Those Aren’t Foothills…

I got to a late start on Sunday morning, after a long night of preparing for the road. I downloaded my maps into my GPS, since this would be my last time in front of my computer for four months, wrote a few e-mails to my contacts at the NPS, and didn’t go to bed until well after midnight.

Of course it was raining in the morning, drizzling and gloomy. Somehow every time I start a new chapter in my life it always winds up rainy. It rained when I moved my furniture out of my apartment, it rained when I moved to Atlanta and when I moved back.

My mom and I went out in search of the Fort Pitt Museum. It is hiding in the middle of Point State Park, so after a few wild loops back and forth across the river, we parked and walked through pedestrian tunnels and under an overpass to finally find the entrance of the museum.

It was beautiful. I highly recommend visiting if you‘re ever in Pittsburgh. Just go on a stroll through the park and you’ll find it through a much more scenic means than I did. My mom and I said goodbye. She told me she’d understand if I wanted to postpone my departure because of the weather. That seemed like postponing the inevitable. It would definitely rain again on my trip, and if I was going to give up because of rain, better to realize now than hundreds of miles down the road.

When I planned my route, I researched bike paths, I tried to keep my path as close to the river as possible and keep off scary state roads. I didn’t account for topography. I didn’t know how to account for it. So, after a leisurely ride along a bike path on the north bank and a mishap with my front fender (It was dragging against the tire, so I took it off and strapped it to my bike), I started uphill.

It was disheartening how quickly I needed to get off my bike and push. I was carrying 50 pounds of gear and these hills were steep! From the river they looked like cliff faces with a ridge of houses a the top. I continued up and up, horrified that after starting at 1pm I wasn’t even out of Pittsburgh yet. My plan had been to practically be in Ohio. At one point I had to carry my weighted bike down a flight of stairs and waited to cross a busy road so I could get across the river.

The hills continued and I did my best on them. When I got my bike tuned up they told me I needed to stretch the cables and comb back to get them tightened. In the week leading up to this trip I barely had time to ride. With the amount I was changing gears, I certainly stretched them now. They started getting irritable when I changed them, or not even changing at all. I’d have to try and switch gears two or three times before it would go. This did not make the hills any easier. Finally, around 6 o’clock I started looking for a place to stay. There didn’t seem to be any campgrounds within a reasonable distance of where I was, so I wound up staying at a hotel. I told myself I was celebrating getting through this first day.

There was a Dick’s Sporting Goods across the road from the hotel, so I dropped off my bike, and with some coaxing, convinced them to do the work before the next afternoon.