Day 45: Pay attention!

That's Alea new mantra to me: "Pay attention!"  

Nice try, Sweety, but it didn't work.  I blew by an early turn, only to make a correction a short distance later so that I could get back on track (it's pretty hard to get lost when you are following a river as large as the Susquehanna).  Of course, by doing that I managed to ride around where Alea was parked waiting for me.  I continued on along the route, wondering to myself "Why isn't Alea wasn't waiting for me along here?"  After all, there were plenty of places to pull over and wait.  A quick look at the map and it looked as though Wrightsville was close enough, so perhaps she was waiting there?  

But when I got into town, she was nowhere to be found.  It was time to whip out the cell phone.  I pressed the On button - nothing.  I tried again a couple of more times.  Same result.  Crap!  I forgot to turn the phone on!  So as I waited for the phone to boot up, I coasted to a stop under the bridge that would take me over the river.  

Ron muscles his load down the road...

Once it was fired up, there was a text waiting for me.  It said "Ronald is here at Fishing Creek.  Where are you?" (I had left Ron several miles back, when we hit some low rollers that let me set a much faster pace than he could manage.)  Then, before I could peck out a reply, in comes another text - "Please text me."  Fortunately, the phone powered up at nearly the same time as when Alea was sending her texts, so nobody spun into a panic.  But once she caught up to me, she was much better about "bread crumbing" to make sure I didn't miss a turn.

But even that didn't help.  Our map said that I would need to turn left on an unsigned road.  So I'm riding along and think to myself "Great - there it is."  Only it was the wrong unsigned road, forcing me to slog up a steep hill in order to rejoin the correct unsigned road.  That's life on the road for you...

I rode 36 miles today, in cold, damp weather.  It started with a long, steep climb out of the campground.  To say it was a grind is an understatement - at one point I was managing just 4.4 miles per hour.  From there it was roller coaster hills for a while, before finally dropping down along the river for a much needed breather.  The rest of the day was mostly medium rollers, with an occasional steep bit tossed in.  There was no sign of other cyclists on the road today, other than Ron and me.  Most everyone else seems to have had the sense to take the day off!

It managed to cool off a bit more as the day wore on, and the light showers became more constant.  It was 54 degrees and raining lightly when the ride ended at Manheim, where we packed up the bike and drove up near the freeway to Pinch Pond Campground ($45 for power, water and cable), where we are camping for the night.

We are planning a major resupply trip to Walmart tomorrow, so we've opted tonight for having a pizza delivered from a local pizza place, CC's - a veal parm pizza (our first such pizza).  It may have only been a 36 mile ride, but it was a hard, cold, wet 36 miles - the perfect excuse to let someone else do the cooking!