I enjoy taking long bicycle rides. But I very rarely take them because the responsibilities of life get in the way. It is a frivolity of time that I can’t justify and so rarely indulge. Usually once a year (I wish it were more) I find myself on my bike heading to parts unknown.
Since I recently moved to live with my grandparents, my familiar routes have been left behind and whole new roads opened before me. I have little time where I might waste afternoons away trekking over these new back hills, but one day in early October I did.
A bit by accident.
It was supposed to be a little exploratory ride, nothing too long. But it (ahem) ended up as something more.
My grandparents live on the edge of a city. A city is the last place I want to ride, so I always turn my bike toward the country and ride out toward the back roads and the wild blue yonder. I like to ride hill country better than flat land (which I consider boring). My grandparents live at the edge of New York state, close to the Pennsylvania border, just shy of the Endless Mountains Region, so once I get out into the country there is excellent riding territory.
If you don’t like riding steep back roads you might not agree.
In early October when the trees were at their peak color I decided to go out for a Tuesday morning ride to take some fall pictures of the countryside. On a previous ride I had gone up Grippen Hill (which presents a beautiful view at the top) and I wanted to return–this time armed with a camera. It’s a steep ride up to the top–over 1 and 1/2 miles–and at the top you can look down at the deep valley and rolling forested land. My intention was to ride up to the top of Grippen Hill, take pictures of the glorious flaming fall colors, then ride down the other side and circle back around to home.
I didn’t check a map before I left.
The trip started out interesting. At the top of Grippen Hill I was taking pictures when a driver coming from the opposite direction stopped and told me there was a small black bear on the road ahead. I thought it would be cool to have a picture of the bear. But the bear wasn’t waiting around for me . . . he was gone when I got there.
Speaking about bears . . . when I get on one of my adventuresome bike rides I fall prey to what I call “The bear went over the mountain” syndrome. Which, of course, goes as such “The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see”–which is pretty well summarizes me out on a ride. I always want to know what is over the next hill. This can be very maddening for someone else on the ride if they’re getting tired and just want to get the ride over while I’m up ahead saying, “Let’s just go over this hill. Just one more!”
Thus the stage was set. I went down the other side of Grippen Hill and when it hit a T intersection I dutifully turned left to begin circling around back home. Onward and downward I went, and after having gone up over 1 and 1/2 miles I had a lot of down to go. Then back up I began to go again. Being the stubborn sort of fellow I had decided that when I turned left from Grippen Hill I was going to continue straight until I came out on the main road that ran parallel to my grandparents’ house. I would then turn left again once I reached that road and continue homeward. It was the route I had decided upon (though I didn’t know exactly where it would lead) and I was determined to follow it. So I ignored all sorts of turns on my left that I knew would take me home. I was going to follow this road straight out to wherever it would go. I wanted to see where this road would go.
I realized my chosen route wouldn’t get me home as directly as I had anticipated when I passed a sign saying I had crossed the Pennsylvania state line. A bit surprised to discover I had entered a different state, I remained determined to follow the road I was on to its end. And I was all the more curious to see where that might be.
On and on I went. I was beginning to think my chosen path was taking a good deal longer to reconnect with the main road I had intended to reach, and perhaps it was time to start considering taking the next left toward home. It was a while before I found another turn. Pennsylvania hill country is less inhabited and there isn’t another turn every mile. In fact, it can be several miles before you have another chance at a turn. As it turned out I came to another T intersection and had to make a choice anyhow.
What had started out as a short ride had turned into something much longer. Not just a long ride over steep hill country, but a long ride with only a bagel for breakfast (I can’t eat a lot before leaving on a ride) and now it was pushing on lunch time. That didn’t really bother me. My big concern was Grandma. She had been taking a nap when I left on my ride and I figured that when she woke up she would be able to determine that I had left on my ride. But she would have no idea where I had gone, or when I would be back. When what was supposed to have been about an hour ride began to stretch into something much more, I began to envision Grandma sitting at home worrying over me. So I began to get worried for Grandma, and to feel guilty that I had gone off adventuring without assuring everybody (or anybody) that they didn’t need to worry about me in the slightest. So I felt a strong compulsion to get home as soon as possible, which ruined the fun of the wandering ride, a bit. It’s hard to feel like you haven’t a care in the world whilst riding through the brilliant fall colors of the countryside when in the back of your mind you are thinking, “I wonder how bad Grandma is worrying . . . now.”
Fretting aside, it was a wonderful ride. I would love to live in that part of Pennslyvania. Hill after rolling hill, farms in the valleys, forested slopes rising above, all the land sparsely inhabited. The roads grew progressively worse until I was riding a rutted dirt track through the trees. A brilliant fall day. Good exercise, wonderful weather, wonderful land.
There are more steep hills where I live now than back at the old home place. I don’t think the steepest are more steep than the worst back home, but there are a greater number of them, and they are usually larger hills, and they have a nasty tendency to have a sharp turn in the road halfway down the hill. I actually get uneasy going down some of the hills here in the new country, as they are steep for such a long period of time, and, as I said, have a tendency to develop a sudden switchback turn. This causes me to contemplate brake failure, or something similar, which would lead to a very gruesome accident.
While on the Penn-New York border I hit one steep hill after another and the road went up so sharply and for such a length that my already exerted legs muscles began cramping. Rather than taking a break and waiting for them to recover, I hopped off the bike and walked up the hill. As one who steadfastly refuses to walk hills it was a humbling moment, but as there wasn’t another hill so severe I didn’t have to do it again for the rest of the ride.
A switchback turn did, however, finally get the better of me.
Taking a tight turn down a very steep hill is a dicey proposition to begin with, but with a cleanly paved surface (and no other traffic on the road) I handle it well enough through a mixture of braking and maneuvering. The situation is many times more difficult when there is loose gravel on a paved surface (one of my greatest fears in a tight turn down a steep hill), or if I am traveling downhill on an unpaved road.
On a dirt or gravel road braking ability is greatly reduced. Past a certain point–going down a dirt road that is sufficiently steep–there comes a time your speed becomes such that you can’t stop without wiping out. The amount of friction required to halt forward momentum can’t be achieved while maintaining normal contact between your bike tires and the road. The idea of fish-tailing or skidding downhill makes me decidedly uneasy and I generally try to apply my brakes as judiciously as I can to moderate my descent . . . but running in the back of my mind is the thought, What are you going to do if you must stop?
And then it happened. I was plunging down a dirt road, applying the brakes enough so that I’m going fast, but not out-of-control, when the switchback turn appears in front of me. I see it, and in that second realize I can’t stop and can’t slow enough to take the turn successfully. In that split-second I have the choice of either slamming on my brakes and taking whatever happens when I start skidding wildly out of control, or I can try a more managed crash at the turn. I opt for the latter, probably out of a faint and wild hope that I actually will somehow manage to take the turn.
I started braking as hard as I could without going into a skid, cutting my speed as I approach the corner. I pulled to the inner side of the turn and as I hit the corner I squeezed my brakes the rest of the way, locking my rear tire. The rear of my bike fish-tailed out swinging me into the turn and I skidded sideways all of the way across the road. By the time I reached the other side of the road my speed was cut sufficiently that when I hit the grass bank on the other side of the road and came to a sudden stop I let the bike go down and landed on my feet, checking any more forward momentum and avoiding tumbling down into the field beyond.
It was a very nice landing, considering it all happened in some two seconds, and I had contemplated plastering myself across the road in a bloody mess, or destroying my bike in the ditch. Instead I checked the camera to make sure it was all right, picked up the bike, hopped back on, and started off again, thinking, “Wheee. I hope there isn’t another one of those turns or I might not make it back home.”
I did make it home in time for a late lunch, and Grandma wasn’t even worried. I ended up with a lot of nice pictures and a pleasant (if exciting) trip. What had started out as a little jaunt ended up as a bike ride of over 22 miles.
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