I rode Pedal Pennsylvania back in August of 1997 and decided to make a return trip,  this time riding across the middle of the state.  The ride began near Pittsburg, PA and ended on the New Jersey border at Easton.  It turned out to be quite a trip, with much more to it than cycling.  The year of 2003 was the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first powered flight, and because of this event, Dayton, Ohio, put on quite an event for its local boys.  I also have family roots in Ohio; this is where my father’s family originated.  Instead of the 1-week ride, I was looking at a 2-week trip with part of it spent in Dayton.

         Planning for the Dayton part of this trip began early, researching as much of the Inventing Flight extravaganza as I could, and checking with a pen pal nearby about some possible leads on ancient relations.  Beyond booking a flight (it was easier to fly into Pittsburg and back out of Easton than to go to Dayton and then try to get back to Pittsburg to join Pedal PA) there was the question of finding a place to stay.  I Googled, Yahooed, Mapquested, and AAA Traveled the Web for weeks.  As you might imagine, anything in Dayton itself was both expensive and hard to find because of the Inventing Flight events.  I settled on a Hampton Inn just down the road from the Air Force Museum, and this turned out to be a good choice.  By the time I left for Pittsburg, I was armed with an extensive collection of maps and other information on Dayton and vicinity.   

Monday July 14: Indiana toAltoona – 67 miles

    After breakfast I departed from the designated route out of town for a more direct one discovered in my walk yesterday, eliminating 5 of those 42 turns, and was once again off through the green and hilly countryside.  Once again, the weather was near to ideal. For some reason the first part of the ride was described as “Views of Ireland.”  Having been there before, I could not quite figure this one out.  There were no rocks, there were no sheep, there were no lakes, and it was not raining.  This time I got to experience an extended (for Pennsylvania) descent of 3 miles to the village of Clymer, followed by a “long” climb of 2 miles out of that river valley.  Lunch for the day was at the Carrolltown fruit market and was easily one of the two best lunches on the tour.  After lunch I rode past Charles Schwab’s castle (actually a reservoir) and a beautiful if somewhat gothic-looking chapel at Loretto. 

There was a brutal climb out of Cresson along a route named “Pizza Hill” and a screaming descent along Glenwhite Run, a manmade flume.  I went flying past several lakes and reservoirs then past Horseshoe Curve National Landmark.  From there it was an easy downhill ride into the Motorized Hell of Altoona. 

    Cedar Hall was the nicest place that we stayed on the tour, more along the lines of a fancy motel than a college dorm.  The small campus is a beautiful and relatively new part of the Penn State system.  After dinner, nearly everyone was off on a search mission for a TV that could get OLN and the Tour de France broadcast – Lance Armstrong was once again in the lead and heading for another victory.

After the experience of riding into Altoona yesterday afternoon, I was not looking forward to riding through the place again to leave it. Fortunately the route out of town was nicer than the route into it, and once I hit SR-1013 I was rewarded with nearly 15 foggy miles on the same road! About 12 miles out of town I took a side trip to Fort Roberdeau then basically followed the signs to Penn State. Once the fog lifted, the scenery was “standard” Pennsylvania: green, with farms and small villages all along the way.

There’s a reason that the town is called State College, and that is because Penn State really is the town! The campus is enormous. We rode past the football stadium on the way to the dorm check-in, and I would imagine that many pro teams would like to have a stadium this nice. It took a while to find the check-in place, maneuver around seemingly endless road and building construction, and locate my destination dorm, Beaver Hall. It was definitely back to “college dorm” rooms for this stay. It was hard to believe, but it was even tackier than the place at Indiana. If Turnbull was scraping bottom, this place was digging for bedrock. I rode the asthmatic elevator up to the proper floor and managed to find my room and clean up. I had no sooner laid down to rest when an explosion shook the building and rattled the windows, leaving a cloud of dust – construction crews were actually blasting across the street! Since sleeping was out, I walked around campus and then around town for a bit.

Penn State is huge – you could drop the entire campus of UNR into the quad area with room to spare. Dinner this evening was not like the previous low-key affairs. Unlike the other places that the tour had stopped-at so far, Penn State is very busy during the summer; the dining hall was swarming with high school kids at some sort of sports camp or other, and the other floors of Beaver Hall were full of noisy students. At least the blasting ceased at 5:00PM.

It had rained last night at some point, but the roads were merely damp by the time I started riding this morning. I was up early for breakfast and then was off to Selinsgrove, the destination for the 4th day of the Penn Central. Once past the usual hills and turns and past a Wizard of Oz theme farm, I hit Route 192 where I remained for over 40 miles except for a quick side trip to Penn’s Cave and a hotel that has been there since 1885.! Not only that, it was relatively moderate rolling hills to the Amish town of Rebersburg. Once again, huge farms dominated the scene The big difference on these farms was the lack of motorized farm equipment. As I approached Rebersburg, it was kind of fun to race the horse-drawn wagons into town. Once past Rebersburg I enjoyed one of the few sustained climbs of the entire tour. It was about 15 miles uphill through Bald Eagle State Forest to Raymond Winter State Park for lunch. I didn’t see a single bald eagle, but maybe they were off on vacation for the summer. Then it was back into the farm country and a relatively easy cruise on Route 204 into Selinsgrove and Susquehanna University.

Susquehanna University is a private Lutheran college, and features a very scenic campus. The nice dorms and quiet atmosphere was a welcome change from Penn State! The town is located along the Susquehanna River and is just up the road from Harrisburg. I was fortunate to be able to catch up with my little brother, Terry, at this stop; he was at the Army War College in Carlisle so only a short drive away. We met up for dinner and a tour of the campus and caught up on his studies for his master’s degree in strategic studies. He had just attended a lecture by Secretary of State Colin Powell and was near graduation.

Back to the turns and hills today. At the top of a steep climb to Little Goldmine (presumably there is a gold mine there) I hit an equally steep 2-mile descent that had me going nearly 50 mph in a matter of seconds. One of the main features on this day’s ride, along with the usual collection of farms, were numerous fields full of junk cars. I guess they all have to go someplace, but you’d think that a dismantler would be a better destination. Lunch today was a little church in Dayton that had had its steeple removed for some reason. I rode past an actual drive-in theater near Williamstown, and the locally-famous Yuenling ice cream place near Cressona. Other than Altoona, this was one of the few days of bad traffic – there was a lot of truck traffic going at very high speeds, even through the tiny villages. The final destination was Penn State Schuylkill.

This branch of the Penn State system is a very small campus of only about 1000 students. It’s pretty quiet during the summer and our hungry cyclists overwhelmed the tiny dining hall. To their credit the two cooks on duty managed to make a run into town for more pasta and sauce, so we were all able to fuel up for the next day.

Today was the only day with marginal weather; it was cloudy and humid with occasional drizzle, but never really rained enough to make the roads slick. Following 10 miles of the usual rolling hills, I made a left turn with a very steep 2-mile climb to Hawk Mountain Nature Area. The area was founded in 1934 and gets its name from the fact that it is along the eastern migratory path for thousands of raptors and has some of the best thermals and ridge soaring country for these birds. In September through November it is possible to see hundreds of hawks and eagles cruising along the ridges at one time. This is not a good time to be a rodent in the Kempton area! The small visitor center has an impressive collection of model birds and goodies.

A nice downhill followed the grueling climb to Hawk Mountain and I eventually ended up in New Tripoli for lunch at the fire station. This was the best lunch of the tour and was prepared by the volunteers at the fire department. It is memorable for its cookies, all hand made, pie (ditto), and the turkey sandwiches. You might wonder what was so wonderful about turkey sandwiches, but when was the last time you did a ride where the turkey slices were carved right off the turkey that had recently come out of the oven? Once past New Tripoli, I rode past the other main feature for the day, which was churches and graveyards. Most of the churches were old and boarded-up, so I guess that religion in on the decline in this part of Pennsylvania. Near to the destination of Kutztown, I ran into several other riders, most of them from other countries. They were in Kutztown to ride at the velodrome.

The university was easy to find, but I thought that I had made a wrong turn and had ended up at the town jail instead of the dorm.  No, there were the Pedal PA truck and vans.  Although the rooms were nice, this had to be most grim-looking dormitory that I have ever seen.  The place looked like a prison, complete with guard towers!  The entertainment for the evening was a trip to the Lehigh Valley Velodrome and an evening of track racing.  Constructed on the theory, “If you build it, they will come,” the velodrome has become one of the premier track racing sites in the United States and even enjoys an international reputation.  We were treated to some awesome racing until the event was halted.  The cancellation was caused by an impressive thunderstorm that had the racers and fans scrambling for cover.  I was one of the few folks that had looked at the threatening weather earlier and brought an umbrella.  It rained and thundered most of the night.

The final day of the tour dawned clear and humid from yesterday’s rain. After breakfast the entire group formed up for a series of group photos taken by one of the dormitory maids. Needless to say, the pictures were dismal; I am unaware of any decent group photo of the bunch. Then I suffered through one more day of hills and turns where the longest section was a bit over 2 miles. The scenery was dominated by houses; we were getting close to Easton. I have to congratulate the route finders on a relatively traffic-free back way into Easton. Things only got nasty on the last quarter-mile where I had to mix it up with the drivers to get across a bridge and into the parking lot of the Best Western.

Pizza and related items awaited me. I went to one of the rented rooms to clean up and change, then packed the bike in its box again, repacked my luggage, and hurried to catch the van ride to the nearby airport.

After having to deal with airports like Reno and Detroit, the Lehigh Valley Airport near Allentown was a shining example of how to do an airport right. Check in was no problem, the waiting areas were spacious and clean, there was no background noise of slot machines. I was soon on my way to Detroit, Minneapolis, then eventually to Reno. The legs from Allentown to Detroit and on to Minneapolis went fine, but on the final leg from Minneapolis to Reno a guy in first class had a heart attack. Lucky for him the plane was full of people returning from a medical conference, so we had an abundance of doctors, nurses, and paramedics. We diverted to Rapid City, Iowa, got the guy off to the hospital, and then sat on the ground for a couple of hours waiting to get clearance to leave again. I didn't arrive home until 1:30AM.

    My first Pedal PA, back in 1997, was an extremely well-run event.  This one was no different.  I definitely would not call it, “touring on the cheap,”  but it's not as bad as some rides.  If there is any problem with the operation, it is that they add on costs for many things that are included in most tours.  The cost for the van ride to Slippery Rock was $40, it cost $25 to have the bike taken from its shipping destination to the meeting point, another $40 for the 5-minute van ride to the airport at the end, and $75 to ship my bike back to Reno (difference in cost to be refunded – it never was), so the $765 tour cost quickly got to $945.  I'm surprised that they didn't tack-on another $25 to haul my bike back to where it was shipped from!  As a comparison, my epic southwest tour with Backroads cost about $950 and had much better food. 

    The route across central PA was truly spectacular.  It certainly wasn't easy with all the hills, but the scenery was fantastic.  The trip to the bike races was a lot of fun, and staying at the small (and one very large) colleges was interesting.  Support was excellent; there was never a problem finding someone out on the course to refill water bottles or help with directions.  Most of the turns were marked daily.  Based on my experience in Ohio a week before the ride, I think that I got very lucky with the weather.  One rainy day out of a week of riding is excellent.  I managed to survive the ride with my normal bike gearing, but I believe it could be done with 3-4 speeds:  a really low gear to get up the hills, a really high one for the down side, and one or two middle gears for everything else. 

   If you’ve ever had the desire to do some touring "back east," this is a good way to do it. Check out the web site at for the latest info on tours and photos from other rides.

Go West and go back to the reviews.