Day 4: 40 Miles

Newton, NJ to East Stroudsburg, PA

I woke up this morning feeling more rested than the day before, but my legs felt the miles from yesterday’s ride. There is going to be an adjustment period before I’m really in shape to do some long mileage days. It would have been nice to start off in a flatter area, but here I am riding through the Appalachians. I can only hope the long days of climbing through New Jersey and Pennsylvania make the flatter states feel easy.

After packing up my things I headed straight to the motel lobby for the complimentary waffle I was promised when I checked in. While I waited for the waffle to cook, I also ate a Danish with a glass of juice. I’ve read about people eating 5,000+ calories every day to sustain their weight and energy on cross country tours. I don’t think I’m eating close to that yet, but it’s only day two and a waffle covered in syrup hit the spot.

Just before I started my ride I took out my bike pump to top up my tires. After filling my rear tire up, I took the pump off the valve and saw that the top of the valve had broken off in the pump. This wasn’t a problem for today, as the tire was filled, but without the top of the valve I wouldn’t be able to add air to the tire again. With the bike already loaded up, I decided this was a problem I would deal with at the end of the day.

I hit the road a little after 9:00am with a plan to make it to the Pennsylvania border before my first break. About 10 minutes into my ride I hit the only climb I would encounter before getting to Pennsylvania. I started up the climb feeling confident, but after 5 minutes of struggling I got off and decided to push my bike. This technically isn’t easier than riding, but it works different muscles. My legs were feeling sore, so why not take advantage of an upper body workout. I’ve mapped my routes using mapmyride and the elevation maps and info can be very deceiving. It looked like this climb would be 3 miles in length and average a 2% grade. My gps was telling me that I was climbing 8% to 10% grades throughout the 3-mile climb, with short sections of flat and downhill. I guess technically it all averages out to 2%, but I’d take a constant 2% grade over that kind of fluctuation any day.

Once I got to the top of the hill the ride got much nicer. A light rain started up, but I dealt with that and made it to the Delaware river with relative ease. While on the bridge crossing the river, I stopped to take a photo. It was a narrow bridge so I had to block the whole lane to get far enough away from my bike to photograph it. I looked to make sure no one was coming in either direction, but within a minute I was blocking the way of a cyclists. Luckily, he didn’t mind and actually stopped to take a photo of me with my bike. The cyclist’s name was Hugo and two minutes later his riding buddies James and Bob showed up. They were on a 59-mile ride to celebrate Hugo’s 59th birthday. We talked for a bit about my trip and they all thought I was crazy, but gave great encouragement.

Once across the river I headed up to Stroudsburg, PA. This is when the rain really started to come down hard. I don’t mind riding through the rain, but with the temperature hovering right around 50 degrees I realized it was time to think about calling it a day. I stopped at a diner for lunch where I could adjust my plans indoors. Meal number 2 of the day was a cheesesteak, sweet potato fires and a coke. If this is starting to feel like the worlds shittiest food blog, I apologize. I don’t think I’m going to see any fine dining in the near future. I looked at the weather and there was a 90% chance of rain across the entirety of my planned route. With that information, I found a motel in East Stroudsburg where I cut my day short. I was planning to make it Bucknell tomorrow, but I’m going to take my time and try to make it there on Tuesday. Once I made it to the hotel my only remaining task for the day was to change out the tube that I had broken earlier in the morning. I needed a small point to let the air out of the tube and decided a pen would do the trick. While it let the air out just fine, the pressure coming from the tire shot the ink out of the other end of the pen and all over my hand. I changed out the tube, but my index finger may be black for a few days. Tonight, I’ll be resting up again, planning to get an early start tomorrow for what will hopefully be a dry day.