urban bicycle journeys

I wanted to bicycle a random sliver of western Pennsylvania and chose Pittsburgh to Johnstown PA.

The plane landed PIT airport at 9:45 AM on a Monday morning after a one hour nonstop flight from Raleigh/Durham. I had checked my Bike Friday folded into its suitcase. Tootie and I have found ourselves with a preponderance of American Airlines miles so this essentially free ticket seemed a no-brainer. I had schlepped through TSA as carry-ons, strung together with their straps; a bicycle trunk bag, a bicycle helmet, a front bag, and a ukulele.

My Uber driver to downtown Pittsburgh was named Mustafa. His wife and children were off visiting relatives in Morocco and he gave a sales pitch about what an interesting place Morocco is. I know from Facebook groups that Europeans especially like to bicycle tour that country. I gotta get organized.

Mustafa dropped me off in front of the downtown Drury Plaza Hotel. I had a reservation there for Wednesday night and the hotel had agreed to store my empty suitcase for three days. My current Bike Friday is the second folding bike I have packed in that same battered plastic Samsonite suitcase I have had for more than twenty years. I picked a spot on the sidewalk to put the bicycle together. The process took about half an hour.

When all was assembled I carried the empty suitcase to the front desk, then bicycled down Grant Street towards the Monongahela River, looking right down this side street.

Pittsburgh is obviously an interesting city to cycle but on this trip I was heading straight out of town. My vague plan was to take Amtrak back from Johnstown PA three day’s hence, which is what I did.

I had had nothing to eat all day except mixed nuts on the airplane so while still downtown I stopped at the chain bagel joint Einstein Brothers for an egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich. I always get the Everything bagel.

Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University is a center of robotics research. I was passed by this “driverless” car, a Hyundai with Michigan plates.

Pittsburgh is an important bicycle touring spot because it is the start of the Great Allegheny Passage, a lovely 330 mile long off-road trail following riverbanks all the way to Washington DC. Where Grant Street crosses the Monongahela River I accessed that trail which I would be riding just for its first ten miles. The trail landscape was a mix of industrial and woodlands.

Seven miles upriver from downtown, Homeland PA was the site of an enormous steel mill complex employing as many as 15,000 from about 1880 until it closed in 1986. There was a legendary strike in 1892 when shots were fired and men were killed. All of that land has now been cleared to be a shopping complex along the river, including a Costco. I cycled across their parking lot.

My ultimate destination of Johnstown PA required a different east / west routing. Ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh I left the trail and cycled across the Monongahela River. I would be passing through Braddock PA, a factory town that has seen better times. From Wikipedia: The population (of Braddock) was 1,721 as of the 2020 census, a 91.8% decline since its peak of 20,879 in 1920. The eccentric now U.S. Senator John Fetterman was Braddock’s mayor from 2006 to 2019. There were signs of life among the abandoned buildings; some new housing, a brew pub.

Beyond downtown Braddock I cycled up a steep hill that led inland. There was a connection to another rail trail if I could pedal over this little mountain. The road overlooked industrial remains.

There was still operational heavy industry.

Before 1920 virtually all cargo and most passengers had to move either by water or rail. Western Pennsylvania seems to be covered in abandoned rail lines. Many have been converted to trails and the state of Pennsylvania does a good job maintaining them. The Westmoreland Heritage Trail covers eighteen miles to the town of Export PA.

There are a lot of American flags out here.

I had picked the town of Export PA as the day’s destination because I had found a decent sounding Airbnb there within walking distance to bars and restaurants. My apartment’s entry was on the ground floor of this house.

My friend Kirk would be impressed at the depth of the Airbnb’s owner’s instructions; more than six pages handwritten on both sides of the page. How to use the washing machine.

I was more impressed by his early to mid 20th century furniture upstairs. There were at least six or seven bedroom pieces of this same pattern. Is this Art Deco or Modernist?

I cycled through Export PA. Its town center featured a memorial to fallen military.

I made plans to come back to The Bigger Jigger for dinner.

Later on, as I cycled up to the restaurant on a Main Street otherwise free of traffic, a car with its window open passed me going in the opposite direction. The word “dickhead” blurted from that open window.

I cycle all over America and rarely feel threatened. That aggressive comment really bothered me. Why would that person feel that way? Should I even try to analyze this? Their small town was at the end of a heavily used bike path so he must see cyclists all the time. Is that the issue? Earlier that day I had seen this sign, in an area where there is no shortage of places to park one’s car.

I sat at the bar, ordered an IPA on draft, and tried to chill. The air had a lovely early summer coolness and all the doors and windows were open. Golf was on TV. A table of old men sat outside.

Their food was delicious, seemingly fresh and prepared from genuine ingredients. First course was soup of the day, chicken and dumplings.

My main course was a cheeseburger.

I was still hungry so I ordered fries. “What size?” they asked. I thought for a second. “Medium.”

The next morning I set out cycling eastward on country roads that had little traffic.

As most towns in this region, Delmont PA honors its veterans with dozens of banners posted through town, each with the name of a resident and their dates of service, in WWII but also more recently.

Modernist Catholic church

This cycle tour was becoming a series of rides on public roads interspersed with rail trails. The Westmoreland Heritage Trail started up again in Delmont.

After ten miles I cycled off trail into Saltsburg PA. Again, the town had signs honoring veterans.

Early that morning I had eaten a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich on Dave’s bread, made with supplies I had brought with me from North Carolina. By eleven that morning I needed something else. In Saltsburg I found Cafe Bella.

The friendly staff made me an egg, bacon, and cheese on English muffin along with an oat milk latte, sixteen ounce, two packs sugar. There were devotional quotes on the wall. For a time I just relaxed and read my book.

Beyond Saltsburg, at least for a while, the William Penn Trail was smooth and lovely, eventually passing through the hundred yard long Elders Run Tunnel.

Beyond the tunnel the trail was well marked but no longer on a former rail line. The surface was rougher and the hills steeper. I struggled up to the dam on the Conemaugh River.

Below the dam two bridges crossed over the river.

I will be seventy years old next month and schlepping up radically steep hills was taking its toll. It was particularly disheartening when I pedaled and pushed up a very steep hill on rough gravel, then descended to discover the marked West Penn Trail was washed out due to recent heavy rains. I would have to push the bicycle back up that steep hill and backtrack over rough terrain.

It was a really tough slog, pushing the bicycle uphill in the dirt until I found pavement. I took a more circuitous route ten miles on regular roads to my day’s destination, the town of Blairsville.

I could find no accommodation in-town Blairsville and had to settle for a Day’s Inn two miles from downtown out on the big highway. There were gambling machines in the lobby, something I had never seen before. The management looked South Asian. The room seemed fine.

There was also nowhere to eat out here on the highway, not to my standards, anyway. All I wanted was a restaurant with alcohol and a nice atmosphere. In the burbs of population 3,200 Blairsville PA there were not many choices.

Wine to-go in Pennsylvania is complicated to buy but bringing your own to restaurants is common. I biked across the highway to the Pennsylvania based Sheetz gas station chain who sells New Zealand Sauvingnon Blanc. I then took the bottle to Spicy Noodles House, Thai food served by Burmese.

For a while I was the only customer. It seemed a good sign that one of the two employees was obsessively mopping the floor, over and over again.

They gave me a wine glass without even having to ask. The spring rolls were delicious.

Chicken pad kee mao was a lot of carbs but I had been cycling all day.

I was less than fifty miles to Johnstown PA and the next morning I set out, first on country roads, passing through the depressed looking town of Black Lick PA. There were more banners honoring veterans.

Early sixties Thunderbird. 1964?

Starting at Black Lick there was another trail heading east, the Ghost Town Trail, a flat and smooth former rail line hugging a delightful gurgling river.

Two days of cycling on rail trails had given my mind expansive freedom and I listened and sang to a certain song over and over, trying to memorize the lyrics. I have dozens of old 1960-70’s hits in my head but learning “new” songs is more difficult.

New Madrid is a song released in 1993 by the band Uncle Tupelo. The band broke up soon after its release. My brother Alex’s first wife Andrea, who recently passed away, turned Tootie and me onto this delightful band in the mid-1990’s. The band whose music bridged Country Music and Grunge Rock, hailed from Belleville IL, outside of St. Louis. The nearby town of New Madrid MO (pronounced new MAAdrid) was the site of a major earthquake back in 1812 and I have since learned that a self-professed “expert” Iben Browning loudly but incorrectly predicted New Madrid would be destroyed in December 1990 by an earthquake. Songwriter Jeff Tweedy, who went on to found the band Wilco, must have colorful dreams. I sang on the Pennsylvania bike trail.

At the tiny settlement of Dilltown PA the trail cross a highway, and I turned south on PA403 which leads the twelve miles south to Johnstown PA.

All I really knew about Johnstown PA was that it had had the famous flood in 1889 and it was a fading western Pennsylvania industrial city, current population 18,000; down from 67,000 in 1920. I cycled towards downtown, passing both active and inactive heavy industry.

Central Johnstown is keeping up appearances, with people on the streets and not too many abandoned buildings. At 1:15 PM it was not too late for lunch, and I was not the only customer at Balance Restaurant.

The waitress recommended “street corn pizza.” Delicious but too much mayonnaise. The outdoor seating was relaxing.

Amtrak was scheduled to leave for Pittsburgh at 6:00 PM so I had a few hours to kill. I noodled around on the bicycle.

The coffee house and bookstore Classic Elements was open until 5:00 PM.

I ordered an oat milk latte, one pack sugar and sat in a comfortable chair in front of a jigsaw puzzle, reading The New York Times on my phone. Nobody else was around. After a while two older guys showed up and parked their electric bicycles outside. They ordered iced drinks, lemonades maybe, looked around for a seat, and then sat right across from me! I feel mildly guilty in sneaking this picture.

They could not have been nicer. The guy on the left said he was seventy-one years old. He described how difficult and tiring the two and a half mile ride to downtown was on his electric bike. We “old men” talked about our achy bodies. Because I asked, he showed me how he had added the electric motor to his bicycle, including some complicated wiring way beyond my understanding. He had been an electrician of some kind. He said he had been working all morning putting up an American flag in his yard, including cementing the pole. If you put a solar powered light on the top of the flagpole, you do not have a responsibility to lower the flag each evening, he advised.

Other friends of theirs came in, and we all shook hands.

Some time later I headed out again, cycling through the streets. On a downtown stretch this new-looking Mussolinisque building seemed out of place. I looked it up; Crown American is a privately owned regional commercial real estate developer of stuff like shopping malls.

Of course there is a brewery in downtown Johnstown PA.

I sat at the bar; listening to a very overweight guy talk to a not quite as plump woman about their work in either medical or EMT or both. They talked about the difficulties rescuing drug addicts who often do not want assistance.

Amtrak was only half a mile away. Before biking to the train I stopped at a Subway for a sandwich for “dinner” on the train. Amtrak only occupies the far left portion of this too-large historic station.

Of course the train was an hour late. Eventually we all stood out on the platform.

Amtrak will break your heart. The lethargic schedule already takes almost two hours to go those ninety miles. More than an hour late, at nine o’clock at night the train limped the last few miles into central Pittsburgh at five or ten miles an hour. I later learned that I could have booked an Uber from Johnstown to Pittsburgh for only seventy-seven dollars.

I was glad to have brought my own “dinner” to eat on the train. The hotel is only a block from the train station. It was nearly ten o’clock when I got to my room, to start disassembling the Bike Friday and putting everything back in the suitcase. I had an Uber for five-thirty the next morning, for my flight home to Raleigh/Durham.