The last weekend in May I went down to the Pennsylvania Endless Mountains region. The purpose of my trip was to care for my uncle’s animals while he and family were away for a wedding over the weekend.
When I go on trips I have two habits. The first is to over-pack. I take more things than I could ever possibly use because “you never know what you might need” and “I want to be prepared.” The second thing I do is inevitably forget something. No matter how hard I over-pack it seems like half of the time I still (with all my excess) manage to forget something important. I have a terrible fear of forgetting to take my wallet when I leave the house and only realizing it after I’ve made a purchase. So, I always feel for my wallet as I pull out of the driveway and so far have managed to avoid forgetting that. The pessimist in me says my fear will still be realized someday because my wallet will be stolen from me and I will only realize it after I’ve finished eating at the restaurant. Until that day, my all-time common thing to forget is my toothbrush. Annoying, but not something that brings the trip to a grinding halt.
Determined not to forget anything, I carefully packed all sorts of supplies, making sure to include my bike and the digital camera. The Endless Mountains region is a beautiful part of Pennsylvania and I intended to spend some of my free time exploring. This was the second time I’ve taken my bike to a distant location . . . both times have been examples to me of why I really need to get myself a bike rack if I want to keep this up. Without a bike rack the only vehicle I can use to carry my bike around is Teman’s jeep. If I put down the back seat my bike can (just) fit. But it is awkward to put the bike in and it takes up most of the back space. Besides, the jeep is a gas hog. Someday I will buy a bike rack.
I almost forgot my toothbrush, but remembered just before leaving.
The trip down went fine. There was no trouble in taking care of the animals. I did forget my sweat pants, which was the first aggravation. Jeans do not rank as one of the top two most comfortable things to ride a bike in. After discovering that little lack of foresight–carefully packing bike and helmet but then forgetting the biking clothes–I figured I had made my quota of forgetting important things in the midst of trying to pack everything. Alas, I wasn’t quite done with myself. When I pulled the bike out of the jeep I discovered the rear tire was a bit soft. This inspired a bit of mental self-kicking. One of the things I had been looking forward to on this trip was taking a bike ride and I blithely packed nothing against the possibility of there being something wrong with my bike. Why, of all times, did my rear bike tire decide to start going soft?
I resolved the quandary by deciding that the tire wasn’t too soft, and I would take the bike out anyhow. If the tire seemed to have a leak, I could turn around and cut my ride short. If it went flat at the furthest point out . . . I would walk home. (If this had actually happened I would have been none too happy, but when frustrated I don’t think very intelligently.) As it turned out this had a fairly happy ending because the tire didn’t go any softer during my ride.
Riding a bike in the Endless Mountains region is something you either like, or loathe, depending on taste. Since I consider hills part and parcel of a enjoyable bike ride it was a good start (in my book) to head out from my Uncle’s place and up a steep hill. For other people it would have been enough for them to turn around and give up. But then, you probably wouldn’t be riding in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania, and most likely you would have long ago given up riding with me.
It was a steep climb, the hill going ever upward. I leaned into the pedaling and kept going. I figured it would be worth it when I reached the top, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Endless Mountains region is not really made up of mountains like the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Hills is a more proper name, but from the top of one of those hills it is easy to understand the name “Endless Mountains.” At the top of the first hill I swung round a bend and came out where a field dropped away on my left, the world spreading out in an unobstructed view. The hills of Pennsylvania rose one after another like green mountains, their tree-covered slopes continuing on and on into the haze-shrouded distance. One of those annoyingly precise people would have said there wasn’t a mountain in sight, but I understood what was meant.
One hill was just the beginning, so I went on down, heading for the next climb. There is a certain rhythm and cadence to biking through hill country. Slow, then fast. Hard, then easy. The slow and hard is the long beat, the fast and easy is the quick beat. A wiser bicyclist will settle into this rhythm, working with it, becoming a part of it so much he doesn’t even think about what he is doing. The rest (invariably those hill haters) say “What, another hill? This is so hard! Why are there so many hills? When will these hills end?” As a result they have no fun because they are thinking about how hard it is, how easy it should be, and how it isn’t any fun.
Going uphill and downhill each have their place. Just as nothing but pedaling uphill would grow wearisome, an endless downhill plunge would also become repetitive. In my experience the hill descent is disappointing because it is over so quickly, and also because it happens so fast. The world flashes by, and you never really get a chance to see the world. At least when you are making the steady crawl to the top of a hill you can look around and take in the scenes.
Sight-seeing is a large part of the enjoyment for me. The exercise is invigorating, the fresh air and sunshine is pleasant, but the greatest fun is seeing ever new bits of the world opening up. Taking a bike ride through a place is a much more intimate experience than whizzing past in a car. You see more things, and you think about them more. You can wonder about the world, and how particular things came to be the way they are. A cemetery, a rock quarry, wet lands–I went by them, pedaling on. I noticed there were a lot of ponds. They were everywhere. It seems people living in Pennsylvania don’t need swimming pools, because there are enough ponds to go around.
Besides the hills and valley, rivers and lakes, I also consider the more civilized aspects of what I pass through. It always interests me to see the type of houses that a location has. The habitation of a place says something about those who live there, both the past, and the present. What I observed on my ride was that there seemed to be three distinct categories of houses. There were old houses, trailers, and the mansions. The old timers, the poor, and the rich where each in their own island, separate from those around them. There are trailers and houses intermixed around where I live, but there are few mansions. The separation was particularly striking as I rode through Pennsylvania because it seemed there were a cluster of trailers at one place, then a stretch of old houses, and further on at the spreading lawns and pastures–behold,
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