Thursday, June 18, 2009

Day 3: Mountville, PA to Frederick, MD

Getting up this morning was really hard. We had a real bed and a hot breakfast waiting for us. Consequently, we didn't get started until after eight. For the first time all trip we were going to spend some time on familiar roads. In college I rode from Gettysburg to Lancaster and we'd be using many of the same roads to get to Frederick.

My strongest memory of that ride was the mile long bridge in Columbia and the steep climb into Wrightsville. Both of our knees were already hurting when we woke up, this hill about killed them. Then we had a few more miles to our next stop: The Haines Shoe House.

Apparently a shoe salesman became quite wealthy in the area and used the shoe house as both a guest house and an advertisement for his shoes. Though we'd both driven by it a dozen times, we had to tour it. The inside looked... like a house. There was also a shoe dog house.

It had also started to warm up. Fortunately, there was ice cream.

And then we were back on the road. We rode right through York, which had a ton of traffic. But fortunately we passed a Walmart, where Jillian bought a knee brace. In West York, they had awesome parking meters.

And then it got really hot. Just past York we stopped at a Sheetz and had a little picnic on the grass. Then we turned off US-30 to go to Hanover, PA. The road turned out to have even worse hills than the climb in Wrightsville. Plus, the hills were rolling, so as soon as we did one we had another. The scenery was beautiful though, with great big fields of wheat.

Once we left Hanover things started to flatten out. By the time we reached Littlestown the hills had switched to long, gradual climbs followed by similar descents. Soon we reached Maryland.

Unfortunately it was also starting to get dark.

We pushed on, following an official bike route through beautiful countryside with wonderful pavement and a wide shoulder. When we reached Taneytown, we took a few minutes for dinner.

Then we rode on to Frederick, catching a gorgeous sunset on the way.

Unfortunately, catching a sunset also meant we would be riding in the dark. We turned both of red lights on as well as all three of our headlights and rode on as fast as we could. Though we'd been riding very slow all day - usually less than 9 - we were able to keep it above 12 here and often up to 18. It felt like flying. By the time we'd reached Woodsboro the sun was totally down. But due to the wide shoulder riding still felt safe. We stopped one more time (at a Sheetz) to hydrate and then pressed on again.

Night riding is a funny thing. On one hand, you hate it because it feels so unsafe and you have to focus so hard on seeing what's on the road ahead of you. On the other hand, there's less traffic, the temperatures are better, and there's a certain peace to it. This was good night riding. Though I wish we'd gotten in a lot earlier, this turned out to be a wonderful section of the ride and just the right thing to cheer us up a bit.

We didn't arrive at our apartment in Frederick until nearly 11. David was getting a little worried. After quick notes to our parents that we'd made it alive, we completely passed out and were asleep in moments.

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