Days 13-15: Pottstown to Pottsville

A lengthy stay:

The last post I quickly described my arrival at Adam and Beth's house.

Well, here they are. Friends I met through other friends while talking nonsense on facebook. When planning the trip I had recalled that they lived in Pennsylvania, and if they were close to my intended route I thought it would be worth the extra miles to see them in the flesh for the first time.

Admittedly, we don’t know each other spectacularly well, but in all our interactions they both just gave off that… vibe. That unexplainable whatever that makes you drawn towards specific people. Adam had always struck me as a fiercely intelligent and interesting dude, and Beth as kind, funny, and insightful.

I feel like I foisted my presence upon them to some extent, but they caught me and treated me like one of their clan from the start. Adam might point out that it was divine fate that put me in their home, and made them both capable and willing to show me hospitality and friendship, but I would disagree with him: They chose to catch me.

There is so much I could say about my time there, but every time I start I feel awkward in the expression. Mainly because in my desire to honor them, I would be intruding on the sacred ground of our time spent together — and I mean that truly. I was both profoundly moved by them as people just striving to live their best lives, and the who of who they are.

Don’t misunderstand me, a lot of our time together was shooting the shit and eating. It felt like Adam wanted to feed me the entirety of what Pottstown had to offer. And who am I to refuse, but it is difficult to be a receiver of charity. I know this from my prior experiences on the road. Adam and Beth’s generosity was not lost on me. I know of myself that if the reverse were true I would do the same, with no expectation of repayment, but its always humbling and difficult to be in a state of receiving to me.

Speaking of receiving…

Days before arriving I had noted that my rear tire was looking dangerously worn. I had tried to source one when Matthew was up with me bringing the fat wheels up, but none of the shops we went to even had fat tire bikes let alone fat tires.

So I had asked Beth about two days before arriving if I could have a new rear tire shipped to their house.

You can clearly see the difference between the two. I’m not sure why the wear pattern on the old tire is skewed to one side, but in feeling the thickness of the tire it was troublingly thin. The new tire has significantly more tread and I’m certain it will hold for the rest of the tour, as the one it is replacing did amiably over 2000 miles.

On that same Thursday Beth and I went out on a hunt for brake pads and some other necessaries. She, being a teacher, had nothing other than her own classwork for a masters to keep her busy over the summer so it wasn’t a huge imposition. We ended up having to go to three different shops to get a single set of brake pad replacements for the rear brake, as I already had two replacement sets for the front.

The first shop didn’t have them. The second said they did but they ended up being the correct type for the front but not the rear. Finally we ambled over to the Trek store and after searching for a bit the produced a suitable pair.

The trip wasn’t all for me though, as Beth also cycles and she found a couple of amazing deals on some kit at Trek, the kind my mother would be proud of — $140 shoes for $20.

We also trucked over to the outlets near their house and I got another pair of shorts because I had sent a significant amount of clothing I deemed unsuitable home. It included my other “civvie” shorts that were full cotton and quite heavy. So I was running with a single pair of non-bike shorts until the purchase.

You can see my concern at the situation with my brakes. I was feeling like there was less overall bite to them for the past few days. These connected pads are actually the front pads, because when I inspected the back they didn’t look like it was necessary. So I pulled out my replacement front pads.

You’ve probably noted a difference in shape, that’s because these are intentionally separated to sit over each of the four pistons of the front brake while thermally isolating them for better heat performance.

The restoration of full braking power would be essential because I was about to tackle the Pennsylvanian Appalachians, which aren’t tall, but they do sport some punishing downhill grades that could easily leave me with overheated brakes while careening down a mountain.

The Second day:

I stayed with Beth and Adam for two days in total (three nights) because after the push to get there, minor complaints were building up. Sores, knee pain, muscle weakness… and honestly just needing a mental rest from the road.

On that second day I was Adam’s ride along as he sourced parts and tools to fix his elderly neighbor’s leaking basement windows, another act of unbidden charity. We talked at length about his relationship with his neighbor, a retired 78 year old cancer survivor. She could be difficult because of her eccentricities, but she was kind and well meaning, just lacking the sorts of boundaries most people naturally throw up between themselves and others. Adam gave her the task of feeding his chickens and collecting eggs every morning — not as a demand, but rather as a concession. She was going to do it either way, and in resisting her whimsy he would have left himself frustrated and banging his head against a false need for control. Rather in allowing her to do what she was going to do anyway it gave her a path to bless him in small ways while he did what he could for her.

Watching the two of them talk about the chickens and whatever else that last morning was delightful. There was a sense that both of them were trying to bestow genuine kindness on each other in whatever way they could. What could have been a sour relationship was gentle, beautiful, additive to both. To me it was the distilations of literally shouldering your neighbor’s burdens because community with others is at once difficult but transformative.

This lesson continue to evolve within me, as I see it played out in so many different acts of communal support to help me along my way. Last tour it was rides, or housing, or money to help me along. Now it was eating “the best Philly cheesesteak Pottstown has to offer” with a friend.

All things must end:

There is so much more I could say with regards to my two days with Adam and Beth, but those stories are mine and theirs.

So on Saturday morning, after charging, swapping on a new tire, and new front brakes, I set back out onto the road after saying my goodbyes and giving my thanks. I’m certain I’ll see the both of them again if it’s up to me.

I rolled out of their driveway and on to the road and after bedding in my new front brake a bit, out of their view and back into the drear of an overcast morning, threatening rain.

Back on the trail:

My jaunt to Pottstown had taken me down the same path I was leaving from, with some minor tweaks. It meant backtracking about 30 miles to Reading, PA.

So back over the cinder strip and bridges I went.

After about an hour I reached Reading. I can’t say much about it because my entire experience was on the trail, except for a small portion of me moving through a residential neighborhood. However it was apparent that Reading was not keeping up with its section of trail. In fact the trail went right beside the homeless encampments next to the river.

I had hoped to get something to eat in Reading, but for whatever reasons I never got sufficiently close to a decent restaurant. So I commited to continue on to a community outside of Reading called Leesburg.

This required about 15 more miles of riding over the same sorts of hilly farmland I’ve become accustomed to.

Eventually, however I stopped in to the local Italian restaurant and ordered a “Jersey Style Tomato Pie” (with peperoni). Beth had let me know about these when we went to an Italian restaurant the night before. Just imagine a pizza with a huge layer of sauce, and very little or no cheese or other stuff. Apparently a jersey style adds back some of the cheese, but not a huge amount. Externally this looks like a regular pizza, but it’s really not. It reminded me of the sort of pizza they have in Italy — sparse on dairy but bursting with other toppings.

I had written more here below Identifying the plants etc but a technical hiccup caused that information to be lost. I would love to add it back, but like when the last save you made in a game is hours behind you, it’s hard to get the motivation to retread what you’ve already done.

I’m not going to identify these plants, just know that they were part of the deep woodland track that I took out of Leesville up towards and beyond Hamburg, PA.

Eventually I hit the small town of Pottsville, where I originally thought that Adam and Beth lived and had planned that part of the tour around. It felt like Pennsylvania’s very own rendition of Maggie Valley, NC. Naked rot surrounded by working people, looked down on by the wealthy inhabiting the upper hills.

It was a stark example of many of the small towns I’ve seen on the Philly side of the PA Appalachians. Duplexes and rowhouses set in a cheek-by-jowl fashion with no yards, directly abutting the main road. It’s a stark difference from the spread out nature of NC’s building. These towns are dense by design — and often even where there are structures outside of a town, like small cluster of houses, they will be the same sort. It’s a bit disconcerting to see two or three duplexes gathered together around a crossroads and that’s it.

I had intended to stay in Pottsville and bike out from there the next day, but fate conspired against me. No response from churches, and literally no lodging meant I would have to bound up a mountain to the next town, Frackville. Over lunch in Leesburg I really thought about the routing to make this climb.

There was a single highway climbing up the mountain for tens of miles. No other access could take me over and my routing program was saying I would need to be on the highway itself. When I looked more deeply it seemed like it was partially under construction, necking four lanes down to a tight two with no shoulder. Realistically I could not bike this. It would either generate a traffic jam, or someone would kill me out of spite.

The small bright light I fixated on is that when I zoomed in on Google maps it seemed like there was a yet to be opened section of track just adjacent to the highway. The only question was if it was suitable for me, and if I could actually access it. It spilled out onto the highway a mere 200ft from the exit I would need to take to safety.

So I trucked to where the aerial view showed some access behind a walmart supercenter and found the trailhead and this:

Proceeding meant not only breaking the law, but certainly at least one portage around this gate, and likely more issues later on as conditions were unknown. I may even have to backtrack if things went wrong.

I did the sign of the cross and dismantled my kit into pieces. The bags and the bike were carried over the rocks to the left of this gate. The trailer miraculously fit under the gap, and I was through.

The initial state of the track was rough gravel, and I was happy to have fat tires as it made traversing the terrain far more comfortable as they rolled over the larger rocks with ease.

The further I went, the better the trail became. But in the back of my mind I could not shake the idea that I would get to the top and be stuck. Fenced in or otherwise prevented from making the last clamber to the highway.

Shortly after taking this picture I rolled past a bird trapped in anti-erosion netting. I approached it slowly and took time while it attempted to escape. A robin had its leg tied by a loose bit of net. I tried for some time to loosen the knot, and if I had a pen knife it would have been trivial to remove it, but I didn’t and other methods would have probably hurt the bird worse. The knot itself wasn’t strangling the foot. So after cycles of me struggling to get the knot free, and the bird panicking, I decided the best thing was simply to break the free thread and leave the knot. The moment I did the bird flew off into the dusk.

Eventually I made it to the final baricade, which was much ado about nothing. As is my tradition, this obstacle was flipped off for posterity and I wheeled into the construction site at the top of the mountain.

Within minutes I had rolled into the parking lot of the Motel 6 at the top of the mountain and bedded down for the evening… or so I thought.

But that’s a story for the next entry.