If you’ve read about all six days of my Pittsburgh-to-Cumberland-to-Pittsburgh trek, you know I’ve left some questions unanswered. So, here are the answers:

Q. How much weight did I lose?

A. I weighed 182.6 pounds the morning before my 300+ mile ride began. The morning after I returned, I weighed in on the same scale at 181.6 pounds. Precisely. One pound. I was dreaming of some apocalyptic drop. I was hoping to at least drop below 180 pounds. Didn’t happen.

Q. Can you do this ride without any training?

A. Yes. If you’ve consistently biked through life, even without wearing one of those geeky all-spandex outfits shouting a certain bike brand or a racing sponsor, you can get on this trail and ride steadily, consistently, 40 to 75 miles a day without waking up the next morning feeling like you’d rather die. In other words, if you like biking regularly but don’t feel like you’re pushing yourself, you can handle this. Skip the expensive, trendy bike-in-place training. Peloton? Hah.

Q. What about the bike outfit?

A. Wear uncovered spandex bike shorts, if you must. I wore biking shorts, or athletic undershorts with running-type shorts with pockets over them. I like Salomon shorts, because they have zippered front pockets, so I didn’t have to worry about keys or my money clip falling out, and not discovering this for 20 miles.

Q. What would I do differently?

A. I’d try to get these blog posts out more quickly. Like, the night of the ride. But when you’ve been riding all day, a burger and a beer and then bed call, loudly. I promise to do this more, and I hope more and more of you will find this worth reading.

Q. Do I prefer to ride with a group, or ride alone?

A. Each has its merits. Riding with brothers Greg and Tom is priceless. When I ride alone, there’s more time for reflection, and maybe getting out daily posts on time.

Q. Would I do this again?

A. Tomorrow, if I could.

 

Lucy, proprietor at the Connellsville Bed & Breakfast, serves up a nice Wednesday morning omelet. It’s 7.30 and the others here are a married couple with their male friend, in bike spandex, from Pittsburgh and headed south. They had breakfast at 7, so we don’t get a chance to do more than exchange pleasantries.

When I’m finished and on my third or fourth cup of coffee, I meet another couple headed south. They’re from Maine, and they’re dressed more in the t-shirt and athletic shorts mode, kind of like me. They’re maybe a few years younger, and parked their car in Cumberland to take the Amtrak train to Pittsburgh where they began their ride. The couple and their friend who left ahead of me are older, perhaps within a few years of standard retirement age.

I worry that The Great Allegheny Passage trail is filled with Baby Boomers just comfortable enough to get nice bikes and enough time off to put a full week into this ride, though I’m going to finish a full day early, myself.

I’d hope and bet that the riding crowd is far more diverse, and more colorful when summer begins next Monday (Memorial Day). Then again, I’ve seen plenty of 30-somethings and perhaps more than a few late-20-somethings on this ride, including the diverse group that tried to warn me off of riding uphill from Cumberland.

This last day leaves me with 62 miles to Pittsburgh, which now seems like a walk in the park. By the time I make “Little Boston,” 39 miles in, the rural hills and farmland of The Great Allegheny Passage roughly from Ohiopyle to the Eastern Continental Divide returns to exurb/suburb by this point. I have a late-ish (1 p.m. or so) lunch at The Trailside, the desktop restaurant above a bike shop and overlooking the trail, where Greg, Tom and I had our first lunch together last Friday.

I take a table on the outside deck and order, predictably, a cheeseburger and a Yuengling. I’m not driving, and although I’ve still got a ride ahead, I take a languorous  hour.

As I eat away the final 23 miles, a group of half a dozen or so bike geeks, wearing matching t-shirts announcing their group’s name storms past with an “on your left!” I’m humbled, though I keep pace with them on a long, steady uphill for a mile or two. A few miles more and they’re taking a break next to a park nestled between the trail and the river.

They’re from Chico, California, aged from 30s to about my age. All male, and they’re finishing up a ride begun in Washington. They’re pretty much the mirror image of the Pittsburgh group that warned me about the uphill ride.

I ride closer and closer to Pittsburgh and my parked, borrowed Fiat 500X, feeling no regrets. I miss the company of Greg and Tom, and their encouragement in keeping a strong, steady, but comfortable pace from Pittsburgh to Cumberland. Now I miss Tom’s expertise as a local in navigating urban Pittsburgh as I get closer to Point State Park. The bridges, right up to the Hot Metal Bridge, cross pavement and over cars instead of rivers and I feel a vacation quickly coming to a close.

The trail breaks up maybe six or seven miles from Point State Park, and I walk my bike for a few blocks on the sidewalk — which I prefer over riding sidewalks — to find my way back. As I take my final selfies at the park, across the river from Heinz Stadium, it begins to drizzle again. I’m unshaven, sweaty and rain-soaked, look like hell, and feel like a million bucks. I could turn around, head south and do this all over again.

Mileage: 62

Official Trip Mileage: 300

Estimated Trip Mileage: 350

Breakfast is included at The Gunther Inn, though it’s at the Princess restaurant across the street. Nice family diner, a “Pappos Family Tradition for Four Generations.” The few others in the diner at 7 a.m. clearly are locals. They know it’s French toast Tuesday, which I discover only after ordering eggs, sausage, hash browns and toast, and not all of that is included. Whatever I ordered that was extra comes in under five bucks, plus tip.

I’m checked out, my bike parked in the alley garage last night. I strap on the three bags and head for the road out of town. Easy — enjoy the steep hill in the other direction, applying plenty of brake, and turn left onto the trail. Except, there appears to be more than one steep road out of town. Just before I ride through a tunnel, I notice that it appears to run under the Great Allegheny Passage trail. Perhaps there’s an entrance just ahead.

Except, there isn’t. I roll toward a small town I don’t recognize. I turn around and start the long, hard climb back up. Past the tunnel, I can clearly see part of the GAP trail. There’s a big old red house on the left with a “NO TRESPASSING” sign.

My only other choice is to walk the bike up that steep hill, in my toeclip shoes.

OK. Drop my bike at the end of the walkway, right next to the “NO TRESPASSING” sign. I walk up to the front door and hold my hands out far enough to make it clear I have no weapon. Ring the doorbell, and a dog starts yipping. I’m about to give up when a woman’s voice yells, “come get your dog! I hate that dog!”

A man’s voice: “I’m in the bathroom!”

The woman starts to struggle with the door.

“Sorry to bother you,” I say, “and I see the NO TRESPASSING sign, but is that the Great Allegheny Trail behind your yard?”

“Yes it is. Go ahead.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

I have just 8 1/2 miles to the Eastern Continental Divide, but the gradual climb is no problem. I’m trying to remember whether there was an alternate route around the Big Savage Tunnel, the 11 football field-long underpassage that certainly must be full of snakes.

There is no alternative route, and thanks to the bike lights I carefully recharged last night, I can say there’s no bear, and I didn’t see any snakes. A few cyclists are riding toward me, but I’m solo heading back north. It’s a bit cool with a few drops of rain here and there, and I’m wearing my yellow rain jacket over a light, black zippered hoodie.

I miss the company of Greg and Tom, but I’m enjoying the quiet run back to Pittsburgh. I’ve waived off any opportunities to catch a shuttle for any part of the return trip. Once through the short Continental Divide tunnel, I can enjoy the slight downhill cant, though I keep peddling at a steady pace, as I’m riding 72 miles today, the second-longest stint of the six-day ride.

My only worries now are my computer, which caught some malware last night on the unsecured Gunther wi-fi, and my phone, which seems to have caught something, too. I can’t dial out.

About mile 47, which is 32 miles into today’s ride, I come up on a cyclist holding up a smartphone camera, to my left. Another cyclist is approaching, so I stop to avoid ruining his shot.

“Keep going,” the camera subject says. “I can’t do a high-five if you don’t get into the shot.”

I’m in such a zone, it takes me five miles to figure out that I’ve just high-five’d Hutch, from the Cumberland Trail Connection bike shop.

I cross the tall bridges that pass over the Casselman and Youghiogheny Rivers and back into Confluence, Pennsylvania, where the proprietor of Confluence Cyclery tunes my derailleurs, again, and gives me detailed lessons on how to use the left brake-handle shifter. I’m 47 miles into today’s ride, which means I’ve got 25 to go.

It’s almost 2 o’clock. I could get the Sisters Cafe to stay open late, but the wife in the bike shop’s husband-wife team says the grocery store in town makes great sandwiches, and that sounds like a time-saver.

I enter the grocery store, and one local says to the woman behind the deli counter, “that was a great sandwich you made me yesterday.” Almost sounds like a plant.

It’s not. I begin to order one, and the woman tells me she can’t. The bread man hasn’t arrived yet, today. So it’s packaged cheese-crackers and a Mars bar for me.

The cycle shop has free wi-fi and a laptop, where I send emails to my wife and the office IT guy. I pay $10 for the tune-up and head out. Half a mile out of town, my IT guy calls. My phone somehow turned on the blind-user’s mode, which means you have to tap the numbers twice to enter the security code. He tells me how to turn off the feature, and says he’ll send me a fix for my laptop, which I can download in my Connellsville B&B tonight.

Miles: 72

European Sandwiches and Coffee sounds like a generic name for a cafe. Its proprietor is Azerbaijani, if a couple of tchotchkes in his restaurant are any indication. I’ve had a late start, because I had to tend to some business from my room in the Fairfield Inn just past Mile 0 on the Cumberland, Maryland side of The Great Allegheny Passage trail.

My sandwich is tasty, and the proprietor, perhaps my age, is quiet and attentive, and proud of his little cafe, and the only person working European Sandwiches this cool, cloudy Monday early afternoon.

I return to the Great Cumberland Trail Connection bike shop to buy a rain jacket from the shop’s proprietor, Hutch. Then I ride across the bridge connecting the GAP trail to the C&O Canal trail, just to say I did it.

On the outskirts of town, the GAP trail heading north begins its climb to the Eastern Continental Divide, but it’s not nearly as tough as the guys I met on Day 1 claimed, though I’ve taken the added precaution of planning a short Day 4. My wife, Donna, has booked a room — a suite, it turns out, though at an affordable price — at the Gunter Inn, just 15 miles up the trail in Frostburg, Maryland.

On the outskirts of Cumberland, I stop to talk to two women who live nearby, and are walking a bit of the trail. They ask me how far I’m going. It’s clear, they say, that I’m not a day-tripper, because of my saddlebags.

“You’re riding alone?” one woman asks, when I explain that my erstwhile riding companions (Greg and Tom) are on their way to Washington.

“Be careful, especially in the tunnels.”

Why?

“Bears. And snakes.”

Snakes? I feel like Indiana Jones, now. I can spot a bear and avoid him or her. Snakes in the tunnels?

“Sometimes rattlesnakes.”

Urp. That night in the Gunter Hotel, I make sure to fully charge my headlamp and taillamp. The ride to the hotel turns out to be much tougher than the uphill ride between Cumberland and Frostburg, which takes two hours at a slow, steady pace. On the way, I see the guys from Day 1, riding toward Cumberland. They’re going to get a shuttle back to Pittsburgh from Hutch, of the Great Cumberland Trail Connection. I’m considering trying to find a shuttle from Frostburg, or perhaps one of the bigger towns along the way.

The road up to town is so steep that I walk my bike for the first time on this trip. The Gunter Inn was built in 1897, but in its latest iteration, was rehabbed just last year and turned into a cool, boutique-style hotel, with a tavern called the Gin Mill next to the lobby. The Gin Mill isn’t exactly a speakeasy, in that it also serves food, but that makes it the perfect place for an early cocktail hour and after walking around downtown Frostburg, dinner at 8.

There’s a great independent book shop, Main Street Books a few doors from the Gunter, and down the block, the Palace theater, which is playing Sergio Leone’s 1966 classic, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Few storefronts are empty in this small downtown.

The Gunter locks up bikes in the back alley in a garage, by the way. A bike club that runs the GAP trail monthly always stays at the hotel.

My bartender at cocktail hour was a student at Frostburg State University, who decided to stay here after graduation. Frostburg’s story is similar to other small towns along the GAP trail. It’s a town built on mining and other heavy industries, but it’s doing okay now thanks to the university’s recent growth, and from tourism like the GAP trail riders.

GAP Miles: 16.5