Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Day 9: Washington, PA to St Clairsville, OH

We were pretty pumped to be riding today, since despite not doing a lot of miles we were going to do three states in a day.

However, we had this minor problem before we could go anywhere. None of the laundry was dry. Jillian hung things out on the bike, while I borrowed a hair dryer from the office (They're not in every room at Motel 6) and went nuts trying to dry clothes.

Our next quest was to try to find a bike shop, so that our wheel and handlebars could get fixed. We spent an hour riding around Washington looking for the bike shop. We did get to see Washington and Jefferson College, which looked very nice. In fact, most of Washington looked pretty nice, and the cops had sweet rides.

While we were searching for the bike shop, someone ran out of a coffee shop and shouted "Jillian and Kyle!" This confused us, since we don't know anyone in Washington. But we stopped, to find that Anne's mother (who we'll be staying with tomorrow night) was having coffee with a friend. It turns out that her friend Mrs Young had pointed out a funny looking bike, and her mother had put it all together. They treated us to coffee, conversation, and directions to the bike shop.

We set off, determined to find the bike shop. Unfortunately, all we could find at the address (even after calling Sheila, for more clarification) was a bank and a parking lot. Frustrated, we rode to Rite Aid.

Here Jillian decided to do something about her feet, so she bought 4 pair of insoles for her shoes (they were buy 2 get 2 or something - to be honest I don't remember the deal, but financially it made sense). So we chopped up the insoles with my knife and fit them to her shoes, only to find out they pushed her toes into the top of the shoe. They weren't going to work.

From Washington we got on US-40 West, which we were going to be riding most of the way to St Louis. 40 has a number of S bridges preserved. An S bridge is perpendicular to a stream, but at an angle to the road. They were cheaper to build than a bridge at an angle to the stream.

40 also has regular mile markers.

Not too long later we crossed into West Virginia. 40 follows the Little Wheeling creek to Tridelphia, where it turns north. West Virginia became the best ride we've had yet - it was all downhill, losing about 600 feet over about 9 miles.

Following the recommendation of a cyclist we came across, we stopped at the bike shop almost on the corner of WV-88 and US-40 after stopping for lunch at Subway. Unfortunately this bike shop couldn't repair anything for us, but they were kind enough to sell us a spare tire. Jillian also tried some cycling specific insoles from Nike, though they ended up not working either. The two very young employees of the shop were also kind enough to point us to the local bike path.

We followed their advice and got on the path less than a mile away from the shop. Unfortunately, this route isn't reflected in the map on the route page. Originally I'd planned on taking 40 through a tunnel and a town, but everyone said this would be very dangerous. The bike path followed the old railroad route.

The bike path got rather confusing, as parts of it were marked closed but not actually closed. We were very careful to watch what the locals were doing and just followed them. It took us over a bridge, through a tunnel, and past some really nice areas of Wheeling.

Wheeling was a very bike friendly city, and we were able to follow bike paths all the way to the riverfront.

I was very hopeful that Wheeling would turn out to be an awesome city, but unfortunately a lot of it seemed to be falling apart. But they did have some really awesome parks and minor league hockey.

The National Road goes across a really awesome bridge onto Wheeling island.

Remembering our experience at Washington Crossing, we opted to walk the bike.

Then we were on Wheeling island, which wasn't as nice as I'd hoped. We crossed into Ohio over another bridge not much later. From Bridgeport, ohio we rode right up and out of the river valley on 40, making pretty good time. It also meant we started and finished at almost exactly the same elevation.

We spent the night at a Super 8, nearly across from the Dennys where we had dinner.

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