Day 17

Stopped at a Bike shop in Delaware OH. The folks there were Amazing. The kid working there was funny and we talked for a while. When we told him we were riding fixed gear, he said to his co-workers:

"I wish we had a wall or something that we could have all the stupid people we meet sign"

He told us about these 2 girls they had met a month back who was riding cross country with over 100 lbs of gear on their 30 yr old Schwinns.

The middle of them was a Guy named Butch, after being there for only a few minutes he started bringing out expired power bars and power gel and energy stuff. He then asked if we were hungry and than took us to lunch at a local place (great food).

The older guy JL had rode cross country twice.

They all gave us great information on routes and places to camp etc.

We rode out of town while a marching band was practicing and they played the theme song to Indiana Jones. So we got to ride out of town to Indiana Jones.

We rode a decent ways out, but the heat became to much. We had to sit around to well after 5pm. We were afraid we weren't going to make it far enough out of urban and suburban areas to find a decent place to set up camp. While riding a van pulled over a flagged us down. It was JL from the bike shop. He said he'd come looking for us to make sure that we made it out okay (and obviously we hadn't). He helped us load our bikes in the van and drove us slightly North of St. Paris OH to a campground. (Kaiser Lake)

The campground seemed like it was going to be amazing. We set up right near the lake, and I took a couple pictures. It was beautiful. However at night George couldn't sleep because of the cranes and geese making noise. At first he poked his head out of the tent inquiring "what the fuck was that?" I explained it was the geese and that everything was fine. Though they did get a little loud and George kept yelling at them to shut up. I couldn't sleep because I think I got a lot of bug bites and they manifested themselves right as I was about to fall asleep and I thought I was going to go crazy I itched so bad.

Day 16

We departed Akron at a decent hour, our next major stop Indianapolis IN. We estimate 3-4 days for a span of 300 miles. The day was pretty uneventful, mostly just corn fields. After a while I was horribly sick of seeing corn fields over and over, one after another, and I prayed to God to please let there be something else besides corn around the corner so that I won't be so bored. Well God answered my prayers, and after the turn in the road we had the pleasure of looking at nothing but soybean farms for the next few hours. We completed the day riding a total of 75 miles, which was to date the longest we had ever rode in a single day. We ended up in Lexington OH. We slept under some pine trees near a cemetery, which ended up being one of the best spots yet. it was covered by the large branches of the pine trees and the needles made for a soft surface to sleep on. It was also a beautiful night, the stars were amazing and the temperature was comfortable. Though we were on a slight slope which made us slide down into the end of our tents and sleeping bags which made things slightly awkward.

Day 12-15

Akron OH.

When we got into town, the first thing was going to the laundry mat. When I lived in Akron it was a mere block from the laundry mat, so we trekked over to the old neighborhood. After that we headed to the local coffee shop Angle Falls. While sitting there this woman came out and asked us what we were doing. We told her, and she said she had done the same thing 20 years ago. She offered us her house to stay in, and told us she had to go shopping so drew us a map and told us she'd leave the front door unlocked and she'd see us when she got back. It was amazing. After talking to her more later on she had probably the best story we've heard yet. This guy randomly asked her if she wanted to go on a bike ride, and she said yes and they rode from OH to Washington state. When he asked her she thought he meant around the block, but when they started they just never stopped!!!!! When they got there they the rode down the coast, worked on a boat, flew out to Hawaii, bike around the islands, flew back to California, worked more, flew to New Zealand, rode around the entire island of perimeter of that country, went to Australia to explore and travel and then finally came home. Anyway we stayed with her and her daughter and they have an amazing house.

Anne came to visit and got a hotel, she stayed for 2 and a half days. It was nice having company after all the time on the rode with George. We also met up with my old friends from Akron and went out and had fun. All in all the stay in Akron was fun, filled with Booze, potheads, muddy sinkholes, jumping fences, climbing onto rooftops, and falling asleep wicked early after drinking a couple beers and watching a movie. In fact visiting Akron was exactly like living in it, just in a shorter time span.

Day 11

We woke up, packed and got ready to make our way out of town. After spending the night with nothing creepy happening I felt bad for being so nervous around him. He may have been weird and crazy, but after talking with him all night he's really just a dude who's slightly unstable, trying to get his life together and has a huge love for the lazy lifestyle and travel. So after everything I identified with him in the end. He loved travel, and couch surfing and all the wondrous things that come adventure and freeloading, things that not so long ago were the very basis of my survival hitchhiking cross country. Upon leaving Bob gave us his contact into and told us to let him know how things are going.

We made our way riding through New Castle PA. Nothing special, except we stopped in a bike shop to get cleats. I had bought shitty Shimano road cleats, and they were chipping, and getting gook from the road caught in the making it impossible to clip in.The shop wasn't anything exciting, but the guy was super nice. I really enjoy stopping in bike shops. He helped switch out my cleast and change pedals, and gave us all sorts of advice. We signed his wall of cross country riders, and just hung around for a while.

Riding on, we came a few miles from the OH boarder and it was getting hot and I was getting tired. So George said he would buy me ice cream when we got into OH, if we rode on and got there today. When we came to the Ohio line we stopped to take pictures with the big "Welcome to Ohio" sign. I got a nice picture of my beer belly hanging out of my tight little cycling clothes. So we have finally made across and entire state, in hot weather, up and down mountain and with various other problems. We stopped at Dairy Queen and they don't sell flavored ice cream. You don't sell flavored ice cream? I am reminded why I never ate Dairy Queen back home and always bent to Carol's or Friendly's. George got a blizzard and we rode a bit further to another ice cream place and got a big strawberry ice cream cone, it was, to say the least, amazing.

We finished up in Ellsworth OH, and just make camp and slept on the side of the road in a little grass patch.

Day 10

When I woke up it was still pretty early. There were a lot of people out walking and biking the trail, and I could hear from inside my tent people making comments.

"hey look some campers"
"looks like their bikers"
"hur-dude look, that persons tent looks like a coffin"
"hur-yeah bro, it does-good one"

When we crawled out of the tent everyone was nice and said good morning and asked how we slept. I was pleasantly surprised by how friendly people were. I suppose because we were travelers and not just vagrants or hobo's it made us more approachable. The main problem was having to walk 100ft into these bushes to pee where no-one would walk by and ask my how my morning pee was.

We made it to Butler PA. We stopped at a Library so I could try and contact friends in OH and check funds. When I came out George had moved the bikes under the overhang and it was pouring. We sat at the library for a while trying to figure out our next move. I found a church that we could have probably slept at if worse came to worse, but we still tried figuring our options. Finally a guy named Bob came out of the library. He asked about what we were up to and everything and offered his place to stay.

He was a super nice guy but a little weird. Long before we even settled down to sleep, we decided on sleeping with weapons, George with his U-lock, me with a knife. In the period that we were there he brought us to a head shop and made George sell a jean jacket for him (very-very sketch) so he could buy groceries, then brought us to a fancy ass bar to show us the dart boards, and everyone in the place looked uncomfortable with him being there. At the grocery store we bought frozen pizza and hot dogs and went back to his house. He told us about his 2 wives in Japan, his kids that he may or may not have, the land he lost in upstate NY during the 2nd divorce, how he use to be an English teacher, how he used his "skills" to make money (and the wives) in Japan, how he was bi-polar, did crack and burned his mom's pic-nic table. Apparently the pic-nic table was the last straw and she used it as an excuse to lock him in a mental institution. Now he was clean and trying to speculate for the future by registering domain names so that some day he might be able to sell them for thousands of dollars. He was also planning on liquidating a bunch in the near future so he could go on a 3 month bus trip of the USA. He is trying to corner the market on domain names with numbers instead of letters such as "L1ps" usualing a '1' instead of an 'I' in "lips." He says by cornering this market, when all other domain names are used up, people desperate to get their company name out will have to turn to him for their domain name needs, and this will make him rich. He has put the majority of his income into this venture.

So we watched a movie called "the last minute," ate cracker with cheese, hot dogs and frozen pizza with our new friend Bob. Then when it came time to sleep we crawled into our sleeping bags in the corner of an empty room and slept with our weapons handy.

Day 9

So Monday comes. We were finally able to buy breaks. We checked out of the hotel and caught a bus ass long out of our way. The best was loading our bikes onto the front bus rack, and then dragging all our gear onto the bus with us, very excellent. We bought the break pads, put them on and then caught the bus back to Johnstown.

In the weekday light Johnstown was actually okay, and lively. Maybe it is just bleak during the weekend? There were still a lot of disfigured mongoloids and mentally ill people around, but people were actually talking and interacting. Businesses were open, and the streets were busy with people. The sun was bright and shining down on the streets and tree's were green blowing in the wind. How much difference a little sun makes.

We rode out of town and made it to Apollo PA. We traveled the far distance North because heading directly west would bring us into the heart of Pittsburgh, and we're also aiming for Akron OH. were I have a few friends. There really wasn't anywhere to camp, but a guy in a variety store gave us direction to a bike/hike trail that he said would be a good spot. We got down there, and though it was beautiful, it wasn't really great for camping. The biking/running trail was right next to the river, and it was surrounded by a thick menagerie of small bushes and young tree's. It was getting late and we just said the hell with it and pitched our tents in a wide open grassy spot right beside the trail. I actually fell asleep pretty easy, even though I usually get nervous when we sleep in plain view and it's hard to sleep when the nerves are up.

Day 7

Riding down the last ridge of the Mountains, we can see the city of Johnstown just mere miles away, we're cruising down these windy roads getting closer and closer to civilization (or so we thought) and.....my breaks give out. I had to full squeeze both the front and rear break levers and use my legs for the fixed gear portion of mobility to stop myself from going down the hill at death speed. We had to pull over to re-adjust the breaks. When I took them off they had metal chips in the rubber pads....which I have never seen. But anyway, sanded and tightened the breaks as best I could and we rode into Johnstown.

It was a sketchy looking little town. It looked as though a bomb had dropped in the city and all the buildings and business survives but the majority of the people died. The ones who were left were disfigured and mentally ill. (seriously we saw 7 people, all but 2 was mentally retarded). We tried finding anything, a hostel, something. We even went to the YMCA but they were closed. This city was a grey, bleak, industrial wasteland. We had no breaks, and couldn't ride on especially through the foot hills.

I am not all that frightened by much of anything that a city can throw at me, but this was different. This town was "Deliverance" meets that city in "Battle for the Planet of the Apes." We gave in and had to get a hotel room figuring we'd be safe for the night, could rest, clean up and find a bike shop in the morning to get new brakes. Well because it was the weekend no shops were open, so we stayed for 2 nights. Watching nothing but TBS**.

**George and I can still quote word for word the commercials they had on those 2 night.

Day 6

Boring. Up hill down hill up hill down hill-turn corner, more hill.

During a climb, saw a green grassy gravel path that led into POA state hunting ground and decided it would be the best place to camp. We crawled in there ate, set up tents and went to sleep. In the middle of the night we hear what sounds like a shovel digging dirt along with twigs snapping and rustling about. I recognized the sounds from when I was hitchhiking and didn't think anything of it. George freaked out and started calling over in a loud, strained whisper "Tiiiim, what is that? do you hear that?" We were completly surrounded by deer, they somehow missed our scent and got pretty close. I didn't realize how close they were so when I made a noise to get them to go away, I scared the crap out of them and about 5 deer started making the alarmed high pitch sequel that they make. Not the easiest thing to try and fall asleep to, since instead of running away they stuck around and made that noise for a good 10 minutes.

Day 5

Woke up, rode on. We finally started our ascent into the mountains. Half the day you spend walking up the mountains, the other half you spend resting at the top and riding down the other side. All this time you know that when you get to the bottom, there is another mountain to go up.

We eventually stopped to rest in this small town which was really more of a cross roads. The center of town didn't have any houses, just a traffic signal, a supplies store, grocery store, and a bank. This is also the first place that we saw Amish. The Grocery store even had a section of it's small parking lot with a horse tie up. It was odd to see 2 Amish hanging out at the supply store speaking there pig-dutch language with horse drawn buggy's only 20 feet away from 2 dudes discussing the weather next to their oversize ford pickups. Everyone was very friendly though, and when we set up outside of the bank to rest from the heat and ingest some food, the bank workers were nice and even talked with us briefly.

We tried camping in this one spot, not to far from a house, but were spotted. The owner came out and told us next time just to knock on the door that way we don't startle him. He didn't mind if we slept in his yard, just as long as we didn't light a fire since it had been a dry spring. He gave us a history lesson about the area and how Burnt Cabins PA got it's name from William Penn's men coming to survey the area and make sure whites weren't breaking the treaty with the natives by living there. If whites were caught settling the area the surveyors told them they had a year to leave, and when the next year came if the surveyors found them there again they would burn down the settlers cabins. The was 86 years old and had lived on the property for 30-40 odd years. Now that we had his permission we realized that the spot we chose was terrible because of the pickers on the ground and lumpy soil, so we asked him if we could sleep closer to the house in the soft grass which he obliged. Only the second night I had to set up my tent.

Day 4

We woke up when it started to sprinkle. We quickly gathered our things and half asleep walked to the front of the 711 to sit on our asses again. So we cleaned up, ate breakfast, and dried out our gear all while sitting in front of this random 711. The locals were nice enough, but slightly confused. It was suppose to be our rest day anyway, so we weren't in a hurry to get riding.

After the weather cleared a little we rode to Harrisburg, where we spent most of the day. We wanted to get pictures of us with the state capital building for Redline**, but there really wasn't any good place to do that. So we sat on the state house lawn surrounded by a squirrel army. Literally, there were so many of them. Hundreds, roaming around, looking almost like veterans of a great war with scarred faces, hairless tails, and missing ears. From what I gathered their tails signified rank, the more scraggly and tufted your tail is the higher rank you are, and the ones with the crooked and hairless tails commanded the most respect from the other squirrels. The small bushy little tailed youngin's were pathetic looking enlistee's but if anyone could put them into shape it was sarge half tail. At one point a little chipmunk came around looking for food and was hastily chased off by a mob of 4 or 5 vicous tuft-eared squirrels.


We sat on the park benches, and the sun was out pretty bright by then. We took out our sleeping bags and layed them over the backs of the benches to dry out. While they were drying we listened to music, read a little and updated our travel logs. A guy that worked for the state came over and talked to us about our trip, he was a casual biker and new a lot of the trails and directed us to places we could get stuff in the city. He was a big help and his excitement for our trip was pretty good motivation.

We rode out of Harrisburg so when darkness fell we could be somewhere we could camp. Ended up near some memorial to PA farmers or something along the state highway. It was a large rock with a plaque on it surrounded by benches in the middle of nowhere with a huge corn field behind it. So we took a couple picture and set up sleeping back between the tree line and the corn field. George tried getting a picture of me squatting in the trees doing my business but I am Tim "fast crap" Walsh, there wasn't even a chance, he didn't even get to the camera and my pants were already up.



There was a decent tree line, with the highway only 6 or 7 feet away, so we decided to set up camp for the night.

**We contacted Redline bicycles before heading out on this trip. We told their marketing dept. that we were going on tour, riding fixed gears, and both riding Redline 925's. They offered us some help in the tour if we took pictures of us with the bikes and gave some reviews.

Day 3

I awoke to a man pulling up, parking his car, getting out and walking into the building. I was confused, wasn't this place abandoned? I woke George up and tried explaining to him that the parked car's driver just went in the building, he was confused "Isn't the building abandoned?" We decided it would probably just be best to get up and get out of there. We went to ride around back and get dressed. On the side of the building a huge door was open with a couple of trucks parked near it, and a handful of people working inside. It wasn't abandoned at all....it was a fully functional warehouse with at least a couple dozen workers. So we got changed quickly behind a small concrete wall and rode out.

Up the road we stopped at a bike shop Called Lebo's Pedal Power slighly west of West Reading so George could buy a bike computer, which has actually been a life saver. To know how many miles you've gone in a day and how fast you are going really puts you mind at ease.

From there we came upon a town a little east of Harrisburg. It was sprinkling a little and we were tired so we hung out in front of a 711. We eventually ended up sleeping behind the store near their air conditioning units. Since it was just out back we didn't set up tents, just laid out our sleeping backs in the dark and slept to the hum of the machinery.

Day 2

We rolled our bikes down that dirt mound. Aside from wearing flip flops, it actually wasn't that bad. So the bike trail doesn't go any further, and we have to start taking back country roads. We picked up a map at a small garage, and got directions to a decent route from the mechanics. The days ride took us about 4 miles east of Reading.

We stopped where the highway inclined steadily and out of view. It was strip mall hell. There was no place to pitch a tent and camp for the night at all. So we decided we'd have to urban camp it. There was an abandoned building, looked like it had once been a grocery store with an overhang large front patio that could fit shopping carts. There was 2 parking lots, the furthest back being chained off to motorists and at the far end littered with industrial trash. Broken pallets, sheet metal, old shopping racks etc. It was perfect to just set up sleeping bags. So we cooked pasta with the camping stove George brought and ate dinner. George and I were starting to feel the reality of being on tour, apparently he had never really camped before and it was a serious reality check for him. So we just sat around for a while talking, trying to mentally ready ourselves and going over our goals and fears about this trip. After a long talk we felt really good about everything and we were pumped to wake up the next morning and get back on the road. And that's when it started to rain-no; pour. So we quickly packed up everything and ran over to the overhang of the abandoned grocery store. Conveniently there were two wooden benches side by side in the front. So we unrolled our sleeping bags and watched the thunder and lightning storm until we fell asleep.

Day 1

Day one started in a haze of sleep deprivation. I had spent most of the night and early morning in the ER with Anne for the doctors basically to say they didn't know what was wrong with her. So Instead of leaving early in the morning as previously planned, we slept and left roughly around noon. George rode out to my house, where our friend Marielle took some pictures of us geared up before we left. There was quite a bit confusion that ensued trying to pack our bikes, where to put this, and where to hang that, all in all it was humorous.

We finally rode on. We rode through West Philly, down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and took the Schuykill River Trail (Kelly Drive) through Manyunk into Valley Forge. It was actually a beautiful ride and I wished I had taken advantage of it more in the years that I lived in Philly. From Valley Forge we connected with the Perkiomen Trail, which runs all the way to Green Lane PA.

Most of the day was spent in silence riding and sweating like crazy. Since it was the first day out, I was horribly prepared to ride at great length with such weight. I think I walked more than I rode, and stopping constantly.
We finally set up camp on a dirt mound beside the bike trail in Green Lane PA. We tried sleeping out of sight of people on the trail, so the elevation was pefect for that. However trying to lug gear and roll a bike up a bushed dirt hill in flip flops was funny as hell (or at least it is looking back on it). All I could think about was how the hell I was going to get it down with 100 pounds of gear.