Day 8 June 7, 2019

Henry's notes for today:

Very sad to leave Mary, who was the most gracious hostess to 4 complete strangers. We left Pittsburgh after Mary's great breakfast via an undulating route with lots of turns; those who know Pittsburgh know how hilly it is.  Tim and Linda had spent a lot of time the day before plotting our course for maximal bike friendliness.  We worked our way to Boardman, OH, a "suburb" of Youngstown.  A couple miles away from our destination, my tail light popped off as I went over some railroad tracks.  I went back to retrieve it, and sadly witnessed a UPS truck crush it to smithereens.  By chance again, there was a bike shop 2 blocks away, so I was able to replace it with a more secure iteration fairly readily.

With Les Schwinderman in Boardman OH

Tonight, our hosts were Les and Patty Schwendeman. Les did the same hand surgery fellowship as Henry, but 4 years later. We know each other despite never training together because we have regular hand fellowship reunions in Jackson, WY every 3 to 4 years.  Owen, their 11 year old son, is a Rubik's cube genius. Their daughter Ally is 16 and learning to drive. After dinner, we had a chance to gorge on ice cream treats at Handel's, a Youngstown institution.  Tim asks for an ice cream stop every day.  To be fair, none of us ever say it's a bad idea . . . .

Tim's notes for today:

Today we left the bike trails and introduced hilly Pennsylvania on public roads as we left Pittsburgh. The undulations did not involve any sustained climbs and we all found them quite beautiful and a refreshing change from straight level trails.

Lunch was picked up at a grocery in Beaver Falls and eaten at their riverside park where local bird watchers had installed a telescope trained on a nest with three hatchling eagles. It was preceded by a stop for Shue-goo at a 100 year old Beaver Falls hardware store that looked quite unchanged over the century other than stocking shue-goo. Stock went to the 12 foot ceilings with many dead end ailes to get lost in. It was complete with local historian at a table outside selling raffle tickets to win a gun.



Maps of today's ride
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3725319124

https://www.relive.cc/view/u3591866905