Day 77 Pittsburgh to Connellsville

Can a day be too easy? Today almost felt that way...

I'm not sure Sean and Dennis would agree as they had to loop back at the midpoint to retrieve a missing cell phone and then try to chase us down and get to Connellsville before us.

We started with 7 riders and 9 am...

Safety talk time

David and Tiernan Regan (Sean's cousins from Ireland), Chris Lattin from Tessera, Rich Hoffman (my college friend), Octavio Herrera Ruiz (from Netronome, one of our sponsors) and Diana and me. Octavio rode with us part way and then headed back. It was nice to have a larger group of HAA supporters and a local rider  join us.

Chris

Rick

 David R.

 Diana

Octavio

Rick and Dave

Tiernan 

The ride was primarily on trails following at first the Monongahela River and then at mile 12 the Youghiogheny River.  It was shaded and a mix of asphalt and well packed dirt. The riding was easy with a good tailwind.

Crossing the river

Pretty typical of 99% of our ride 

We saw many cyclists, joggers, and hikers along the trail.

Cyclists doing it the hard way!

One group of shirtless tatoo'ed riders passed us  multiple times as they sped past and then stopped for breaks. They cheered us on each time we passed them at their breaks.  At the last fly by they were just getting on the bicycles and hollered "We're going to smoke you in a minute." That was enough motivation for us to ramp up the pace just enough to leave them in the dust. We never saw them again...

Lunch was another attempt at  something different.

Lunch stop

We pulled into a bike shop/restaurant combo called the trail side. We sat on the patio and ordered from a menu. The food was excellent but service a tad slow. I was just not comfortable sitting back and doing nothing while waiting for food or bill, particularly with storm clouds looming above.

The good news is the food came, we ate well, and were on the road again without much delay. Word on the street though is that the whole team is looking forward to a Subway's lunch tomorrow...

We spent most of the ride just calling out "Pole ahead", "Biker Up" , "Runner up", "Bump", or  "On your left!". 

Not a ton of conversation compared to the previous days though David R. did chat a bit with all of us.Being from Ireland it took him a few minutes to get used to riding on the right side of the trail, particularly around bends. This was a bit comical at first but also scary. Glad he got it straight after a while!

We arrived in Connellsville around 2:30 pm, too soon for our rooms to be ready, and about 20 minutes ahead of our van. So there was a bit of sitting around and waiting on the back porch. I enjoyed this down time.

We enjoyed a nice dinner in town and I couldn't resist stopping to take a picture of one of the 10 Commandments granite monuments that seem to be everywhere in this town. The history on this: "A Pennsylvania pastor has begun a campaign to erect Ten Commandments monuments throughout his town after a lawsuit threatened to have a Ten Commandments statue removed from the local junior high school."