Day 14 - to Pittsburgh

August 22, 2021

We got up and packed and, for us, an early start, getting on the road at 7:30.  Since cell service has been unreliable, and we use that on the navigation app on our phones, I used my Rand-McNally road atlas to lay out a route and off we went.  The plan was to go to Binghamton, New York on the backroads and from there we would go our separate ways.  Dan has a doctor appointment early tomorrow morning and wants to be back today so as not to miss it.  To do that he’ll grab I-81 to I-80 and get back to Pittsburgh today.  I want to stay on the 2-laners and will probably camp again a few hours outside of Pittsburgh.

The ride to Binghamton was smooth and when we got to the junction with I-81 we said our goodbyes over the intercom and headed out on our own courses.  Mine was hours and hours of 2-lane roads through many, many small towns and villages.  This is really my preferred way go.  Less traffic, slower, more interesting roads.  I didn’t stop for many photos but I did take some.  One thing I wanted to document were the banners seen in small town across PA, NY, NH, VT, and ME that salute and honor veterans from those towns.  Here’s an example:

While I have been taking pictures of my bike in from of various courthouse in Montana, I thought “Why just Montana?”  I found two courthouses today that made good backdrops.  This one is from Potter county, PA in the town of Coudersport.

And a street view from there. 

This one is in McKean County, Pennsylvania in the town of Smethport.

Smethport’s claim to fame, and it’s mentioned on a welcome sign, is that the first magnetic toys were invented here.  I looked it up later and it was the “Wooly Willy” that appeared in 1956.  You can read more about that here.  

The ride took me into the Allegheny National Forest.  A really nice ride through a very dense forest.

Some miles later, in a town that didn’t have much else, it did have this huge church.

Now I am starting to think about where to camp for the night.  I got out my phone and did the usual searched but wasn’t finding anything that was to my liking or in a reasonable riding distance.  I checked the distance to Pittsburgh and figured that by the time I could get to a campsite and get set up, I could be in Pittsburgh.  Off to Pittsburgh I went.  I was making pretty good time, and still enjoying curvy roads, when road construction closed the road I was on.  The navigation app was aware of this but instead of sending me on the designated detour, it sent me another way which it claimed, and probably was, shorter.  It was a small road though some rural neighborhoods with a narrow, sketchy road.  It’s simply part of the adventure.

Luckily, when I got to Pittsburgh the app guided me through it’s narrow, busy, and twisting streets and all the directional mishaps that could happen getting through downtown.  I missed a turn coming out of the Liberty Tunnel that runs under Mount Washington but the app still got me close enough to my son’s neighborhood that I could find my way to his garage unassisted.

Since I was sharing my location on my iPhone to his, he met me there and the first thing he did was throw an oil drain pan under the bike and we did the oil change.  It’s best to do a change when the engine is hot and it certainly was that after a long ride.

After hauling gear inside it was time to kick back.

It was a 485-mile day, 13-hours from start of the ride to the finish.  I think it was a personal record.