Day 40, Friday, August 8.
Lawton, PA to Liberty, NY
Daily Mileage: 89.9 miles
Total Mileage: 3,599.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:15 hours
Average Speed: 12.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 45.9 mph
We woke up to another cold morning; however, it warmed up faster today. We ate breakfast at Don-A-Bee's (the correct name of the diner). The local men occupied the bar spaces while David and I grabbed a table. About halfway through our meal one guy started the questioning and we ended up having a nice conversation.
We had a couple really nice surprises this morning. The first was that the lady who owns the restaurant, and who we thought hated us, gave us our breakfast for free! We finally did it, we got a free meal! We heard about this happening to bikers, but until now didn't believe it. Then, while we were across the street changing my flat tire, one of the customers from the diner drove over and told us they heard what we were doing and they though it was great. Afterwards, the guy gave us a $5.00 bill and told us to use it for lunch. Man, it was incredible!
We made our first stop twelve miles down the road. David had something to drink while I looked at the map. I always look at the map whenever we stop hoping the towns have moved closer together. Today we just went up and down hills. All day it was down one big hill at 40 M.P.H. and then up a huge hill at speeds that registered as 0-2 M.P.H. on our computers. We did that for six of the seven hours we rode today. Talk about tiring.
The big news today was that we finally left Pennsylvania and entered New York State. It’s fascinating how you can cross a state line and notice the differences. Along the road toward Liberty we saw a number of Hasidic Jewish communities. For so much of the trip we have just seen people that looked like David and I, except (usually) without the shaved heads. Now, we were beginning to run into a great variety of ethnicities and after so many weeks on the bike it was all new to us.
We pulled into Liberty around 7PM and needed to camp, and we ended up working really hard on this one. First, we stopped at the Police/Fire station, nothing. Next, we moved to the churches, nothing. This was impossible. Hills all over the place made us not want to bike up and down them to find something on the other side for fear that there wouldn't be anything and we would just waste what little energy we had left. It was getting dark and we needed to sleep. So, we bit the bullet and got a disgusting hotel room. This was a trick too as the prices were so expensive here to what we were accustomed, and we didn't want to pay double for the two of us. David decided to be the point man for this operation. He went into the motel and bartered with the lady to come down to $40 for the room. She made him promise that it was just for him, which he did. David took his stuff up to the room and walked across the street to meet me at the gas station where I had been waiting. We walked down the street for dinner, stopping at a Pizzeria owned and operated by actual Italians—great pasta, homemade bread, and the nicest people. When we went back to the motel I had to bike quickly past the front desk so they wouldn't see the two of us.
Our motel room looked like it missed being remodeled and used to be rented at an hourly rate. It would have been cleaner to sleep outside on the sidewalk. The shower was disgusting, and we didn't even turn down the bed sheets—we just put our sleep sacks right on top of the bed. It did have a color television with New York stations though, and we watched the news about Woolworths closing and fell asleep.
Daily Mileage: 89.9 miles
Total Mileage: 3,599.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:15 hours
Average Speed: 12.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 45.9 mph
We woke up to another cold morning; however, it warmed up faster today. We ate breakfast at Don-A-Bee's (the correct name of the diner). The local men occupied the bar spaces while David and I grabbed a table. About halfway through our meal one guy started the questioning and we ended up having a nice conversation.
We had a couple really nice surprises this morning. The first was that the lady who owns the restaurant, and who we thought hated us, gave us our breakfast for free! We finally did it, we got a free meal! We heard about this happening to bikers, but until now didn't believe it. Then, while we were across the street changing my flat tire, one of the customers from the diner drove over and told us they heard what we were doing and they though it was great. Afterwards, the guy gave us a $5.00 bill and told us to use it for lunch. Man, it was incredible!
We made our first stop twelve miles down the road. David had something to drink while I looked at the map. I always look at the map whenever we stop hoping the towns have moved closer together. Today we just went up and down hills. All day it was down one big hill at 40 M.P.H. and then up a huge hill at speeds that registered as 0-2 M.P.H. on our computers. We did that for six of the seven hours we rode today. Talk about tiring.
The big news today was that we finally left Pennsylvania and entered New York State. It’s fascinating how you can cross a state line and notice the differences. Along the road toward Liberty we saw a number of Hasidic Jewish communities. For so much of the trip we have just seen people that looked like David and I, except (usually) without the shaved heads. Now, we were beginning to run into a great variety of ethnicities and after so many weeks on the bike it was all new to us.
We pulled into Liberty around 7PM and needed to camp, and we ended up working really hard on this one. First, we stopped at the Police/Fire station, nothing. Next, we moved to the churches, nothing. This was impossible. Hills all over the place made us not want to bike up and down them to find something on the other side for fear that there wouldn't be anything and we would just waste what little energy we had left. It was getting dark and we needed to sleep. So, we bit the bullet and got a disgusting hotel room. This was a trick too as the prices were so expensive here to what we were accustomed, and we didn't want to pay double for the two of us. David decided to be the point man for this operation. He went into the motel and bartered with the lady to come down to $40 for the room. She made him promise that it was just for him, which he did. David took his stuff up to the room and walked across the street to meet me at the gas station where I had been waiting. We walked down the street for dinner, stopping at a Pizzeria owned and operated by actual Italians—great pasta, homemade bread, and the nicest people. When we went back to the motel I had to bike quickly past the front desk so they wouldn't see the two of us.
Our motel room looked like it missed being remodeled and used to be rented at an hourly rate. It would have been cleaner to sleep outside on the sidewalk. The shower was disgusting, and we didn't even turn down the bed sheets—we just put our sleep sacks right on top of the bed. It did have a color television with New York stations though, and we watched the news about Woolworths closing and fell asleep.
(Photo: David with the “Welcome to New York” sign.)
