Day 34 – St Clairsville to Grantsville – Cycling US40
118 miles, 13:05 elapsed time, 9.5 hours pedaling, 11,400 ft elevation gain, 8400 calories burned
The pre-dawn morning air chills us, up high on a hill overlooking the area surrounding St Clairsville, mounting up for another day in the saddle. The coming sunrise spills warm orange and rich reds across the sky. The view across the hilltops is breathtaking, and we take a few pictures, knowing full well these aren’t the kind of shots that translate into anything other than “ho-hum†if you’re not standing there.
With this chilly air, I’d love to have bit of climbing to warm my joints and muscles as a beginning to the day. However, as soon as we leave town, we begin a two-mile descent steep enough to require quite a bit of braking. It’s cold enough I’m uncertain about potential icy spots on the road as we fall into the coldest air at the base of the descent, where the road crosses the old Blaine Hill Bridge over Wheeling Creek.
It won’t be the last time today I’ll wish for another layer of warmth…
The road follows Wheeling Creek for several miles, meandering through old towns and past 200 years of history few people remember. It’s early in the morning on a Sunday, so traffic is extremely light, giving us a chance to stop and take lots of photo’s as we cross the Ohio River twice. The second crossing uses the old Wheeling Suspension Bridge.
This is a beautiful old bridge, built in the middle of the 19th century. It spent two years as the longest suspension bridge in the world, and was the first bridge across the Ohio River. Dave and I walk the bridge, taking lots of photos, soaking in the history and beauty of the place.
In Wheeling, we begin to rely heavily on the maps I planned and loaded into my Garmin. Prior to this as we’ve crossed the country, we’ve just used these maps as a backup – something to get us back on track if we stray to far from our route in our meandering. Here is Wheeling, we just take whatever turns the Garmin tells us to take, and are rewarded with a wonderful ride through town, following an excellent bicycle path for several miles along an old railroad grade, dropping us off in Elm Grove east of Wheeling.
Another 15 miles or so down the road, just after entering Pennsylvania, my Garmin tells me I’m off my route. I’m still on US-40, but I just passed a turnoff to West Alexander. Dave and I consult about this, and after our good experience earlier in the day following my pre-mapped route in the Garmin, we decide to trust the route I loaded into the Garmin, and follow the older road. Who knows, maybe this is another spot where US-40 disappears into I-70 for a few miles.
This turns out to be a beautiful old road. We follow the “old old†National Pike for 8 or 10 miles, most of it along gravel road not suited for road bikes. While a pretty ride, it probably eats up 45 minutes of the day picking our way along gravel. Turns out we could have stayed on US-40 and saved the 45 minutes – 45 minutes we’ll want later in the day.
In Washington we make our final decision to go with the US-40 route rather than the GAP route we’d originally planned. We’re taking in a big breakfast/lunch at the Bob Evans, about 40 miles into our day. We’ve lost a bit of time this morning, and we resolve that we’ll just need to stay a bit more focused on collecting miles beneath our wheels to make sure we get in to Grantsville before dark.
Later that night, an old fella will deliver pizza to our room in Grantsville, MD. The pizza will taste like one of the best things I’ve ever consumed. I’ll soak my sore body in a hot shower, and update those closest to me that I’m safe and fine. Not that they would have been worried – they would have had no idea that I just experienced what Dave and I will look back on as our “day from hell†riding through Pennsylvania.
Not that everything about the day or the ride is bad. We ride through beautiful countryside, with stunning scenes across rivers and down over valleys. Generally, I suspect the folks are really nice – just like everywhere else. At least the ones who aren’t throwing empty beer bottles at us, but I get ahead of myself…
I’d like to talk a little about hills, and about climbing hills on a bike. Being from Colorado, I love to climb mountain roads on my bike. Few things are as satisfying as a nice five or ten mile climb, your body finding a sweet harmony of work, a rhythm of muscles and heart and lungs, climaxing with a summit from which you can see for miles. I like to stop for just a minute at the summit, enjoying the view while I consume calories that will soak into my body during the descent.
The descent. That wonderful reward for the hard work of climbing. Screaming downhill, bending into corners, wrapped in the wind. Reward.
There’s a ride we like to do in Colorado called the Triple Bypass. It’s a route from just west of Denver to a spot just west of Vail. Something close to 120 miles, with 11,000 or 12,000 feet of climbing in the day. It’s a big deal ride for those who can get into shape for it by July each year. All that elevation gain is spread out over three climbs really. For the 10 or so hours of riding, your essentially climbing or descending three long passes.
Today, we’re in four states. We’ll finish the day at just shy of 120 miles, with 11,400 feet of total elevation gain. That gain will happen in tiny little chunks – climb 200 feet, then descend 190 feet, then climb 200 feet, descend another 190 feet. Over and over, with the tiniest of net gain on each climb. Just about the time you start to feel a rhythm in your muscles, you’re at the summit of the hill, ready for the 8 second descent so you can start over in the climb, trying again to find the rhythm.
It’s not like these hills are gentle rollers. They are consistently 6% to 9% grade. That’s steep enough to need brakes occasionally on the descent. So here we are, climbing the same 190 feet of elevation gain over and over, and insult on top of injury, we have to brake on the descent. C’mon, really…
Then there’s the road. Clearly, bicycle traffic was not part of planning for this road. Often there’s no shoulder to speak of, and when there is a small shoulder, it’s generally full of glass and other crap that we want no part of.
It’s Sunday, so I suspect the traffic is much lighter than it would be on a weekday. It’s not that the traffic is light – I’m just looking for a bright spot here. Since we made such a bad judgement call, staying on US-40 when we could have ridden on the GAP trail, at least I can believe we didn’t have to endure as much traffic as we would have on a weekday.
There’s a beautiful long descent into the town of Brownsville, where we find a shady place to rest and take in calories after crossing a beautiful old bridge. A few miles back, Dave made a comment about us running out of either legs or light before we got to Grantsville at the rate we’re going. As always, Dave’s mind has been doing the constant calculations, and knows that we won’t make our destination by dark unless our rate increases. The likelihood of our rate increasing is only slightly greater than zero, since our legs are clearly suffering in these tiny steep hills.
I heard Dave’s words as I took a picture of a beautiful old home along the road. My tiny little mind has Grantsville as our destination for the day, and just hasn’t yet caught up to Dave’s real and accurate prediction. I still have Point B in my mind, and anything short of reaching Point B just seems like a foreign language to me.
To hear Dave tell it, when he made that comment to me, I looked at him like he had two heads. From his perspective, I was saying, “Heck, let’s buck up man, we can do it.†The reality is that I just hadn’t caught up with his good and sound logic yet.
I guess that’s why it’s good to do these things with a good friend. It’s pretty unlikely that two guys are both gonna have their brains engaged at any given time. Even if one of them uses sound logic to try and facilitate reasonable decision making, the other one is likely to be engaged in some sort of fantasy, or deluded by visions of unreasonable accomplishment, which will only make the reasonable one cast aside logic once he feels challenged by the unreasonable zeal of the the other.
If not for this craziness, would the wheel ever have been invented? Would the Atlantic ever have been crossed? Would we ever have landed on the moon? Would Captain Smith ever have maintained his course with the Titanic in the face of iceberg warnings? Would Napoleon ever have failed so miserably in his invasion of Russia or his campaign at Waterloo? Would we have continued to build and operate nuclear power facilities after the disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima?
I guess there’s an upside and a downside to all craziness.
Leaving Uniontown in Pennsylvania, we are treated to our one and only long climb of the day, and if feels pretty good. Going on for 2 or 3 miles and gaining 1300 feet, it’s nothing like a Colorado climb, but it’s a whole lot more satisfying than what we’ve had all day. By the time we reach the top, I’m hopeful that maybe now the insane up and down will stop for a while. The view from this summit is beautiful as we savor one of today’s rare moments of optimism.
Climbing back into the saddle, I’ve just reached speed on the descent when I feel a blow across my back and hear the tinkling of glass shattering. Looking up, I see a red pickup truck speeding past me rolling the window up, and realize these yahoos just threw a beer bottle at me out of their truck window. And connected.
Luckily, they didn’t hit me in the head, but across my lower back. Luckily, the bottle connected at an angle where it would break, rather than delivering all it’s force into my spine. Luckily, I don’t have a gun handy.
Full disclosure: I own guns and like guns. However, I’m not a fan of folks carrying them around with them, and I’ll use this incident as my example of why I don’t think it’s a good idea to carry a gun. Things can just escalate too quickly and too far.
At that moment, along that highway in Pennsylvania, I’m attacked by some idiot for no reason. Without a doubt, it’s an attack that can easily kill me, either by hitting me in the head, breaking my spine, or causing me to crash with traffic around me. It’s cowardice of the worse kind – attacking someone from behind and running away quickly so they don’t get their hands on you. In any other circumstance, this would be considered assault with a deadly weapon, netting the perpetrator jail time.
Maybe his view of the world is so small that it doesn’t include anyone who doesn’t drive a red pickup truck like him. Maybe he’s a sociopath. Maybe he’s just really stupid. I have no idea why he did what he did. But if I could have gotten a gun into my hands quickly, I’m pretty sure I would have been sending lead into the back of his truck. Would it have been self-defense? Maybe. But somebody might have actually ended up hurt or dead. Maybe somebody innocent. How might my life have changed then?
Dave and I talk it over on the side of the road. I’m clearly hopped up on adrenalin, and want some sort of retribution. But there’s nothing to be done. We can call the cops and report it, but if this is like most places in the country, they don’t take attacks on cyclists seriously. Plus, it’ll just cost us precious daylight that we’re losing very quickly.
I swallow my indignation and channel my adrenalin into pounding the pedals for a few miles down the road, hoping I’ll see a red pickup truck stopped at a c-store or someplace else in the next few miles…
We’re still several miles from Grantsville as we cross into Maryland and turn our lights on. I wear a Vis 360 helmet light, which provides good visibility behind me, and also gives me a little light in front when it gets really dark. Dave has a very small light that shines forward, giving him a very small amount of light – really only enough light to be helpful if we’re only riding a few miles an hour.
Dave is a better minimalist than I am. I think I’m pretty good at keeping my pack down to only the essentials, and certainly compared to most folks who tour on a bicycle my pack is miniscule. But Dave really takes the art to a level that only a few humans are likely to achieve. While the pants I carry to change to in the evening after riding are super lightweight, they are long slacks. Dave carries a pair of running shorts that probably weight 10 grams. The evening shirt I carry is also super lightweight, but the micro-thin t-shirt that Dave carries is probably half the weight.
Most of the time, I have to say I think Dave is the wiser of the two of us when it comes to this stuff. Generally, I could have gotten by just fine with running shorts and the light t-shirt. But in this case – in the case of how much light to carry – I highly recommend Neil’s approach over Dave’s.
I look back over my shoulder, and see Dave about 30 yards back. It’s dark now. Not just twilight anymore, not just almost dark, but dark. The road in front of us is a black shape disappearing into the trees. I sense that Dave wants to stay behind me so he has a light to follow, as he’s really unable to make out anything about the road. However, at the same time, I really want to be behind Dave so cars approaching from behind see my rear flashing light first.
I take Dave’s lead on this, and stay in front of him to help him avoid running off the road or riding down the center of the road. It’s late September, and we’re up fairly high by eastern mountain standards. As soon as the sun hit the horizon, the temperature started to drop rapidly. If it were daylight, we could ride harder to try and generate heat, but we have to take it easy and slow in the darkness, exacerbating the effect of the cold. I have every layer on, and I’m shivering from the cold.
This is a really rotten place to be just now. I’m picking my way down a descent, squeezing the brakes a bit to avoid over-riding the light from my Vis 360. I’m shivering violently, and my exposed knees are aching with the cold. I hit the bottom of the hill, start to turn the cranks to climb the other side, and am treated to screaming pain in my knees. They’ve been working all day long, enduring the wear and tear that turning the cranks a few thousand times will generate, and now they’re being iced-down in rapid fashion by thirty-something degree air rushing across them in the descent.
When we hit the bottom and I ask them to start turning again, they decline. Not so politely I might add…
We go through this little routine a few times on the hills approaching Grantsville. Me coaxing my knees painfully back into the routine at the bottom of each descent, them screaming their objections, making our way ever so slowly up the other side. I always get them warmed back up so they’ll endure a bit of pressure, but that usually happens about the time we top out the climb, and start the freezing descent again.
I’m at the bottom of a hill, going around a sharp little corner. Up the road are lights, so I assume we must be close to Grantsville. I try turning my knees, and they refuse. Really – they just say no. I have a moment of panic, realizing I’ll need to unclip and stop riding here if I can’t get some motion out of them – we’re about to start a little climb again.
Dave goes around me, frustrated I’m sure by these little episodes of nearly coming to a stop at the bottom of each hill, followed by the very slow progress up the side as Neil and his knees engage in a battle of wits, pain, and suffering. Here, at the bottom of this final hill, Neil appears to have lost the battle, and Dave is just to tired of the day to give a damn. Around me he goes, headed into the light in the road up ahead.
As rotten as we feel right now, it might as well have been that glorious light at the end of a near-death experience.
I’m eventually able to bribe and coax my knees into turning for me again. We’re not really that many clicks short of delirious in our suffering when I catch up with Dave, and we spot the Casselman Inn on our left. Few sites in the universe can compare with that of a warm inn at the end of a long day of suffering made more miserable by several miles of real pain in the last several miles of the day.
We make our way to our room, and call the local pizza parlor to order delivery on the biggest pizza they made, covered in every form of meat they can find. Dave’s still in the shower when our pizza debauchery arrives, and I don’t wait for him before tearing into it like a hyena over a gazelle on the plains of Africa. I don’t think I even wait for the door to close on the pizza delivery guy.
My Garmin tells me I burned 8400 calories today. To put that into perspective, I think the average male my age needs to try and take in something like 2000 a day to be healthy. Less than that and most of us will lose weight. Back in my “olden daysâ€, when I would backpack a lot, I would pack my food to give me 3000 – 3500 calories a day, which was the recommended intake for a very active male. I suppose it’s possible to take in 8400 calories in a day, but it would involve a LOT of eating.
Which helps to explain the whole “hyena over a gazelle on the plains of Africa†behavior, as well as the unnaturally good taste the pizza seems to have.
A long hot shower later, with a belly stuffed with meat and pizza, I drift off to sleep. I’m struck by the delight we’re able to feel in a little comfort after we’ve felt misery and suffering all day. This cheap little hotel room, smelling of pizza, with the heat turned way up, feels like a little slice of heaven.
Once again, it comes into focus. Our lives are so easy, comfortable, and consistent. We live in the middle of comfort, the lap of luxury really by world standards. We’re only able to appreciate that comfort and luxury if we allow ourselves to ride along the edge of discomfort for a while.
Darkness, indeed, helps us see the glory of the light.
Hunger, indeed, helps us taste deliciousness of the pizza.
Hereafter, Dave and I will refer to this day as our “day from hell†on our trip across the nation. I suppose with all the heaven we’ve been treated to on this journey, a little taste of hell now and then is gonna happen…
