Day 7

From Pittsburgh to Connellsville, PA    55 miles.

The day starts out with a big hill.   First street style (~17% grade), except twice as long.  Its exhausting just to push my bike up this, dripping sweat after traveling less than two miles. 
Need to ask directions to get out of the city a couple times, but no huge detours.  One lady insists on giving me cold bottled water, so pours three mini bottles into my one big water container.

The start of the trail is mostly uneventful, things are flat and all of well maintained crushed limestone.

Sometime around 4:00-5:00 a storm is coming in.  First the clouds, then the treetops on the ridgetops are whooshing and swaying.  I can hear the initial storm front coming, trees that are closer and closer blowing and swaying.  Finally it hits me at ground level, and its hard to keep my eyes open with all the dust, leaf bits, and whatnot all being kicked up by the gusts.  It hasn't started to rain yet.  I come across some people scrambling to put away their gear (they'd been on the river) to see how far the next town is.  Five miles.  I book.  Before the town a camping site is right off the side of the path, and I stand at the side of a building whose overhang is just wide enough to keep from getting any more wet.

I start talking to a guy named Chris, who also had just arrived for shelter, but his plan was to stay there in the first place.  He offers to share his camping space with me, but my plans are to keep going. 

The rain continues, and I decide to stay there for the night.  Camping is charged per head, not site, so Chris pays the $12 for me.  In his words, he was a well paid band director, and I, while having an education, are nonetheless unemployed.  I don't protest.  He's a middle school band director around Pittsburgh and has been for 20 years.  He loves it.  He's brought 7 batteries for his smart phone, to make sure it never goes dead. (Further down the trail I encounter a sign indicating that no cellular service is available for the next 30 miles... I wonder how he copes with this).  He makes the trip from PGH to DC once a year. 

The ultimate luxury of this camping place (which I slowly realize wandering to the other side that lots of people live there also) : standing ouside of the laundry room, getting hot dry air from the vents blown onto me.  Free air dry.

Boy scouts are loud and keep me awake longer than I would like.