Bikes

Matt and Loren are on their honeymoon in France this week, following the Tour de France on their bicycles. Those of us left behind are jealous, but are compensating by biking every day. By the time they get back, I might actually be bike-fit enough to do some riding with them.

On Saturday M and I went out for a spin around town. It was blazin' hot, and their was an ozone warning, so we ended up not staying out as long as we had originally planned. We headed down Penn Avenue, then cut down to the river, where there is a trail of sorts that goes by the Convention Center. We biked around the Point, where there were plenty of yinzers having barbeques on their boats. Next we sort of got lost, but in the process ended up in the Mon Wharf parking lot. Now I had never been there before, although I had seen countless episodes of WPXI 11 at 11 showing cars quickly being consumed by rising flood water. The picture on the left shows M in Point State Park, gazing at the Best View of Downtown, the Fort Pitt Bridge. This is also the third most terrifying merge in all of Allegheny County. We went across the Smithfield Street Bridge and up the South Side bike trail. When we got to the end of that, we decided not to attempt to bushwhack through the overgrowth to find the rest of the trail, and instead turned around and headed back over the Hot Metal Bridge, up the Panther Hollow Connector Trail and back to Bloomfield via the newly paved Neville Street.

On Sunday, we went with Rita and Tony to the Butler Freeport Trail. We started out in Freeport and basically rode towards Butler until we had had enough. Then we turned around. In between the torrential downpours, the trail was quite pleasant. The portion we traveled on was well-maintained, free from litter and had plenty of benches and picnic tables along the way. There were even a few little three sided shelters, which reminded me somewhat of my AT days. Naturally, we were nowhere near them until we were already completely drenched, but it was a warm day, so no risk of hypothermia. If the weather had been slightly more pleasant, and if we had not gotten such a late start, we certainly would have gone all the way to Butler. As it happened, we were about 5 miles shy.

On Tuesday night, we went out with the Tazza D'oro with Team Decaf. When we showed up and I saw everybody with their fancy cycling shoes and spandex shorts, I started to get a little nervous. When I saw that the route map was 22 miles, I got a little short of breath. And when people started joking about going up 57th street, I was about ready to slip out quietly and pretend I never even had the idea to embark on such an adventure. However, although some of the more serious, or at least more seriously outfitted, folks took off and lost us at the first traffic light, we had a substantial pack with us, pulling up the rear. We met some cool new people, and I absolutely recommend this bike ride, if you would like to get into cycling.

Here are a couple of useful links for biking in the Burgh.
Free Ride
Bike PGH
The Great Allegheny Passage
Yough River Trail - M and I did this one in January. There is an awesome campground in Connellsville, that has heated cabins in the winter!