Day 11 - The drive to Pottstown

It’s taken me some time to circle back to writing. Either my days have been filled with the necessary functions of riding, eating, sleeping, and planning or they have been spent with friends. This is tardy by many days, but at least it’s here.

Starting out in Harrisburg (actually Camp Hill):

I spent the night in a cheap but well fitted motel knowing full well that I would be greeted by the task of actually fixing the flat from the day before which was still slowly leaking.

As some of you may know this is an involved process that typically takes 10 minutes in the best of circumstances and more like 30 minutes of sweat and cursing. This wasn’t too far off from the second, but I’m genuinely getting better strategizing ways to save time.

For the uninitiated the process involves dismounting the rear wheel, taking off two bolts, a tow hitch, a bracket that prevents my hub motor from rotating in the frame, and then snaking a 25lb wheel and motor out the chain, making sure to grab all the little washers and gubbins that come with it. Then preventing the bike from resting on the derailleur which changes the gears. For most bikes you simply pull a little lever and and gently unscrew a plastic nut and the wheel pulls free in seconds.

From there I knew I would need to install a new tire because I couldn't find the leak the night before. This meant fully deflating the now limp tire, pulling it and the puncture protection liner out. Which seems pointless, but it probably prevents about 50% more punctures from rocks and such that poke in and then don’t permanently embed in the tire.

Then I have to partially inflate the new tire and wrangle the liner back in, which is like trying to wrestle a greased snake. Then pump it up just enough to make sure everything is seating. Then bounce the wheel a few times and pump up some more to prevent one side from sitting deeper in the rim than another which causes the whole bike to bop up and down as you move.

You get the idea.

This is only my second flat the entire trip, so I’m grateful. All the highway miles from last year meant there were some days I was doing this process eight times.

Inner tube replaced, tire on the wheel, wheel on the bike, and me out the door at around 10am.

Riding into Harrisburg meant crossing over the Susquehanna river.

My experience of Harrisburg was simply to skirt it by following the biking path beside the river. It looked nice as it raced by, but I was intent on making miles and I had many to make.

Harrisburg proper scrolled by fairly quickly and I was dumped out onto the industrial via beside the railroad tracks. This turnpike leading me south and east.

I stopped for a late breakfast in a shiny diner in some small rowhouse filled suburb two miles down the river and shortly after took a more direct easterly tack off of the turnpike and into the rolling farmlands.

Like most of the last parts of Virginia, this land is widely farmed and fairly open, dotted by the familiar structures set against the azure sky. It was pleasant riding, and traffic was light and respectful.

This is an area heavily populated by Mennonites and Amish and so it was fairly common to see them working in their normal dress of a straw hat, blue shirt and denim overalls. I passed by a toddler sitting in a wagon watching his sibling feeding cows. It was a beautiful scene, but I didn’t think it would be respectful to capture. But there were other quaint views I did see:

At some point I entered the local Rail trail system near Lebanon and began to climb some low and slow peak. At the time I thought I was just weak for going 12-13mph on the trail, but then it hit me that I was also going up at the same time. This was quickly made more poignant when my speed suddenly increased to a solid 17mph on average after cresting.

At some point I stopped and took a bit of a rest and recharge. I honestly cannot even recall when or for how long, but it was around 4pm when I started the next leg, having already gone about 50 miles.

I had been texting back and Forth with my friend Elizabeth (Beth) in Pottstown, my eventual stopping point. Unbeknownst to me it was her birthday and they would be going out to dinner around 6:30. For whatever reason this put me into high gear to close the distance at the highest sustained pace I could muster. I felt two different things at the same time, I wanted to meet both Beth and Adam, people I had come to respect through our online intereactions, but at the same time it felt weird to ask people I had never met in person to structure an important date around my arrival. Either I got there with time to not stretch out their plans, or I would arrive after their dinner having burned off some time blogging or doing something else while they celebrated so as not to impose.

I wanted the first, but the likelihood was small. From the endpoint on my map it seemed possible if I could just hold a breakneck pace. So I did. Pushing with everything I had I was going 24mph on a cinder trail.

Around Reading I saw that I had about and hours worth of riding to do in approximately 45 minutes. Then I sat down and did the final planning step by putting in their actual address. It was then I realized this was certainly not going to happen. I would arrive later, perhaps even as late as 8pm.

So I texted to let Beth know that was the case and then began to take a more sustainable pace across the trail and eventual surface streets.

Around 15 miles out I started to look for food because I was deep in deficit and I could feel it mounting. At Birdsboro I saw a chinese place that looked promising, but when I rolled up to it it gave me the creeps. Everything else was too far off the beaten path. So I had a sad supper of a fruit rollup and a protein bar and continued on.

I was finally in Pottstown following some closed down Industrial road where they were doing work. This took me to a crossing point on the river I needed to make, but when I arrived it too was shut, requiring a revision to my route that took me over a set of gruelling hills to make the last few miles.

Energy gone, I was bonking harder than I ever had before. Each pedal stroke felt weaker than the last, but I slowly rose over the first set of hills to see the cooling towers of a Nuclear power plant.

It shouldn’t be surprising to see this odd juxteposition of industry vs nature given that PA is rife with deer, but the moment still struck me as I crested what I thought was the final hill.

It was not, but rather the first and biggest of a set of perilous rollers with switchbacks and tight turns while going swiftly downhill that gave me concern for my brakes and if they could handle the stress.

Eventually though I arrived on their road. I looked won and saw a text saying I should go in and shower and get settled even though they weren’t home. I felt like an intruder doing so, and so I texted that I would go down to Ninos at the bottom of their road and get some food and a beer.

When I got the text back that beer was not available there, but it was within their house, I think I resigned to fate and rolled my bike behind their house.

I’ll talk about our time together to some extent later, but I did get a shower and hopped out just as they arrived.

Adam handed me a beer and we sat and talked as I slowly arose out of the deep calorie deficit stupor I was in.

It was the end of another taxing 80+ mile day and there’s more to it, but it’s 1am and I have 75 miles to cover tomorrow.