A QUEST FOR BREAKFAST AND SMOKES, RIDING IN THE RAIN, BIKINI CLAD GIRLS, AND AN UNEXPECTED STOPPING POINT.
That morning I awoke with the sunrise. The storm was over and a thick fog lay over the cemetery. I put on my boots, grabbed my bike shorts and headed over to the restroom to get changed. When I came back, Craig was sitting on a picnic table smoking a cigarette.
“Want some dried fruit?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied. I took a package and ate some fruit. Craig had dehydrated oranges so that he could keep his vitamin c levels up and maintain his strength. We both learned that morning that dehydrated oranges were high on the list of nasty tasting things. I pulled out some granola bars from my pack and shared them with Craig.
“Well I need a new pack of cigarettes,” Craig said, “and I can go for a decent egg sandwich. The guy we talked to yesterday said that there was a convenience store and a restaurant just around the bend. So we packed up our bikes and packs and headed into the fog towardsBuena Vista,Pennsylvania.
We arrived in town at six forty-five am. The gas station said that it didn’t open until seven. So we went over to the restaurant, which was more or less an ice cream place that didn’t open until noon. We went back over to the gas station since it was almost seven. We waited until ten after seven and just as we were getting ready to leave, a car pulled up. A woman got out of the car and went over to her store, surprised to see customers at this hour. She unlocked the door, went in and turned on the lights. We followed her in and found out that despite the Marlboro sign on her front door, she didn’t carry cigarettes. Since she didn’t have coffee made yet, we decided to buy some Cokes and headed back on the trail.
Craig was a faster rider, so he would dart forward while I straggled behind. There wasn’t much of a grade, but with a pack on your back and a heavy load on your bike, you could really feel it. Occasionally I would find Craig waiting for me to catch up, and we would drink water and then continue on. As the morning sunshine began to clear away the fog, we noticed that we were passing trough small sleepy towns. It felt like we were the only ones awake. When we came into West Newton, the first thing we saw was a train station with a man using a large lawnmower to cut the grass around it. 
We paused at the station and I told Craig that I was going to get some water and take pictures of the station. He told me that he was heading into town to get his cigarettes. We agreed to meet here when he was done. While walking around the station, I saw that there was an old passenger coach next to the station. As I was looking at it, the gentleman mowing the grass came from behind me and asked if I would like to see the inside. Being the rail fan that I am I quickly said yes. He gave me a key and sent me up the steps. I unlocked the door and went inside. It was clearly under restoration for there wasn’t a single seat in the coach and that there was scaffolding scattered about the interior. I snapped a few pictures (with my finger accidentally on the multi exposure button, oops) and headed out locking the door behind me. 
I found the man sitting on his lawnmower and returned his keys thanking him generously. I went back to the sign that my bike was leaning against. No sooner did I sit down than Craig came back, riding towards me with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
“I found an open café,” he said to me victoriously. So I hopped on my bike and followed him up to a café/convenience store. We ordered some breakfast sandwiches and sat down to eat them and enjoy some coffee. When we were done, we grabbed some extra forks for our noodles and continued on our way.
Not too much farther did we go when it began to rain and we pulled on our ponchos. Let me tell you this, riding a bike with a Boy Scout poncho on isn’t very pleasant. Because of the heat and the fact that I was exercising my body, I began to sweat and it quickly became a sauna inside. To make matters a tad worse, my glasses fogged up and I could barely see where I was. By the time we reachedCedarCreekPark, just three miles, it was a complete downpour. Instead of pressing on, we stopped at the trail station in the park and stayed under the eaves of its roof to keep dry.
When the rain finally stopped, we packed back up our now dry ponchos and headed out into the humid day. We continued on for what seemed like forever in the heat. Craig and I were keeping a close pace to each other and we were both soaked in our own sweat. Suddenly Craig whipped out. His handlebars had popped from their socket and his front wheel turned sideways throwing him from the bike. Surprisingly he was not injured other than a few scratches and torn clothes. We rested our bikes against some large rocks and sat down for a rest. We were near a busy one lane bridge that went into a tunnel above us. We both drank a ton of water and watched cars as they sped across the bridge, honking their horns as they entered the tunnel. 
After awhile we stood back up and pushed our bikes along the trail. Craig’s handlebars were still loose and he was nervous about riding again. At Roundbottom Campsite we met a group of thru bikers that were almost done with their journey. This father and his two boys had started out fromWashington,DCand were doing about fifty miles a day. They helped Craig tighten his handlebar and wished us luck. As they sped off west, we headed out eastward. I am sure that you have heard that hindsight is twenty twenty. Roundbottom is a rather nice campsite that has both shelters and tent pads. And if Craig and I realized how far we still had to go to get to Ohiopyle and how little we had actually come, we would have camped here for the night. But we plugged on.
Just east of Dickenson Run yard, the B&O had a connection with the P&LE. The connector bridge was single tracked and crossed the Youghiogheny at an angle. Where the yard was is now a huge flat field at the base of a cliff with the trail running down one side of it. The bridge is all that remains to hint that this was once a railroad. The tracks still cross the river on the old bridge and end about four or five feet from the edge of the bridge. When Craig and I approached this area we noticed the bridge. 
The bridge isn’t hard to miss, considering the local youth have taken it into their own hands to redecorate it with bright colors. As we approached the bridge we noticed some of that youth hanging out at the bridge. A group of teenage boys and girls in swimsuits were on the bridge. Bikes with clothes on them were all over the area approaching the bridge. The kids would climb out onto the bridge and jump off into the slow moving waters of the Yough, swim to shore and do this all over again. Craig and I stood there watching them for a while. One of the girls was fascinated with Craig’s plan to bike across the country. I had taken out my camera and snapped a few pictures of the bridge and took a group shot of the kids with Craig. After that the girls put back on their shorts, leaving just bikini tops on above. They all wished us good luck on our journey and rode off towards town. Not long after, we followed.
We arrived inConnellsvilleRiverfrontParkand made it to a gazebo just in time for more rain. It was a quick shower. So I left the gazebo to get a photo of the P&WV Bridge over the Yough. 
My camera reached the end of its roll, so I went back to the gazebo to get a new roll of film. However, I forgot to rewind the last roll (hey I was tired by that point) and permanently erased the photos I had just taken, including the photos of the bridge and teenagers with Craig. Looking back at the roll later on, I realized that not a single shot of Craig on that roll turned out. The entire trip, I got only one good photo of my companion.
In the gazebo we came to a realization, there was no way we would make it to Ohiopyle tonight. According to my map, it was seventeen miles with nothing in between but river and trail to get to the town ofOhiopyle. Riding at full strength it would take three, maybe four hours, and it was almost dark. We headed into town, we were both very hungry, so we found a Wendy’s and had dinner. The air-conditioning was like a punch in the face. I didn’t realize how used to the heat we had gotten. So I grabbed a small cotton jacket from my pack and put it on to keep from getting chills. After we ate, we grabbed a phonebook from the payphone for its map of town, and used my trail guide to find a close by motel. The closest one was up a steep hill from the Wendy’s. So we started up the hill, which was also a busy four lane road. We reached the motel and checked into a room and took turns using the shower. A hot shower had never felt that nice in my life. After that, Craig made a phone call to his loved ones using the room phone and I called my fiancé and mother using my dad’s cell phone outside the room to give Craig some privacy. I set up my sleeping bag on the floor and Craig took the bed (he didn’t think to bring a sleeping bag on this trip). We watched the news. On the news they talked about the storms last night and predicted rain for the rest of the week. They also mentioned a small boy whose pedal fell off his bike causing him to stumble and break his neck. There is nothing like the news to fill you with dread right before bed. We went to sleep. 
STATISTICS:
MILES TODAY: 35.02
AVG SPEED: 6.3mph
TRIP MILES: 62.23