Category Archives: Pennsylvania

Oct 15 1 comments
Pennsylvania, Uncategorized, Virginia

From PA to MD to VA

We’re covered a lot of ground in the last few days. Last time we blogged we were in Manheim, PA and now we’re in Virginia, just outside of Washington DC! We’ll fill you in:
After leaving Manheim, we rode to York Furnace, PA in the Susquahanna River Valley and it was a, well, hilly ride. In fact, on that ride we decided if everyone had to ride bikes, we think it would prompt some changes in road names. For example, a certain two-mile curving uphill road without a shoulder might not be called “Pleasant Hill Road”, and a road that starts out flat before spiking straight upwards might not be called “Long Flat Road”. Needless to say we were fairly exhausted by the time to made it to York Furnace, and we slept well, enjoying the cool fall night that followed the long warm day. 

In a prior blog I mentioned that we ride past pretty farms and pretty woods. Well, after Manheim it turned into pretty farms and churches. We literally rode through two towns where all we saw were farms and churches. We did see this adorable little guy along the road though…
Awww… he was super cute and very friendly, but we had to press on to Maryland!

We crossed the Mason-Dixon Line with a fair degree of rejoicing, and found our way to a small town called Jarrettsville, MD where we stayed in the most beautiful farm field up on a hill. Here’s a shot of our tent in the field.

The land belongs to a wonderful couple, Betty and Bill, who have been farming it since 1968! We had a great night and were actually invited in for a delicious dinner and stayed up ’till 11 talking. We got up the next morning and Betty even cooked us breakfast before we took off for Baltimore!
Baltimore! Tricky to ride a bike into (there was lots of traffic), but we stayed downtown and had a nice time exploring the city.
The next morning we made the executive decision not to ride out of Baltimore and into DC. It was pretty scary riding in and we just didn’t feel good about the ride out of Baltimore and into DC… so we took the public transportation to DC! Here’s Alan on the DC Metro:
We got to DC and are staying with our friends Dan and Angie in a suburb in Virginia. Yesterday we went to the Holocaust Museum and the National Zoo, and today we’re staying at the house, working on updating our blog, our Photoshelter account and YouTube account… backing up files on our LaCie Rugged hard drives and to our LaCie ED Mini back in Portland! Check out our Photoshelter and YouTube accounts for the new stuff! 
Oct 11 1 comments
Pennsylvania, Uncategorized

Manheim, PA

We spent Wednesday night in Manheim, PA because as we were riding through, we saw that there was to be a big parade and we thought we’d get some good shooting in. The parade turned out to be a part of the Manheim Farm Show which was pretty cool, AND it was at 7pm on a Wednesday. Neither of us had ever seen a night parade, but we thought we’d share a couple of the shots we took with you.
Alan got this one of one of the food booths at the Farm Show:

And this one he shot during the parade:
I was thrilled to have access to the bands warming up on the football field:
And to get this shot of a Mennonite woman and her baby:
We’ve got lots more shots of the parade that we’ll be putting up on Photoshelter early next week.

In other news, Southeastern Pennsylvania is super hilly. SUPER hilly. Good thing we had this to get us through:
And yes, in Lancaster county we saw Amish people. They were super nice and we were pretty in awe of their horses and mules. They were working hard on those hilly farms! But we got some delicious produce from the farm stands in Lancaster County and rode on… 

Oct 09 0 comments
Pennsylvania, Uncategorized

Plowville, PA

And on we go through Pennsylvania. Here’s some idea of the types of things we’re seeing:
Alan took this shot in the stream we stopped at in St. Peter, PA. The stream has black granite boulders and rocks along the riverbed…

And I took this one in a rolling field:
That’s pretty much what we’ve been seeing. Pretty wooded area. Pretty rolling farm. Pretty wooded area. Pretty rolling farm…You get the idea. We also hit quite a lot of hills that we thought were a little more than “rolling”. But towards the end of the day we stopped at a great farmer’s market in Plowville called Weaver’s Market, and met this gentleman:
That’s Steve. He is pretty much the friendliest man we’ve ever met. He was buying apples at the farmstand and offered to let us stay with him. He proceeded to help load the bikes into his Subaru, and brought us to his house nearby. He put us up in one of his daughter’s rooms, bought us pizza and let us watch the debate on his tv! When we got up in the morning, he cooked us an amazing breakfast of pancakes and bacon and coffee, before loading our bikes back into the Subaru and bringing us back to where we had left our route so we didn’t have to ride a steep and winding road during rush hour… yeah, Steve is a pretty great guy- oh, and did we mention that he has run 3 marathons? Holy moley. We know people think biking around the country is hard and takes discipline, but a marathon? Whew! Neither of us have ever, nor are likely to ever consider doing something that strenuous! Anyway, a huge thanks to Steve and all the best wishes for his next marathon! 

Oct 08 0 comments
Pennsylvania, Uncategorized

Phoenixville, PA

We left Philly and got to ride the lovely Schuylkill River Trail out of the city, then went through Valley Forge National Historic Park where during the Revolutionary War the American Continental Army camped over the winter of 1777-1778. You can check it out at the Valley Forge National Historic Park website, but we took the time to wander around a bit and go into some of the buildings, including General Washington’s Headquarters- we decided it looked pretty cushy by today’s standards… a gorgeous stone building with three bedrooms and beautiful wood floors on an incredible piece of land. There were also hundred of deer in the park! Alan got his first flat there and I love this shot of him fixing it. You can just make out the two deer in the background:

We made it to Phoenixville, and on a quest to get a cup of tea around 9pm, we ran into some folks on the street who were signing up voters for the upcoming presidential election. We forgot the tea completely and decided to do some interviews and take some photos there:
They then directed us up to the Phoenixville democratic headquarters, where we met the folks behind the scenes working frantically to make sure all the registration forms were in before midnight (the deadline). 

We got a great interview and though it has very little to do with the Project Tandem mission of telling stories about the environment, we’ll post it soon so you can listen because we thought it was pretty inspiring that these volunteers were out on such a chilly Monday evening in a small town trying to make sure everyone was registered to vote! 
Phoenixville turned out to be a cool little town and we were pretty inspired by the things happening there. This morning (Tuesday), we got to interview a small business owner in the town about the choices that she is making in her store to combat global warming! 
Oct 07 0 comments
Pennsylvania, Uncategorized

Philadelphia

We had a fantastic weekend in Philadelphia where we stayed with my family friend Tavis and her kids for a couple days. We got to go into downtown Philly, see the sights, eat some amazing food and meet incredible people. Tavis made sure we were comfortable, (very) well fed, and had the opportunity to meet people in the Philadelphia community who are environmentally active. We just thought we’d share a couple of our favorite moments in photos with everyone:
We had a blast playing with Joey:

And Davie was adorable and insisted on giving Alan a push on the swing in the house…
Joey, Davie, Tavis, Alan and I got dressed up and danced in the backyard last night… we were all laughing and having a ball and Alan grabbed this great shot:
Anyway, we just wanted to say thanks to Tavis (and the kids)! We had such a great weekend and really appreciated you welcoming us into your home! Also a huge thanks to Tavis and her landscape architecture firm, Viridian Landscape Studio in Philadelphia for making a donation to Project Tandem of an internet air card for our laptop so we can keep our blog updated! It’s actually how we are posting tonight from Phoenixville, PA! Check out their website for some really inspirational landscape design work… super cool stuff. Thanks so much!!

Also wanted to throw out a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dad and grandma! You guys are the best, thanks for your undying support in this project… when things got a little crazy planning Project Tandem or even out here on the road it’s always comforting to know that you’ve got my back. Love you both so much, wish I could be with you today!
Oct 06 1 comments
Pennsylvania, Uncategorized

Suburbia

We spent the whole day Friday riding from Jim’s place outside New Hope to Philadelphia. It shouldn’t have been a long day, but despite really nice “Share the Road” signs all over the place, the drivers weren’t giving us an inch on the side of the road and it was pretty scary in a couple places! The landscape wasn’t the most scenic we’ve seen so far… a lot fewer farms and a lot more of this:

But we were excited to take the bike path from Norristown into Philly, where my family friend Tavis lives, but about 8 miles outside Norristown we decided to stop and give my back tire a little more air. We got our nice little pump out and started filling the tire when it just sank- completely deflated. Turned out the pressure needed to pump the tire full was a bit much for the valve and we collapsed giggling, kind of excited to have our first official flat. Okay, not excited, but accepting and prepared. Or so we thought. Turned out… not so much. The spare tubes we had for our tires were actually the wrong size! Whoops! Should have checked that before we left. Anyway, we tried to patch the hole for a solid hour to no avail before knocking on doors to see if anyone had a truck. No one did. So… we started flagging down pick-up trucks as they went by us on the road, and fortunately, John stopped. 
He let us throw our bikes in the back and drove us to the nearest bike shop. He’s a cyclist himself and a native of the area. We are eternally grateful that he took pity on us, and allowed us to make it to Tavis’ house in Philly by 7:30 that night. Whew! Of course, Tavis plied us with delicious food and wine and good company, and we passed out at our goal for the week of Philadelphia, exhausted and thrilled to be there.