Training Log Archive: blairtrewinIn the 1 days ending Oct 15, 2014: |
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Wednesday Oct 15, 2014 #
Note
(injured) (rest day)
Some continued improvement today - was at could-run-on-it-if-I-had-to level, but since I didn't (except to get across a street at Niagara Falls) I didn't. Was a bit sore at the end after a long day on the road.
Today's route started at Niagara Falls (actually, at the next town down the road from it in the mistaken belief that Niagara Falls accommodation would be overpriced - it probably is on a summer weekend but definitely not on a Tuesday night in October), then continued on past Buffalo, on (relative) back roads through western Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, then south into West Virginia.
I prefer travelling on the back roads if I can; even though I didn't have much time to linger, you get at least a bit of the sense of the place. I didn't previously know that northwest Pennsylvania was the scene of the country's first oil boom in the 1860s and 1870s; these days the local fossil fuel activity involves fracking the district with some enthusiasm. (Fracking was to lead to a longer day than planned - workers for it had filled every available room for miles around in the place I'd originally planned to stop, and I ended up going 100 kilometres further down the road). There's also a lot of forest in the region, which has regrown after being logged more or less into oblivion in the late 19th century. On the New York side of the border there's also some Indian land, which inevitably in these parts means there's a casino. (I've long thought there's a certain irony to the fact that, two or three centuries after the whites dispossessed the Indians with beads and trinkets, the dispossession is being reciprocated with slot machines and roulette wheels, although I'm told most of the money actually ends up in Asia).
I only passed through Pittsburgh (on a slightly non-optimal route choice because my map wasn't quite up to the job). It looks more attractive than I remember it, which probably has at least something to do with the fact that my previous experience of it was the area around the bus station (rarely a flattering introduction to any US city) at 11pm on a -15C night in December 1989. The local geography reminded me a bit of some German cities (lots of buildings crowded on the floor of a steep-sided river valley) so it was perhaps fitting that I found an outer suburb called Heidelberg.
West Virginia is, by my reckoning, the 30th state I've visited properly (plus three others where I've only gone through airports, Arizona, Texas and Kentucky). For the record, the 17 I still have to tick off are VT, IN, IA, WI, MN, ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, AR, MO, OR, ID, MT, WY, and UT.
Today's route started at Niagara Falls (actually, at the next town down the road from it in the mistaken belief that Niagara Falls accommodation would be overpriced - it probably is on a summer weekend but definitely not on a Tuesday night in October), then continued on past Buffalo, on (relative) back roads through western Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, then south into West Virginia.
I prefer travelling on the back roads if I can; even though I didn't have much time to linger, you get at least a bit of the sense of the place. I didn't previously know that northwest Pennsylvania was the scene of the country's first oil boom in the 1860s and 1870s; these days the local fossil fuel activity involves fracking the district with some enthusiasm. (Fracking was to lead to a longer day than planned - workers for it had filled every available room for miles around in the place I'd originally planned to stop, and I ended up going 100 kilometres further down the road). There's also a lot of forest in the region, which has regrown after being logged more or less into oblivion in the late 19th century. On the New York side of the border there's also some Indian land, which inevitably in these parts means there's a casino. (I've long thought there's a certain irony to the fact that, two or three centuries after the whites dispossessed the Indians with beads and trinkets, the dispossession is being reciprocated with slot machines and roulette wheels, although I'm told most of the money actually ends up in Asia).
I only passed through Pittsburgh (on a slightly non-optimal route choice because my map wasn't quite up to the job). It looks more attractive than I remember it, which probably has at least something to do with the fact that my previous experience of it was the area around the bus station (rarely a flattering introduction to any US city) at 11pm on a -15C night in December 1989. The local geography reminded me a bit of some German cities (lots of buildings crowded on the floor of a steep-sided river valley) so it was perhaps fitting that I found an outer suburb called Heidelberg.
West Virginia is, by my reckoning, the 30th state I've visited properly (plus three others where I've only gone through airports, Arizona, Texas and Kentucky). For the record, the 17 I still have to tick off are VT, IN, IA, WI, MN, ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, AR, MO, OR, ID, MT, WY, and UT.