Day 17 - Williamsport to Ansonia

I woke in Williamsport at around 8:30 am, which is quite late for me given that I usually am up as soon as the light peeks around the curtains at around 5:50 up here. Clearly I had needed the extra sleep given the previous day’s lack.

By 9am I was out the door and shortly thereafter at a Denny’s fueling up for another day of large early climbs followed by a very gradual incline over the course of 60 miles.

Today I would hit the Pine Creek trail and take it all the way up to the confluence between it and some other fork, ending at a cluster of buildings that could hardly be called a town, named Ansonia.

There are days when I have to fight with my mapping program. I’ll plan out a route and then the reality of that route becomes apparent when it's starting you in the face, real time. This was one such day.

I had already finagled the route as much as I could to minimize repetetive inclines. Often the “safe” route is less direct, and it will crisscross ridgelines where the highways and rails tend to find the natural grooves and just follow them. If I was in a car I could take a 10 or so mile jaunt to Jersey Shore (not that one) to the west, and then immediately get on the rail trail. I would be in the low areas next to the river and I wouldn’t be bothered by anything but slow rolling hills.

I am not a car. And as a result in PA it’s illegal for me to ride on a restricted highway – the kind with onramps and off ramps. Even though the shoulder may be ample and safe, it simply isn’t legal and I would absolutely be confronted by a state trooper within minutes. In Montana and North Dakota that was different, because often times the only route between two locations is a restricted highway, so they have graciously chosen to allow cyclists on the margins.

Long story short, I would have to take a kind of corner cutting tack that shortened the distance, but increased the elevation gain significantly. Effectively I would be going over another mountain broken into three different stages.

While leaving Williamsport I passed by the sorts of odds and ends you can only see when you're not looking. A graffitied plane being transported to who knows where. An intruder sitting in a local veterans park

I had to get out of Williamsport. The mapping program wanted me to take “Hillside drive”, which should have been a clue. Well, as I passed Andrew Jackson Primary School, noting that he was one of our worst presidents and it was shameful to name a school after him, I saw Hillside drive in the flesh.

A stripe of pavement snaked up so severely it disappeared into the foliage of the trees overhanging the road. Nah. Nope. No thank you.

So much to the protestations of my mapping software, which would make an angry chime every two or so minutes, I took a different route on the Market Street in the low lands.

These protestations continued when I got out of Williamsport and noted that the route it wanted me to take was again a bogus, hilly mess when there was a perfectly flat street lower down. Other than dodging meemaws on their way out to the dollar general this was of no concern.

Until I got to the part I thought might be a problem. Yeah. It was a problem.

You see, I’m not allowed on the restricted highway, except the place I want to go looked like it had parkinglots I could navigate through to get from some side roads to the road I wanted to get to without going on the highway. The other option was to take a long jaunt up a gruelling hill.

So I did what any sensible person would do, and broke the law. Again. For approximately 300ft as I pulled out onto the highway and immediately off a ramp onto the road I wanted. I fear at some point my grievous crimes will catch up to me…

The first hill began after a turn off a more trafficked road onto what felt like a secluded track given that it had few houses and no dividing line. After a few minutes I pulled off to the side to set my chain onto my lower gearing. And answer the call of nature.

I thought to myself “man, if somebody drives down this road and sees me peeing they can just get over it.” Moments later a burgundy minivan slowly rolls up behind and past me and stops. I’m still mid-stream over here.

A man with a sour look on his face rolls down his windows. I’m steeling myself for the confrontation and he simply flips the door of his mailbox open and gets his mail. Fair play, old man. Mission accomplished I roll on.

With lower gearing this first hill isn’t the worst. I think it topped out at a sustained grade of 6%. Manageable.

Well then there was the ride down into–and I’m not making this up– Devils Elbow, a jink in the road right at the place where you’d expect to be going the fastest. So I prep myself for this descent, because I know it could potentially chew up my brakes.

Halfway down the hill I stood up to bleed some speed. Pumped the brakes twice to bring me out of the forties and then I see the hard right turn ahead. I pull hard and bring the bike to a walking pace to make the turn. The smell of burnt brakes is pungent around me. after the jink I see the road straighten and flatten and just let her rip. Air resistance will keep me going slow enough.

The first hill was the warmup. Now I was faced with the real deal. A hill that at maximum had a 12.9% grade, but when I visually measured it seemed more like a 32%. Needless to say, this hill was crushing. In my lowest gear at the highest assist, throwing out as much power as I could muster over multiple minutes I had to stop about 300ft from the top. My motor was overheating. I was overheating and panting for air. So I stopped and ate a couple of fruit rollups to regain some glycogen, and after a few minutes of rest set back to it. The remaining part wasn’t trivial, but after the rest me and the motor together could handle it. If it was just me, even as a smaller man on a lighter bike, I’d probably have to had walked my bike up.

Another distressing downhill, but this time the lines of sight were good and so I didn’t really need to brake at all. I could see my speed would easily bleed off from air resistance.

The third and final hill was trivial to get over. Lower, slower slope, shaded. Perfectly fine. However the downhill was, in a word, terrifying.

It was a straight unbroken shot down into another hard right turn, but even steeper than the devil’s elbow. I got about halfway down before bringing the bike to a complete stop. If I didn't I couldn’t be sure I would be able to bleed enough speed without burning out my brakes as I entered the turn. I took a literal 10 minute break to let my brakes cool and my nerve come back up. I got perhaps 30ft and my spidey senses said “Nah, brah”. I hopped off the bike and walked down into the curve.

I was finally over the “hard part” of my day. It had taken two hours to go 15 miles.

The next sixty miles were all on hard packed gravel and cinder. No hills to speak of, just a long strip slowly going upwards, winding by the edge of Pine Creek.

I like these sorts of trails but It’s hard to share may pictures from them. Most of the time you seem to exist in one long green tunnel. Occasionally the canopy would open up and I could see the creek with its attendant wildlife.

I genuinely have no idea what this man was doing, it seemed like he was sitting in a completely isolated stretch of river far from any campsites. He was moving his arms as if he was swimming upriver but not moving. Perhaps he was strength training.

Then there was actual wildlife. This raptor is quite large. I’m not sure what it is, but I’d hesitate to say it was an eagle.

I saw it fly up and then watch me from across the river.

And then there were flowers.

But mostly… my ass hurt. The riding was easy except I just could not stay comfortable in the saddle for more than a few minutes at a time. Road miles have piled up and left me with some uncomfortable sores – none have turned into open ulcers but rather just hard, tender bumps. So sitting for a long period exacerbates them.

Miles and miles of this green and grey ribbon went by, until finally the trees started opening up more frequently, and the mountains seemed to loom higher than before.

I was now on a fork of the creek that was entirely wild. The only roads nearby were forest tracks put there by the park service. No houses. No cars. No people except for the occasional riders in the other direction.

The forest sounds different when human noises aren’t around. I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean it quite literally. There have been studies done that show that loud sounds like planes flying overhead suppress insect and animal calls for minutes after. The air was a cacophony of calls. Sharp whistles of one species. A coo of another. The throaty thrum of distant frogs. I could suddenly understand Walt Whitman and his feeling of spiritual connection to nature anew.

Near dusk, having covered approximately 78 miles I rolled into Ansonia. It was nothing. A closed bar and inn on one side and houses. My map said that my lodging was another mile up the road and so I trucked there, beyond ready to get off the bike.

I was greeted by the man working there who wanted to talk, while I just wanted to flop on a bed after a shower. Eventually though I got that shower and stepped out to a setting sun.

About twenty miles on blacktop, and 60 on trails.