The end of the ride

This is a long blog so if you're in a hurry, go to the bottom for a quick summary.

Thursday we left the Comfort Inn in Huntingdon at 7:09 AM. Eldon had the great idea of getting rid of our luggage on Dave and Martha Clymer. They live about 20 miles away but it happened they were coming to Huntingdon that morning so we just left our luggage there at the hotel for them to pick up. Mary and Wishart were stopping in to see them on the way here so they brought it along.

We had about a 6 mile stretch where we rode illegally in US322/22 limited access. There wasn't actually a "Motor vehicles only" sign where we got on so we would have used that as an excuse if we had gotten stopped but still I was nervous.

Eldon was feeling very tired. We stopped at a McDonalds where we shared a McFlurry, a fruit smoothie and a coke but it didn't seem to help for very long. Eventually in Mifflintown at just over 42 miles we stopped at a Burger King and he decided to call his son Herman to come pick him up.

"Parting ways at Burger King"


I went on following old US 22 as much as I could but there are two places where there's no other reasonable place to go except back on to US 322/22. Both places there were "Motor vehicles only" signs. The first stretch was only 2 miles long and I sprinted through it at 20 - 25 mph on adrenaline. The second one was longer and I was so nervous I twice got off at exits that didn't lead anywhere so I had to get back on. Fortunately, no state trooper saw me.

I don't think my actions qualified as civil disobedience. What I was doing felt another order of magnitude safer than some of the legal riding we did earlier in the trip in western PA where the traffic was heavy, the shoulders narrow to non-existent and twists and turns severely limiting visibility.

After Clark's Ferry there are sections again where I rode on limited access but there it is marked as "Bike route J". All it would take for the state of PA to make it safe for bicyclists is to stop being anal about giving special treatment to gas consuming vehicles and put up a couple dozen signs.

Lois and Jonathan left Goshen in the morning about 6:15 AM and were racing me to Dennis and Rachel's. (I was the only one that knew it was a race.) They were following me on Google Latitude during the day. We were also in cell phone contact several times - technology can be really handy. By the time I got to Elizabethtown, they were close by and decided to get off 283 and wait for me on 230. I had to come to a rapid stop at the red light at Rheems and decided to call and find out where they were. They had the fun of telling me to just look ahead where they were waiting for me.

Jonathan took this picture outside the window as they drove by. Obviously, they won the race. He labeled it "Some crazy biker"

Following the good directions that Eldon gave me I rode into Dennis and Rachel's before 6:00 PM. 128.25 miles, 8:03 riding time for just under 16 mph average speed. I was getting tired but had none of the utter exhaustion I've gotten before on century rides. It was probably partly the exhilarating 10 - 15 mph winds out of the northwest, partly guzzling soda and other sugary drinks, partly having a relaxed pace for the first 40 miles for a solid warm-up and perhaps a week of intense training helped.

Thinking back over what I ate, I didn't eat that awfully much. I had fairly big carb loaded breakfast, one and a half bananas, half a McFlurry, and a small hamburger from the dollar menu at McDonalds late afternoon. What I'm not counting is the sugar laden drinks. I think between the soft drinks and my Nashbar bike drink mix that I added to my water bottle I had over two and half quarts of sweetened drink. In addition I emptied my 2 quart back pack water tank twice and so I probably had close to 2 gallons of liquid.

Lastly, here's a list of the things to be thankful for on this trip.

1. Safety! Sometimes I when I lay awake at nights I wondered why I was taking the risks of the roller coaster like down hill thrills.
2. No rain. Eldon and I think we had a total of 2 dozen rain drops on the ride. We did have some fairly heavy mist - enough to mess up glasses one morning and several rainy periods at night but that's it.
3. Tail winds almost every day and particularly my last day
4. Technology. My Blackberry, Eldon's GPS, my laptop all helped immensely in planning and executing the ride.
5. Supportive friends and family especially Lois who not only fully supported our adventure but kept in touch every day. It was fun to get calls and text messages just checking in to see how I was doing.
6. Eldon's countless hours ahead of time planning it and then navigating the 633 mile trip. He had done it alone 6 years ago and once before the opposite direction and has an amazing ability to remember details of the road. We didn't follow the exact path he did either time but our route overlapped with those several places.
7. No flats for the entire trip! Eldon had just one. No other significant mechanical problems either.
8. A substance sometimes called "butt butter". It helps immensely when sweat and constant rubbing of the skin on my biking shorts caused a rash.
   

Summary for those in a hurry:
I MADE IT.

Getting close

We had major climbs and descents again today. Our distance was 83 miles from Indiana, PA to Huntingdon. I lost count of how many hills I topped 40 mph but it was at least four and twice I hit 45.1 faster even than yesterday. As I climb the long grades prior to the descent, it reminds me a bit of sledding as a kid. Long pulls up the hill and a short thrilling ride down but I've had enough of those thrills. If there's no traffic 40 doesn't feel too bad but 45 feels too fast even with no traffic.

For the first time we were on a rail to trail section for 16 miles. That was relaxing but my pleasure didn't go to infinite as it should have with 0 traffic by the formula I proposed yesterday.

Tomorrow we'll head toward our destination but since Harrisburg would make a decently long day and we don't feel like getting a motel there, we are probably going to get picked up. Me by Lois and Jonathan as they catch up to me heading to the reunion this weekend and Eldon by Herman.

Eating, math, science with a Biblical quote, road artifacts

We have learned that eating enough is a very important part of making a good day on the bikes. Today after a large continental breakfast, lunch at Arby's and after doing several long climbs we went into a convenience store with good intentions of picking up a 6-pack of granola bars but they didn't have any 6-packs so we got these pre-packaged pies. The "nutrition" information is below. Biking takes approximately 35 calories per mile so the calories below were all used up in about 14 miles.

In addition to the pleasure of biking being related to the calories consumed, I decided today that it is also proportional to the tail wind and the square of the width of the road shoulder as long as there's not too much debris. But the pleasure is inversely proportional to the road kill per mile, the traffic and especially truck traffic.*

Today was our hilliest day so far. We only covered 65 miles. I hit over 40 mph on 5 different hills. For quite a while 40.9 was my peak and I was braking on that hill! Later, that was surpassed by a maximum of 41.9 however, the average today was 11 - our slowest day so far. Why does our day of highest speed also come with the lowest average you ask? Because (and here's the science lesson) what you gain in speed down the hill is mostly eaten up by wind resistance with no way of gaining it back up the other side. More technical explanation below.**

I entertained myself today on the long, long climbs by watching for interesting things along the road. Here's what I found today that I could easily put in my pockets:

I have no idea what's on the DVD - I've already pitched it. The Sharpie actually works, the dime might buy me a piece of gum. The switchblade was probably used in a crime and then abandoned :-). You probably can't read that it's quality steel from China.

Then there was this that I didn't want to put in my pocket:

We see so much road kill. I've seen 4 snakes, a cardinal, a whole family of raccoons, the bloated carcass of a dog and of course the usual deer, skunks, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrel, mice, moles and many unrecognizable flattened remains as above.

Footnotes:
* for Jonathan and actually anyone else with at least some memory of high school math it could be expressed this way:

P = k W² * B * C
           t * T² * D
Where:
P = pleasure
k = some constant
W = Width of the shoulder of the road
B = Breeze on your back
C = calories consumed
t = car traffic
T = truck traffic
D = debris on the shoulder


**I actually worked the science of this last night. It's high school level so bear with me. When going down hill your wind resistance is proportional to the square of your speed so you never have anywhere near enough momentum from whizzing down the hill to take you even a short distance up the next. For example: suppose you have a 10 mile level course that you need to apply a constant 2 pounds of force to overcome the wind resistance (a reasonable number according to the almost encyclopedic mechanical data in my brother's head). So over the 10 mile course you have done 20 mile pounds of work. (Remember from high school science that work is defined as force time distance, usually expressed in foot - pounds.)
Now suppose instead of a level course you go down 5 miles at four times the speed you go on the level (like me today). The force it takes to go 4 times the speed is 16 times as much (4X4 since wind resistance is proportional to the square of your speed). So for 5 miles it takes 5X16 or 80 mile pounds of work. The force behind that is almost all supplied by gravity but eaten by the wind. Now when you go back up the other side, you have to lift the whole gross weight of you and your bike and luggage back up against gravity with no help from the momentum gained going down. Ecclesiastes 5:16 And this also is a sore evil, ... and what profit hath he that hath labored for the wind?

If you read this far I have one question for you. Don't you have anything productive to do?

Monday crossing into PA

This morning we had cloudy weather for the first and even a bit of mist - just enough to fog up glasses. Just after noon we crossed into PA. Our mileage for the day was 81 miles, 6:22 minutes of biking time, averaging 12.6 with almost 5000 feet of climbing. We had quite a few miles of somewhat uncomfortably heavy traffic with not much of a shoulder. The most work was between miles 65 and 75. It started with a precipitous descent into a river valley that warmed up my brakes like never before which of course inevitably led to a long climb interspersed with short twisting descents.

I haven't suffered at all from the total exhaustion I get when doing the Pumpkinvine century. Part of it might be that I'm kept to a more even pace and part of it may be the constant eating. We had 4 meals today starting with a big continental breakfast at 6:00 at the Best Western then on to a stop at McDonalds, a meal at a Subway and a full meal at a Lone Star Steakhouse here next to our Super 8.

Sunday

We decided to go to Maple Grove Church of the Brethren near Ashland, Ohio for their 10:30 service which was about 25 miles away so we didn't leave until 7:45 this morning. We got there at 10:00 and the service was over at 11:30 but we didn't get left until shortly after 12:00.
The gently rolling hills from yesterday became much more pronounced. At one point on our way to lunch in Smithville we climbed a hill where I got down to about 3 mph standing up in my lowest gear but I didn't get off the bike. I think I'm ready for the Hilly Hundred ride in southern Indiana.
The lunch at Smithville wasn't until about 4:00 PM. There just wasn't any place to eat. Even this place was about 4 miles out of the way. It was a very nice buffet but our most expensive meal so far. The picture below is from in front of the restaurant.

We stopped about 15 miles short of our goal for the day at about 7:15 pm at a Best Western in North Canton, Ohio. Our total mileage for the day was 79.8 miles but only 12.4 mph. However my top speed was 38.4 down a nice hill.
The good things: no flats, mostly tail wind, no rain and so many stops we avoided the utter exhaustion of yesterday.

A long day

Eldon didn't move far after arriving and showering here at the Walton Inn in Willard, Ohio. That's him on the bed. You can be glad the picture stops before you get to his top half. We always park our bikes in the room but this room is just barely big enough for two bikes.

It was a long day. We only went 11 miles farther than yesterday but of course it was day two and our irrational exuberance has worn off. Then also having a flat an hour or so after our 6:30 AM start didn't help. With some brake problems that took 40 minutes during the cool of the day. Back tracking for forgotten sun glasses although only half a mile, was also a bit demoralizing. After that the day heated up about 50 degrees from where it started. Eventually we ran out of water late afternoon and dragged into a Marathon gas station about 10 miles from our room reservations here. It was just past 5:30 when we arrived at the hotel. (11 hours after leaving with just 7 hours of actual biking time.) We would never have made it without the stiff southwest breeze which was very helpful except for the numerous times we had to head straight south. Also on the positive side, our biggest hill for the first 5o miles was a railroad overpass. That part of Ohio is absolutely flat.

Tonight instead of an Asian grill buffet like last night, we went all American with an East of Chicago Pizza buffet. Good pizza, cheap salad bar but what do you expect for 5.99? I think I got my money's worth.

First day of the ride

We left Goshen just after 7:00 and reached our hotel in Defiance, OH 91 miles later just after 2:00 averaging just over 15 mph. A tail wind with long relatively level stretches really helped. We stopped at every McDonalds we saw except one. The first two were for potty breaks and the third one was for lunch in Auburn. We skipped the one in Hicksville, OH. I think if we had stopped at all the Subway restaurants we saw we would still be on the road.

weighing in

Tonight I loaded my bike with everything for the trip including my laptop which I'm now very seriously considering taking. The laptop with charger weighs 6.7 pounds. Fully dressed with biking shoes, helmet etc, I weigh 142. The gross weight of the bike with me on it is 188. That means the bike and all baggage is 46 pounds. One way to look at it is that my laptop is almost 15% of my total bike and luggage. On the other hand, it's only 3.5% of the gross weight and more importantly, the bike seems to handle just fine. So I think it will go along. The disadvantage is that I will be more tied to work but I almost have to be the first 2 days anyway while my cohort is also on vacation. The big advantage will be much more convenient access to email, this blog and my brother will be able to download the daily routes to his GPS as we go along. (He could only load 3 of the 7 days on his GPS at once.)

Initial blog

rarin' to go.

Well folks, I've joined the blogging world - at least temporarily. My intention is to blog regularly during our bike ride. I don't know if I'll blog after that or not.
I don't expect anyone to be following this blog yet so I'm writing this as though it is an email - I have it setup to automatically email you when I post it. If you don't want to be emailed just send me a note. You can always go to my blog site (see "bikebrother" link at the bottom of the email to access the blogs.)
On the trip, I will be blogging from my Blackberry which means the blogs will be short on details. I hope to include a highlight of the day and a picture or two. Unfortunately, it will also mean that at the bottom of the post there will be this stupid confidentiality note from MMA because that gets automatically attached to every email I send. I haven't figured out yet how to get directly to my blog site on my Blackberry so I can't edit it out. Any geek out there that can tell me why on my Blackberry I get an error when I try to access blogger. com, please let me know.

Special note to Barb and Doug: if the attached picture takes too long to download, please let me know. The picture was taken from my Blackberry and when I send it to the blog site, I can choose what size to use so I can easily make it smaller.

Trip preparation

I decided to pack my panniers today to see if everything fit. I was feeling around on the bottom of the panniers and trying to find out why there was a puffy place near the rear. Eventually I discovered there is a zippered pocket on the outside near the bottom that contained a waterproof cover for the pannier. The panniers are still almost new so it's not like I would have used these coverings if I had found them earlier but I'm pleased with the find.
A week from tonight we should be in Willard Ohio with 2 days behind us.