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
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