It was a long day and a long ride but the headline is we made it and it was as good as expected. I don't have the time or the mental energy to write down all we did today so this will be a picture heavy post. Today's ride was 60 miles which is the longest ride I will probably ever do on a mountain bike. I was anxious about the length of today's ride but although I faded the last five miles its nothing a little hydration and sleep won't fix.
It helped that today's weather as perfect. It was 60 degrees when we started and never go much about 75 with no humidity. Today's ride started with a hour drive to downtown Pittsburgh where the Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny rivers meet. There is a fountain at the point where the rivers meet as well as a medallion at the start of the trail where Jack, Dorthy, Bob and I took a picture to mark the start of the ride.
We then headed down the trail which is along the Monongahela river. Pittsburgh has a lot of bridges, more than any city in the world including Venice. They are all steel bridges of different designs. We cross over the Monongahela on the Hot Metal Bridge and I got a picture of the skyline of Pittsburgh as we left the city.
This part of the GAP trail is paved and so it was easy going. We worked our way through the outskirts of the city. It was very industrial as most of the land we were riding on use to be old steel plans. Its amazing how many abandon plants there are. It some places it looks like a bomb went off and burnt or damaged all the factory buildings. Some place are being revitalized so it is a strange mix.
In Mckeesport we crossed another bridge and left the Monongahela to follow the Youghiogheny. Don't ask me to pronounce the names.
At this point the tail became crushed limestone but was still a very smooth and easy surface to ride.
There were a couple of weird but interesting waterfalls along the trail. The first one was white and looked like snow. I think it was phosphorus run off from an old mine.
The second one was red and was iron and sulfur run off from a mine.
The GAP trail has plenty of places to get water and use the bathroom and even has bike repair stations along the way. If you want food you have to stop at one of the small towns along the way. We ended up stopping in West Newton at an old restored train station.
The trail does have some odd things to see along the way as well as some bike art.
After the town of West Newton there wasn't a lot of civilization. The towns we did pass through were usually run down old mining towns of 10-12 houses. We were still following the river which was very scenic. The only thing that disturbed the scenery was the noise of the many freight trains going down the other side of the river.
At 55 miles I started to feel the miles of the day. Jack was of course was getting faster and sprinted away. When I saw the archway I knew I was less than a mile from the finish. Although I was sore I did not cramp and after a shower and something to eat I felt pretty good.
Because this was a point to point ride after we got cleaned up we had to go back and get the car we drove to Pittsburgh in. So we drove back to Pittsburgh and made a stop at Bike Heaven. Its a museum and bike store and has 3 floors of amazing vintage bikes. I could go on for pages about all the cool bikes there were but here are a few picture of what I saw.
That's it for today. It was a fun day and am looking forward to tomorrow's shorter ride.
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