67 Miles!

As part of our training for our trip, Steve and I, and all the other riders, pledged to do at least one 65 mile ride. Since Steve grew up about that distance from Philadelphia, we decided to bike out to his home town, Willow Street, PA (next to Lancaster, PA).

You can check out our route here.

After a couple hours of bike adjustments, tire changes, and strategic packing at our home in Center City Philadelphia, we were ready to go. We had only gone a few miles through West Philadelphia, when we ran into a slight snag. The metal plate on my shoe that I depended on to clip into my bike was not well secured. It turns out, the screw hole was stripped, and I had to move the plates down a notch. We let Steve's dad know we were running later than expected, and moved on.

After a brief bathroom stop at McDonalds, and some stange looks, we were finally off. We were happy to get out of Philadelphia, past 476, and into West Chester where it began to get a lot nicer. We stopped in the downtown area to eat our home packed PB&J lunches (we'll need to get used to this as it will be a staple lunch during our trip). As we made our way onto Strasburg Road, the ride got especially difficult. The hills were monstrous and never ending, and we had a strong headwind that certainly wasn't helping. A couple miles from Coatesville, we ran into a German man on the side of the road. He had come over to the states for two weeks with the intent of doing a mid-Atlantic bike tour. He had given up for the day, and we helped direct him to the nearest inn.

By the time we got off Strasburg Road, we had gone about 40 miles and were exhausted. Steve and I found an open field and collapsed for about 15 minutes. With the help of a sports drink called "nuun," and the glorious sunshine, we mustered up the energy to keep riding.

Our next stop was in Quarryville, where we stopped at Steve's favorite childhood cremerie/snackbar: Dottie's.

We shared a large double thick chocolate milkshake and hung out at a picnic table. This really helped us on our home stretch, and in fact, those last 8 miles were our fastest the whole trip (avg ~17 mph).

Seven hours from the time we left our home in Philadelphia, we reached Willow Street. We were greeted by Steve's parents, who were kind enough to offer us a warm shower, a yummy dinner at Ruby's diner, and a nice warm ride home (since Amtrak refused to let us get on the train with our bikes).

Here's a picture of Steve and I when we finished. Can you tell we were excited?!



Can't wait for our trip. Just 3.5 weeks!