The final leg of the trip actually started with a weekend ride from Vicki and Terry's house to our house. We had decided to plug this gap over a weekend, since that would save us the trouble of getting a ride to their house at the beginning of the trip and riding for two days just to get as far as...Pittsburgh. So the weekend of May 7, our friend Bob graciously agreed to drive us to the Pymatuning Lake area and we commenced to ride to a campground in Beaver County where many of our friends camp.

If you remember that weekend, the weather was less than one might hope for for a long bike ride. The temperature dropped to about 50 degrees and it started to rain soon after we left Vicki and Terry's house. But it wasn't all that bad, it wasn't raining that hard...until the wind kicked up. Still, we plugged along for a couple of hours until about five miles from Sharon, PA where we got the mother of all flats (punctures to our British friends).

It turned out that our rear tire (of course), was more worn than we thought and we actually had blown out a sidewall. For those of you who've never had the pleasure, that means that patching the tube really doesn't help, since what happens is that the tube works it's way through the hole in the sidewall and blows out like an over-inflated balloon. This gave us the opportunity (yeah, that's it--an opportunity!) to try a tip we'd read about. Since money is actually made from linen and silk fibers, it's very strong and can be used to "seal" the hole in the sidewall and keep the tube in.

That worked pretty well, but remember it was a rainy day, and it turns out that wet money isn't as strong as dry money. We Google Mapped bike shops and found that there was one in Sharon, so we managed to limp the five miles or so to the bike shop. Fortunately, they had what we needed and we emerged about 45 minutes later with a new tire and some new spare tubes. Serendipitously, there was a Mexican restaurant right across the street, so that became our lunch stop as well. All in all it turned out okay, but we lost at least two and a half hours.

We finally made it to our destination, and slept a well-deserved deep sleep. The next morning was still cool, but dry. We headed downhill to breakfast and from then on pretty much stayed along the Beaver and Ohio rivers, thus having a fairly level ride into Pittsburgh, and with a helpful tailwind!

We got home about 2:30 and after cleaning up, went to Marianne's (Maggie's sister) for dinner. Despite the adversity, it felt good to accomplish something of that scale over a weekend, and has really put us in the mindset for the trip in June.

We will be leaving from our driveway on June 20 or 21, just after welcoming four men doing the "every baseball park" ride that our friend Charlie did back into 2004. We're excited about trying the bike trail from Pittsburgh to DC, although we won't be taking it all the way to the Capital. Instead, we'll head across Maryland to the Jersey Shore, where we've had many happy vacations. Right now, our biggest hurdle is to survive the extended school year. Wish us luck!