Back to Day 15

3:30

We just checked into a really nice hotel in Cockeysville, MD. We prefer tomorrow’s rest day to be in an upscale hotel, preferably one that is somewhere. There is a shopping mall, a Wegman’s, and a movie theater down the street. We are definitely somewhere, and we are happy.

Today was a pleasantly uneventful day. Our first stop after breakfast was at the dollar store to buy Gatorade. Even Dana has had enough lukewarm motel bathroom sink water for a lifetime. Dana watched the bikes in the parking lot, and I went in to buy the Gatorade, but we kept our headsets on so we could discuss flavors. (OK, colors.  Everyone knows Gatorade is really about the colors.)

So there I am, standing in front of the drinks cooler, talking to him, but there’s nobody there. “They have blue. They have yellow. Oooh, green!” A lady gave me a VERY strange look. Then when I went to pay, I asked Dana if he needed anything else, but the cashier thought I was talking to a bottle of Pepsi. I tried to explain, but I wasn’t feeling any love there.

Not long after buying Gatorade, we crossed the Mason Dixon line into Maryland.

The following picture explains a lot about the terrain we’ve been riding, although today wasn’t as bad as this implies. On the other hand, it reminded us that yesterday, leaving Wrightsville, we rode on Long Level Road for a few miles. May I just say that sometimes the road names lie.

Our butt and lunch break was in Jarrettsville, where I finally got my liverwurst.

After lunch we left the ACA route, because it doesn’t go into Cockeysville. It felt like we were cheating, but when the route had us turning off the road to Cockeysville – probably to go uphill for 5 scenic miles and then back down for 5 more – we just stayed on the main road. The main road was pretty busy, and the noise and traffic helped me appreciate the ACA routes – hilly and isolated, but also scenic and safe.

Right outside of Cockeysville we crossed a nice new suspension bridge over the Gunpowder River. We stood on the bridge for a while watching the birds – swallows, red wing blackbirds, hawks, and a plethora of LBJs.

When we got to our hotel, a nice lady from Baltimore asked about our bikes, and when we told her about our adventure, she prayed for us.

We are looking forward to our rest day tomorrow, after which the terrain will get steadily flatter into Virginia, after which there will be no real hills. Unfortunately, Dana thinks the scenery will become more boring, based on what he calls Escher’s 3 Laws of Biking:

1. A bike ride is always uphill and into the wind. A corollary is that if you are going downhill or with the wind, you are probably lost.
2. The beauty of the scenery is directly proportional to the steepness of the hills.
3. Hills always look steeper when viewed from across the valley from the previous hill (this is sometimes referred to as the valley effect)

Here is a rule I added: If I can climb up a hill, it isn’t really a hill.

9:30 PM

We just returned from dinner with Mike, his wife Katy, and their daughter Ginny. It was so nice to have a home cooked meal – it’s funny how a restaurant can be a break from always eating at home, but eating at home can be a break from eating in too many restaurants. I want Nancy T to be assured that we had ice cream for dessert, but I cannot post a picture of it because Dana took a picture of me actually eating the ice cream, and no one needs to see that.

On to Day 17

Back to Day 14

Sorry we didn’t post last night – we had no WiFi at the Peach Bottom Inn, and Dana was getting too cranky to deal with it.

Yesterday, 11:30 AM

500 miles down, 1900 to go. Only 100 hilly miles left. I will celebrate when there are zero hilly miles left. For now, I will just keep slogging up the hills. Meanwhile, check out our awesome system for drying wet panniers in cheap hotel rooms:

We started the day hiking up Chique’s. Dana said he could have ridden it. He should have ridden it. I wasn’t going to ride it, no way, no how. Then we came down the other side and into Columbia.

We figured there would be a Laundromat in Columbia, but we didn’t see any on Google Maps, so we rode on into Wrightsville, across the Susquehanna river. I apologize for the fact that pretty much all of Dana’s pictures have my back/butt in them.

Dana found a bike shop and bought gloves, then we walked up another hill, then down again, to the River Town diner. Nutella stuffed French toast. Yum.

We are now sitting in a laundromat behind the diner. The soap machine is older than time and ate my freakin’ quarters, but on the plus side dryer #8 runs forever, a good thing to note if you ever plan to come here. And the ancient machine had bleach, so tonight I will wash out our water bottles. This is a nice laundromat, but it’s really reminding me of why I love owning my own washer and dryer. If nothing else, they do not eat my quarters.  (Oh look, a picture of not my butt/back, but still me. Sorry.)

6:30 PM

So at one point today, we’re climbing up yet another hill – I’m actually riding this one, feeling slightly less demoralized for a moment – and my phone rings. I know I shouldn’t jump every time a phone rings, but I do. Perhaps it’s a habit I learned back before answering machines and redial and cell phones. Or perhaps it’s because I assume it’s the kids, and maybe they’re in trouble. (Or they can’t find chicken in the supermarket, or they don’t know how to use the dishwasher, or they lost their cell phone at Time to Clay). Nonetheless, I worry.

So I got off the bike and answered the f–ing phone, and I heard a perky, sunshine-y voice say “Hi, my name is Judy with a very important message about your credit card. Do not hang up. We want to help you lower your monthly payments and interest rates.” I was sorely tempted to chuck the cell phone far into the amber waves of grain, but the phone is useful. If I had gotten my hands on Judy at that moment, however, she most assuredly would have been chucked.

Then, a little later, we saw two women riding the ACA the other direction. They looked to be about our kids’ age, which caused Dana to mutter “Wow, our kids really are failures, aren’t they?” Not only are they riding from South Carolina to Maine, but one of them had made her own saddle bags out of bungee cords and Home Depot buckets. Dana muttered for quite a while after he saw that.

We saw our first and only Amish buggy today, and we got chased by some Amish kids as we passed their farm. I’m sorry to say that a 4 year old Amish girl can run up a hill faster than I can bike it.

Along our path, we saw this table of free stuff, which made me terribly homesick for PHA. I considered taking the cow butter dish and dragging it with me to Florida, but Dana give me the dope slap look usually reserved for Bill.

Along the way we ate mulberries from a tree…

and briefly considered buying another kind of bike…

Dana had looked at the maps and said there was a grocery store in York Furnace, and boy were we looking forward to York Furnace. Dana was almost out of water, I was almost out of Gatorade, and for some reason I was craving liverwurst. But then we kept riding and riding, until it became depressingly obvious that we had missed York Furnace and it’s promised grocery store. HOW COULD WE MISS AN ENTIRE TOWN???? So we kept riding, hungry and thirsty and uphill, to Airville, where we went into the Fire Department and begged some water from an EMT. He told us that the nearest services were in Delta, which is where our motel is, which was still 10 miles from Airville. Luckily, most of those miles were downhill.

I was very excited to find the grocery store in Delta, because I was still craving liverwurst, but on our way into town we passed an ice cream stand, and our bikes were just drawn to it. The ice cream was great and a much needed treat, but I definitely see liverwurst in my near future.

So we’re here at the Peach Bottom Inn, just had a drink with David and are sitting down to dinner. Funny how everyone at the bar asked “Why are you here? You realize you’re nowhere, right?” It seems the ACA routes you through lots of scenic beauty (think hills), but not necessarily through places that are “somewhere”.

9 AM

Having breakfast at the Delta Family Diner. It’s Father’s Day, so the place is hopping. About to start our ride to Cockeysville, MD to visit our friend Mike. We are going off route, which will shorten our hilly day and bring us closer to Mike’s house. Tomorrow will be a rest day in Cockeysville. Dana thinks a rest day will help our muscles strengthen so we stop sucking so much. I think I’m still going to suck, but a rest day sure sounds good.

On to Day 16

Back to Day 13

I want to begin today’s blog by apologizing for our photography. It’s like “Look at this wonderful farm” or “Aren’t these ducks cute?”, and you are all looking at the picture thinking “That’s a duck? Really? OK, if you say so.” But we will continue posting pictures because that’s what you are supposed to do on vacations. Who knows, we may actually improve our photography skills in the next 6 weeks, although I wouldn’t count on it.

So the highlight of last night’s motel – it was a really crappy motel – was that there was a Dunkin’ Donuts right across the lawn. So we started the day with croissant breakfast sandwiches, then headed back onto our route. We were only planning 30 miles for today, for a few reasons. 1) Hotels are few and far between; 2) we are in hill country; and 3) we really need a rest day, and since we aren’t getting one, we should at least do less miles per day.

We were in the heart of Menonite country today – farmland and small towns. We stopped to eat strawberries at a roadside stand,

we saw amber waves of grain,

and we took more pictures of awesome scenery that doesn’t look nearly as awesome in a photo.

We stopped for lunch in Manheim, as Debra and Camilla had blogged about a 1920’s themed restaurant called the Cat’s Meow. First we stopped at a CVS to buy Gatorate (for me) and candy bars (for Dana). I just can’t get enough Gatorate lately.

Note: I know Gatorade is bad for me. I am sure Gatorade is the reason I am not losing weight climbing all these freakin’ hills. But I have an irrational aversion to lukewarm motel bathroom sink water in a slightly dirty water bottle. And since drinking Gatorade is probably better for me than dehydration, I am drinking Gatorade.

We got to The Cat’s Meow just in time. The skies opened up, drenching our bikes and  packs outside, but luckily not drenching us. At one point the entire dining room started vibrating and emitting a high pitched alarm. Everyone thought it was a fire alarm, but it was actually a local flash flood warning, beeping on every cell phone in the place. We stayed there quite a while – had some soup, shared a salad, shared a sandwich, shared dessert. Is sharing an old people thing?

We debated staying in Manheim for the rest of the day, but decided to brave the weather and continue onto Mt. Joy, which was only 9 miles further. The skies cleared, the sun came out, and it was a lovely, if somewhat hilly, ride. We stopped to have smoothies in Mt. Joy – I promised Nancy T that we would eat ice cream every day – and then went to the local post office to mail my old bike seat and some spent maps home.

From there we rode to Marietta. Google maps showed a lot of hotels in Marietta, so we figured we’d just get here and figure it out. But the B&B we wanted was closed, and another was full, and another didn’t answer their phone, so we stopped into McCleary’s Public House to ask the locals where we should stay.

And we met Stacy, who was sitting on the porch having a beer with her friends and she asked “Where have you been biking today?”. And the conversation just sort of took off from there. I had almost 3 beers with Stacy, and we chatted with Kathy and Mike and Matt and pretty much everyone who walked onto that porch. McCleary’s is a cool Irish pub – I wish we had someplace like it at home. While we sat on the porch talking about jobs and kids and bikes and good college majors in the 1970’s, the skies opened up again. There was thunder and lightning and probably some local flooding, but it was a wonderful excuse for those extra 2 beers.

When the rain stopped, Dana rode his bike back up to the highway to the Blue Note Motor Lodge, and Stacy gave me and my bike and my beer-soaked brain a ride. Dana got here first – sigh. I must say this motel is much nicer than the one last night. We called the local pizza place for delivery, and just finished a gourmet meal: shared Italian sub, shared meatball sub, and lukewarm root beer.

There’s that sharing thing again.

Everyone at McCleary’s warned us about the upcoming hills. I guess the worst one is about a mile up the road in Chique’s. We met the woman who owns the house at the base of the hill, we will check out her garden tomorrow as we trudge up the blasted thing. But tomorrow is another short day, because there’s really only one B&B for the next 60 miles, and it’s at mile 30. I have already booked our room.

On to Day 15