urban bicycle journeys

Hot weather was coming. Over the years I have used York PA as an escape valve for a nice bike ride, even though the weather there is often just as hot as my hometown of Chapel Hill NC. On this particular June day York PA did indeed look to be cooler, with predicted overcast skies and highs in the mid seventies.

York is also culturally The North, a little over fifty miles above Baltimore MD. York PA was the only Union city conquered by the Confederates. Occupying forces stayed there for about three days in 1863, about a month before the Battle of Gettysburg. Despite qualms about my ancestors fighting for what now seems the wrong side of history, I still appreciate Southern style. It feels mildly exotic to bike around somewhere undeniably Yankee.

I would do this trip as a cycle up and back, parking in Parkton MD and biking north to York on the Torrey Brown / York County Heritage Rail Trail, then back again the next day.

Tootie needed our “good” car to visit our grandson Frankie. I could have driven our spare car, a 2004 Honda Accord with 195,000 miles but a rental VW Jetta for two days was only a hundred dollars. On a Tuesday morning I cycled two miles from our condo down the Chapel Hill hill to the Enterprise office. The folding Bike Friday fit easily in the trunk. By 8:30 AM I was driving north towards Virginia. Once near DC I-95 was, of course, a mess, creeping and crawling for hours at a time.

It had driven for six and a half hours when I pulled into Parkton MD. It’s not much of a town, just a few houses. There were parked cars scattered near the trail, across the road from a house that in this otherwise rural area was incongruously operating as a yoga studio. I had to assume no one would care if I left this rental sedan there for twenty four hours.

I started cycling down the lovely rail-trail. I am glad I asked “which way is York?” from a passing cyclist, since I honestly would have gone the wrong direction! The surface was unpaved but smooth.

Maryland is now the nation’s wealthiest state per capita, but it did not feel wealthy out here, just peaceful. Maryland seems to do a better job than surrounding states in controlling suburban sprawl. On this path I saw signs repeatedly protesting a plan to build electrical transmission towers.

The path continued on and into Pennsylvania.

As I approached York I could see housing from the trail. Older North Carolina neighborhoods just do not look like this.

The trail passes through a former rail tunnel labelled year 1840.

The rail trail does come right into downtown York PA. York, population 45,000, has one or two downtown hotels but I stayed at an Airbnb in an early nineteenth century brick building with the eccentrically cluttered Pippi’s Pen Shoppe on its ground floor.

Pippi was closing for the day as I arrived, and she told me just to put the bike there inside her store, leaning it against a display case of ballpoints. I was given free rein of the entire building for the night and stayed in a two bedroom apartment on the upper two floors. There were low ceilings typical of a building of this era.

After checking in I walked around downtown and quickly found Holy Hound Taproom.

I ordered a porter. It was a pleasantly diverse scene at their bar and prices were low. I savored the beer, then walked back to my “hotel.”

Later on I found dinner at the bar of White Rose Bar & Grill which seemed by far the most crowded restaurant on a Tuesday night in downtown York.

York is in Pennsylvania but physically closer to Baltimore than Philadelphia. My dinner of chicken covered with crabmeat seemed Marylandish.

I talked to two guys in the construction business, in town for one night. They were proud of their company which they said was involved in the building of a new football stadium in Nashville TN, of all places.

I had designed this as a short trip. The next morning I did not wait for Pippi to open up her Pen Shoppe. I packed up the bicycle and departed, locking the door behind me. There would be three or four hours of cycling before driving the rental car six hours back to Chapel Hill NC. I found breakfast down the block at a tiny coffeehouse “manned” by just one woman. Their only breakfast was a pre-made burrito. It was quite good, actually, as was the book I was reading, about the art of writing, by the accomplished horror author Stephen King. The book was given to me by Cindy, one my New Orleans coterie of budding writers.

Before joining the rail trail York looked exotic in the morning light.

At its core York is an industrial city, including Harley-Davidson’s largest motorcycle plant. The bike path passes alongside a large Johnson Controls factory.

I cycled onward, south back towards where my car was parked.

Biking down the trail, through my bone conduction Shokz headphones I listened to the entire Muswell Hillbillies album by the Kinks.

Released in 1971 to poor sales, the record is now better appreciated. Songwriter Ray Davies grew up in the Muswell Hill section of north London listening not only to American blues and country, but also show tunes like Oklahoma. Like other British groups that attempt country music, the Kinks do not sound authentic, but Muswell Hillbillies speaks on its own terms. Davies had had visions of an America he had never visited while bemoaning the government imposed redevelopment of his London neighborhood. All twelve tracks on the album are distinctive, this the title song.

I cycled onward.

My rental VW Jetta was still there at the trailhead. I was home in Chapel Hill in time for dinner.