Day 1 was a beautiful ride--I didn't realize the trail going right out of Pittsburgh in that direction was so spectacular! All of my local rides have been in other directions. Because we were leaving from the Point at 7am, the girls were able to come down and ride the first 6 miles or so, even though they were going to school that day. Mom and Dad picked them up by the Birmingham Bridge and took them to school.
Sadly the excitement of the day was put in check by the fact that Paul had been fighting off some horrible bug/allergies and about 15 miles in, after fighting to be able to breathe, realized he would have to abort the trip. We were all very upset and sad and felt terrible not the least of which was because Paul had put an enormous amount of energy into planning the whole trip and was intimately knowledgable about the whole route and its idiosyncrasies. We waited for the pickup in McKeesport and finally decided that the three of us would keep riding.
Paul went back to the house, took some medicine, and slept it off, and we continued to ride in a much more somber mood.
After traversing past steel mills, seeing what seemed like miles of stacked up tubular steel pipes, we wound along the river and up, up, up for 60 miles. We finished the day at a lovely little park in Connellsville. Dad picked us up and drove us back to Pittsburgh, as we had planned to go back and sleep at home on the first night. Sheena and I agreed that when we do this again we'd prefer to just stay where we are, even on the first night, and cut out the car shuttle. However, since we weren't fully packed for the "real" trip, we had no choice but to go back.
We had dinner at our house and then we installed the roof luggage rack on the van, packed as much as we could in it, and worked on getting our things packed and the house in order for the trip. We were so exhausted, though, we ended up leaving much of it for the morning.
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