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.