Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Day 8: Donegal, PA to Washington, PA
Today started with yet more rolling hills - nothing much interesting to report. Surprisingly enough, we still hadn't lost enough altitude, so before long we had yet another long downhill. Sadly, this was likely to be the very last one we had before the West.
Our first town of the day was Mount Pleasant. There was a bike shop here, and we were hoping to talk to someone about the shaky handlebars as well as pick up a spare tire and some tubes. Unfortunately, the guy that fixes bikes wasn't in, so we had no choice but to ride on, handlebars shaking a little more all the time.
This part of PA seems to have a series of steep, but not terribly long hills. It made for very painful riding, since we were really hoping that we were all done with the big hills. In between the hills are rivers. As we were riding into Monongahela, we raced a coal barge (We won)
Since it was well past time for lunch, we stopped at a Sheetz, where we had a lengthy conversation with Mick, a retired steelworker. Mick was very nervous about our riding 136, since traffic moves very fast and there's a very limited shoulder. He was right, but there also wasn't much traffic when we rode it. The terrain looked nice, but it was more rolling hills.
There was a lot of very picturesque farmland, and Jillian spent a lot of time shooting pictures of cows and hay bales. I tried to ride away, but she spotted me.
On our way into town we passed the SPCA during a a bit of construction. Anxious to get off the road a while, I decided we'd stop and look at the dogs. I fell in love with a certain German Shepherd, who was also the only quiet dog in the bunch.
We rolled into Washington pretty early, which was good, since we were entirely out of laundry. Jillian took charge of hand washing the laundry.
We found out the next morning that the motel had guest laundry and we just hadn't noticed. Meanwhile, I tried to fix the bike some.
We were having quite a bit of trouble with our wheel. The tire we had on the back was a little large, and there was less than 3/16 of an inch of clearance on either side. If we hit even one bump the tire was out of true and we'd rub. We had been rubbing for several days, and trying to true the wheel at every stop was becoming my new hobby. I also took a few moments to tune up some other things that had been bothering me a while.
Dinner was at the Chinese Buffet nearly across the street. Food was pretty good, but the fortune cookies were so much better.
← Day 7: Bedford, PA to Donegal, PA | Home | Day 9: Washington, PA to St Clairsville, OH →
| posted at: 07:29 |
permanent link and comments
