Save for the downpour Friday evening, weather along the Great Allegheny Passage has been ideal for biking, with highs in the low 60s F, and lows in the mid 50s. Sunday morning in Rockwood is a bit different. Temperatures have dipped just below 50 degrees F. And ideal as the Husky Haven is, with the guest house’s three bedrooms and a washer/dryer in the basement, it should come with earplugs.

The guest house is two blocks from a set of train tracks, with both freight and Amtrak trains blowing their whistles late at night and early in the morning. Still, I manage to get plenty of sleep. And the hostel I mentioned in Day 2 is two or three blocks on the other side of the tracks, and certainly less comfortable.

The Husky Haven also has billiards and ping pong tables in the basement, and a display with Jean Atchison’s sled-dog rig on display.

According to the Trail Guide, Rockwood is a “rural community with its roots in industry and railroading” that didn’t have its industrial age boom until after the Civil War. It’ll be interesting to see whether a sustained boom in biking tourism can save, even transform, the little town.

This morning, there are no restaurants open for Sunday breakfast, as far as we can tell, so we zip up our light jackets and get back on the trail to ride another 11.5 miles to Meyersdale, the “Maple City.” It’s the highest town on the GAP trail, a steady, gradual 280-foot climb from Rockwood to 2,106. Its main street is a steep ride down from the trail, to a diner that specializes in pancakes and French toast to take advantage of the local output, but that means a steep ride up, as well.

Meyersdale may be the highest town on the trail, but it’s not the highest spot. Another 8.5 miles south and 286 feet in height takes Greg, Tom and me to the Eastern Continental Divide, where water on its west side flows to the Gulf of Mexico, and water on the east side flows to the Atlantic Ocean. Its all downhill from here.

A mile-and-a-half later we enter the Big Savage Tunnel, an aptly named train tunnel built in 1911 and reconstructed in 2002-03. It’s 3,300 feet long, dark and moderately downhill, and though I have something like a 200-lumen headlamp on my Jamis, Tom’s light seems more powerful, so I’m happy to pace off of him for the length of 11 football fields. Another mile-and-a-half and we’re at the Mason-Dixon line, separating Maryland from Pennsylvania.

“People don’t realize Maryland is in the south,” an older gentleman, completely devoid of any modern biking spandex, and accompanying a young couple on bikes, tells us. But we knew that already.

Now we’re cruising as we continue downhill toward Frostburg, Maryland. At Frostburg, we’ve gone 28 miles since Rockwell, Pennsylvania, and have dropped 560 feet since the Eastern Continental Divide. We’re 16 miles from “Mile 0” in Cumberland, the looming goal marking the halfway point for me, if I ride the whole distance back to Pittsburgh, and a bit less than halfway for Greg and Tom, who have 184.5 more miles beyond Cumberland, to Washington, D.C.

Frostburg is a nice stop, with carport-style covered benches, a water fountain, bike racks and a parking lot big enough for a couple-dozen day-riders. We press on to Cumberland at a nice, relaxed pace, through another tunnel, this one shorter, and along train tracks that serve freight, Amtrak, and the nostalgic Western Maryland Railroad, which gives tourists a 32-mile loop ride around the area.

Like much of the GAP trail, this section is gently curved to ease you on up or down the mountains. Studying the opposite lane, I feel like the climb back north won’t be that hard, but ask me again tomorrow when I’m doing it.

We wind through a train yard in the outskirts of Cumberland, crossing a couple of city streets and through a couple of parking lots, then into the town’s old-fashioned train station, base for the Western Maryland Railroad. Greg, Tom and I pose for smartphone photos on the Mile 0 marker spot, on the edge of the train station courtyard. There’s The Crabby Pig bar and restaurant on the right just beyond that, then a few more shops, including the Cumberland Trail Connection bike shop.

It’s nearly 5 p.m. on a Sunday, but the Cumberland Trail Connection is open until 7, and they’ve got beer. Tom and I both have our bikes checked out. I haven’t owned mine long enough for post-purchase tuning adjustments, and though I used my 11 upper gears most of the way from Pittsburgh to Ohiopyle, I downshifted taking the steep streets into Rockwood and I’m having trouble getting the chain into the taller of the two front sprockets. It could be user error, as the brake-handle shifters new to drop-handlebar bikes are very new to me.

The Cumberland Trail Connection also has a dog, Mishka. You can trust a bike shop that has a resident dog, especially if it also has beer.

Cumberland is much like the rest of the Great Allegheny Passage towns. Cumberland Trail proprietor Hutch tells us he works with bike shops and other businesses on the two trails to take care of customers along the way — say you need a part that the Confluence bike shop  doesn’t have. And like those other towns, Cumberland has built up a service-tourist industry to mitigate the loss of factory and mining jobs. Just past Hutch’s shop is the Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriot, a quarter-mile at most beyond Mile 0, which despite its corporate identity, lets you store you bike in your room. There’s a bike wash and racks outside, and the indoor hot tub, open until 11 p.m., is just fabulous.

I don’t have any debilitating aches. Far from it, though the long three-day ride has reawakened leg muscles I forgot that I had.

Past the Fairfield Inn, Cumberland erected in 2010 a bike/pedestrian bridge connecting the Great Allegheny Passage trail with the C&O Canal Trail. It might be coincidental the bridge was built just after passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. So far, I haven’t found any official connection.

We throw our tourism dollars at Ristorante Ottaviani, a few blocks downtown, at Hutch’s dinner suggestion. It’s exceptional Italian cuisine by any standard, but today at least, it serves the tastiest spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever had.

Trail Guide Mileage: 43.5

Mileage, Greg’s iWatch: 45.9

Total Mileage, Trail Guide: 150

Total Mileage, Greg’s iWatch: 164.5

Today’s Net Elevation Change: -1,206 feet

 

 

 

Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, is a favorite for Pittsburgh day-trippers. College students, already finished with their spring semester, are poring into town to take summer jobs as river raft guides. Tom convinces Greg and me to spend the morning in town and ease on up to Rockwood, where we have reservations at Husky Haven Saturday night.

That’s a mere 27 miles, according to the Trail Guide, though it’s also an elevation gain of 594 feet. I manage to double my sleep from the previous night to more than six hours.

As I look out over the Yough Plaza parking lot, I feel like I must be in Colorado or Oregon. The lot is full of bikes in the provided racks and more on the day-trippers’ Subaru and SUV bike racks.

In the motel’s guest laundry room, a day’s worth of biking and post-biking clothes are drying. Tom’s Specialized adventure bike has developed a flat and he gets it fixed at one of two bike shops nearby.

Adventure bikes are made for trails like The Great Allegheny Passage and the rougher C&O Canal trail. In fact, I bought the Renegade mostly because I thought I’d be riding the C&O and its rough, rutted surface. Just as “hybrid” bikes begin with a hardtail mountain bike-style frame with straight handlebars, and replace off-road tires with intermediate tires for such paths, the modern adventure bike starts with a road/touring bike with drop handlebars, but with wheels that can accommodate tires more robust and wider than the bolo tie-thin racing style tires. My Renegade’s versatility proves perfect for this long trek.

We check out at 11 and head for the park overlooking the rapids, for pictures. Then we ride the half-mile or so back to the trail and continue on south.

Steadily, slightly uphill, Tom and I pace off each other at a moderate clip as Greg is slightly off-pace and behind us. We take regular breaks along the way, but most of the time Tom and I maintain a constant 10-12 mph (an estimate). The GAP trail’s speed limit is 15 mph.

We stop in Confluence for a late (2-ish) lunch, skipping the Lucky Dog cafe on the outskirts. Confluence is named for its confluence of the Casselman and Youghiogheny rivers. It’s also the home of Confluence Cyclery, located downtown, a mile or so off the trail. Its owners are two escapees from Washington’s Inside-the-Beltway rat race, and it’s worth visiting whether or not you need any adjustments. The owners recommend lunch at Sisters Cafe, a block away, but we must hurry — it’s 1.50 p.m., and the diner closes at 2. Tom gets a new pair of tires to replace his worn tires at Confluence Cyclery as we have lunch.

The 18 miles to Rockwood are perhaps the most beautiful miles on the GAP trail. In Rockwood, there’s a B&B/bike shop right on the trail as we enter the town, but we take a left off the trail, cross a bridge and find the guest house of Husky Haven, on the other side of the Casselman River, and named for the team of dogs that Barry and Jean (the owner) Atchison  used to mush in winters a generation ago on the GAP trail. The Atchisons’ property on the other side of the river, cleared of trees so they could run huskies in the ’90s and ’00s, now is Husky Havens’ campgrounds for bikers.

Jean checks us in to the guest house and tells us there are two dinner choices in Rockwood this Saturday night. The closest closes at 7 p.m., about an hour after we’re showered and ready, while the other is more than half a mile away, serves food until 9 and has a liquor license. Sold.

It occurs to me on the walk over to the tavern (Greg rides his recumbent) that we’ve been in Trump country for much of this ride. Rockwood is another small Pennsylvania town, well-kept but economically stagnant because of dying or moving industries. Tons of steel, coal and coke used to come from these hills. The marketing of the Great Allegheny Passage and its official connection with the C&O Canal trail in 2010, when the U.S. started to recover from The Great Recession, has begun to bring in biking enthusiasts like me who’ve already spent used car money on ever more expensive bikes and their accessories.

It won’t be enough, of course. There’s Husky Haven, the Rockwood Trail House B&B, the Hostel on Main, which we passed on the way to dinner and a place called Gingerbread House — which we did not see — in this town of 846 people. I wonder how locals in Rockwood regard bike tourists like me.

Trail Guide mileage: 27

Mileage according to Greg’s iWatch: 30.9

Elevation change: +594 feet

 

A small group of fellow bikers, a few years older than Greg, Tom and me, arrive at Point State Park in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet to form the Ohio about the same time we do. They’re wearing spandex bike shorts with jerseys on a couple, t-shirts on the others. I’ve decided to wear running/hiking shorts with zip-up pockets for keys and money clip, over my overpriced padded Pearl Izumi biking shorts, with a t-shirt.

We trade taking smartphone photos of each group.

I have three more sets of these shorts/bike shorts/t-shirt combos chosen for maximum flexibility (plus one long pair of Solomon warm-up pants) packed tightly in my expandable seat back, which is propped on top of a tandem-pannier. One nice feature of my new Jamis Renegade is that it has posts for a rear rack, which will come off after this ride because it bumps up the weight of the 20.4-pound bike.

Greg’s recumbent trike weighs about twice the mass of my bike, before throwing on our respective touring bags.

Metro Pittsburgh resident Tom leads us through the downtown streets, sticking mostly to the bike lanes and pedestrian/biking bridges that crisscross the rivers. Now well past its steel-making economy, resurgent Pittsburgh has done a good job of integrating bike lanes into its relatively narrow city streets. There’s a two-way bike lane on one side of key streets, separated by thin posts, and all traffic seems to flow as well as in any city, at least at 7 in the morning.

I’ve had three hours of sleep, because I checked in to my downtown hotel well after midnight, but I’ve had enough coffee to keep me awake and looking forward to getting out on the open Great Allegheny Passage trail. I expect bike shops and motels, bed & breakfasts, brew pubs and cafes catering to the burgeoning cycling tourism business.

But first, more bridges criss-crossing the industrial wastelands of outer Pittsburgh and its working class suburbs. There’s a short piece of road, about half a mile, near Duquesne, with no more than a white painted line to delineate the bike lane from motorized traffic. Greg has been pedaling without a traffic flag, because his luggage covers the flag holder. There’s no traffic and we safely make it back to the off-street GAP path.

Our first big stop is in Boston, 21 miles into the GAP trail from Pittsburgh to the south. Here, the small towns just outside the metro area are not quite as economically healthy. Steel mills and factories have been replaced, to a small extent, by places like The Trailside restaurant and a bike shop in the same building just below, a few steps off the trail. Greg, Tom and I lock our bikes on racks or fences, but judging by the other bikes parked here there’s no need to take along our cumbersome bags (I have a frame bag, in addition to the tandem pannier and the expandable seat bag). After lunch at The Trailside — I had the biggest fish sandwich of my life, and needed two Yuenglings to wash it down) — we head out for Ohiopyle, our first night’s stop.

Greg advertised this expedition as “nice and laid back;” there will be no racing nor showing off. I keep up with Tom, usually riding in his draft, sometimes passing him and trading him for the lead. The Trail Guide advertises a 78 mile ride between Pittsburgh and Ohiopyle, and a 510-foot rise in elevation to 1,230 feet above sea level. Greg falls behind on the uphills, gains on the downhills.

My frame bag is a bit fat, and it’s brushing against my right knee with every pedal stroke. I tell Greg and Tom to keep riding, that I’ll catch up after I adjust things. I’m probably half a mile behind when I start pedaling, fast again, to catch up. We’re maybe near Adelaide, north of Connellsville, a populated exurbia/rural area with houses on either side of the path, and the Allegheny some 50 to 100 yards to our left.

I spot what appears to be a beer tent, and figure my two riding companions have stopped there. Turns out they haven’t, and it’s not a beer tent, but instead a pretzel tent. You pay for pretzels and get pints of Yuengling thrown in. A group of a half-dozen riders from Pittsburgh, both younger and older than me, are enjoying pretzels and beer. One, no older than early 30s, offers me a beer, but I’ve already had two.

“How far are you riding tonight?” he asks, and he’s surprised we’re heading as far as Ohiopyle. When I explain how I plan to turn around alone and come back after Cumberland, he tries to warn me off.

“He did that once, and he’d never do it again,” the fellow rider says, pointing tone of the older members of the group. “It’s steep coming back.”

He offers to find out whether a shuttle service in Cumberland, which they’re taking back on Monday night might have space for another rider and his bike.

I catch Greg and Tom in Connellsville, once the “king of coal mining and coke production,” according to the Trail Guide, and now with a nicely designed bike lane that runs on one side of the street and connects the off-road ends of the GAP path. We stop at a frozen yogurt shop just off the street path. I won’t touch yogurt in any form, but the pink lemonade Italian ice was fabulously refreshing.

The remaining 17 miles to Ohiopyle is slightly up-grade, crushed gravel and mostly smooth, with a few bumps and ruts mostly on the other side. It’s wooded with the occasional waterfall off the rock formations on our right, and beautiful. The Allegheny River is off a steep bluff to the left, with active train tracks following along on the other side of the river, from the east bank. My longest single-day ride until now was the 52 miles of Michigan’s Zoo de Mac event, also in late May, and the last of three I rode was 16 or 17 years ago. Already I’ve ridden more than 60 miles, and I feel fine as I pace off of Tom. To paraphrase two-time Formula 1 World Champion Fernando Alonso, my legs have a brain of their own.

But a few miles out of Connellsville, as evening approaches, it starts to rain. Then it rains, lots. Pouring on us. I have a disposable rain poncho, a glorified plastic lunch baggie, but that’s not my problem. It’s the rain splattering my glasses. My visibility is down to maybe 10 yards. Greg passes us along the way, claiming his iWatch says we’ve only got 10 miles, though the iPhone on which it depends doesn’t have full, constant bar. The path seems as relentless as the downpour. It was probably closer to 14 miles.

The rain stops before we reach the bridge easing us into the lovely little town of Ohiopyle, and the sun is making a comeback. We check in to the Yough Plaza motel a few blocks off the trail, and use the bike wash to hose off as much wet crushed pebble mush off our bikes as we can, before we even settle into the two-bedroom (with kitchen and living room) suite. It’s 8 p.m. when we’re finally showered and ready for dinner. We choose a cafe just around the corner that closes at 9 — summer hours in these parts are still a week away.

My back, neck, legs and shoulders feel fine. The ball of my left foot, having spent more than 12 hours in a toeclip shoe have not, and I’m walking in my Sanduks with a bit of a limp.

Miles, per Trail Guide: 72

Actual miles, per Greg’s computers: 74.8

Elevation change: +510 feet