PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Editor-in-Chief/Founder, The Hustings/thehustings.news 2020 to present

• Commission columns from freelance contributors on a near daily basis
• Solicit, organize and edit freelance contributions
• Write thoughtful daily pieces focused on providing balanced coverage of current political issues and news
• Work in variety of ways to increase digital audience and build platform Freelance Contributor, Autoweek/autoweek.com 2022
  Detroit Bureau Chief, Automobile Magazine/motortrend.com 2012 to 2020

• Edited and wrote columns, breaking news, features and reviews for website and monthly automotive magazine with literary bent
• Edited cover stories and features, fact checked and coordinated with contributors
• Detroit Editor, Motor Trend/motortrend.com 2000 to 2012

• Wrote prolifically for the website and created influential industry blog
• Served as primary writer/chief editor of the magazine’s news section, coveringanalysis about the industry and future cars
• Sourced, developed and wrote features for Motor Trend Classic

OTHER RELEVANT EXPERIENCE (summarized)
Newsletter Editor, Legislative Editor for Nurses, Washington D.C. (four years) Senior Reporter, San Diego Business Journal, San Diego, CA (five years) Reporter, Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA (one year)

KEY SKILLS

Editing/AP Style
SEO
Working on Deadline Remote Work Microsoft Office WordPress
Social Media Promotion Using Metrics
Digital Publishing Freelancer Management Time Management

EDUCATION

B.A. Mass Communication/Journalism, B.A. Film Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI

AFFILIATIONS/ACTIVITIES

Election Stringer, Associated Press, 2020
Member and Former President, Board of Directors, Automotive Press Association

Analyst/Commentator/Presenter: Multiple TV and radio including CNBC, Al Jazeera, Fox Business, Detroit and WI Public Radio, Cheddar TV, Autoline Detroit

Los Angeles gets my vote for Worst Place in the World to Drive, and I’ve driven everywhere from Almaty, Kazakstan, to Rome, Italy. It’s also one of the worst places in the world to ride your bike, especially if you ride to commute.

In South Los Angeles, motorists in their closed SUVs pumped with max air conditioning assume that if you’re on a bike, you’re not riding by choice, but because you’re homeless (and therefore don’t really have anyplace special to go while people who own cars and SUVs must get to work) according to The New York Times‘ Sunday, June 24 news section.

Cycling groups led by Ted Rogers, of the BikingInLA blog <bikinginla.com>, are lobbying the L.A. City Council for safer bike lanes following the tragic death of Frederick “Woon” Frazier, casualty of a hit-and-run by a woman in a Porsche sport/utility.

Earlier this month, Charles Pickett was sentenced to 35- to 55-years in prison for killing five when the pickup truck he was driving plowed into a group of nine bicyclists out for a regularly scheduled ride. Pickett had methamphetamine, muscle relaxers and pain medication in his system when he hit nine cyclists in June 2016, a forensic scientist had testified. He was driving 58 mph in a 35 mph zone, and apparently did not hit the brakes until he hit the first of the cyclists on a rural two-lane highway outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

 

Now a proposal in the Michigan state legislature would require that motorists allow no less than five-feet distance before passing cyclists on certain roads. But even with potential gains in car-centric states like Michigan and California, bike commuters and recreational bikers will remain caught in the middle, between motorists and pedestrians. Yes, some people do walk in California and Michigan.

There are the selfish motorists who express outrage when cyclists aren’t riding on the sidewalk. And there are pedestrians and dog walkers like me who want cyclists off the sidewalks. Listen to me, not to them. Bikes are street legal on most surface streets.

While I understand how bicyclists, especially the “newbies,” are reluctant to ride on the street or on a local two-lane because of incidents like the two above, the consequences of riding aren’t much better.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were walking from a parking space on a side street near Woodward Avenue, in downtown Detroit. As we approached the corner of a building to turn left onto Woodward, a young couple on two bicyclists whizzed past us, riding fast on the opposite side of vehicle traffic, on the sidewalk. We saw them, and they saw us, only at the last second (assuming they saw us at all). We could have been run down, hard.

A few weeks later, I walked out of a local liquor store that’s close to home, where I picked up a bottle of Chianti to go with some Italian takeout further down the street. As I reached to put the bottle into my pannier, a bicyclist on the sidewalk, to my left, braked hard. It was past dark, and he had no light on his bike, though he was wearing a helmet, I think (I hardly saw him before he biked on). I unlocked my bike and walked it to the street and turned on to the alley just half a block away. My neighborhood is just outside of Detroit, also on Woodward Avenue where I often walk my dogs as the occasional bicyclist passes by.

I try not to give them any space, because State law requires bicyclists dismount and walk their bikes in the presence of pedestrians. But they don’t have to do this. My neighborhood has plenty of bike lanes, and quieter side streets where the speed limit is 25 mph, not 35 mph. You can safely and easily get to your destination by avoiding Woodward, sticking to the streets, and using a smart combination of alleyways and side streets.

I can’t say whether this might work in neighborhoods in South L.A., though in all my extensive travels, I’d bet Metro Detroit is more dangerous for cyclists than any other North American city except for L.A. And it’s the Metro Detroit part that’s important. When I lived in the city, I rode around town and into the nearby Grosse Point old-line suburbs quite extensively, but it wasn’t until I moved into the suburbs that I regularly heard the words “ride on the sidewalk!” from motorists.

I always refused. Do the same, and plot your ride or commute by staying off major thoroughfares. Don’t give in to motorists who believe that bikes don’t belong on the road.

Hoping visitors to http://www.gaptrail.org will take a look at my nearly year-old story of riding the Great Allegheny Passage.

 

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

 

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