Through New York and on to Pennsylvania

First off, I put up a photo album on Facebook, and you can check it out by clicking on the title of this post.

Here's what's gone on the last few days.

We left Poughkeepsie, and after getting turned around, riding across a busy bridge and then taking the highway against traffic in the wrong direction we headed to Roscoe. This was the hardest day we've done so far. 85 miles over 3 mountain passes including Hunter Mountain, which had a grade (steepness) that I won't even begin to guess at. All i know is it was the steepest road I've ever seen, much less ridden. I got to Roscoe a few minutes before the first group , and meet Rick, our contact for the night. They really hooked us up. The church we were staying at had pot luck pasta (i honestly ate like 4 plates), and then we stayed at the Roscoe Country Club. We had beds!!!! It was so awesome. Then, the next morning Rick's restaurant had pancakes for us. Roscoe is going to be hard to beat.

Thursday we left Roscoe and headed to Binghamton, NY. Shira, Ashley, Peter, and I left first, and missed our turn onto highway 17. We ended up adding 30 miles and a mountain pass to the day. At lunch we'd already hit 64 miles (the whole day was only supposed to be 69). We reached the church at 94 miles, so Peter and I decided to keep riding and make it a 100 mile day. A hard, but good day.

Friday we had our first build day on the road. We moved 80 tons of top soil and spread it across the yard. We worked hard, got done early, and spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry and going to the bike shop. I got a new computer (so I can keep up with mileage) and some sweet new tires (my tires got shredded on a gravel road on the way to Binghamton).

Saturday we left Binghamton and headed to Towanda, PA. It turns out we were really headed to a small town called Standing Stone about 7 miles away. And then it started raining. Then it poured. And then the van got stuck in the mud trying to turn around when we were lost. But the Road King got us out (see the pictures), and everything ended up okay.

This morning we left Standing Stone, went through Towanda again (nothing like back tracking), and headed to Wellsboro. It was 58 miles of what seemed mostly uphill, but all in all it was a pretty good day. It was also the first time in 5 days I didn't get lost. Hopefully my luck is changing for the better. We made it into Wellsboro early, we showered, and then just hung out for a while. I got all the dirt and muck of my bike and now its ready to ride after a few dirty days. The host church wasn't providing dinner tonight, so we decided to go out instead of cooking. We went to a little family restaurant where I had spaghetti and meatballs. It was delicious. Now I'm sitting in the town park on the public wifi, enjoying a very pretty evening.

Tomorrow we leave for Coudersport, PA.