We woke up at 5 and got ready just like usual. For breakfast, the sponsors put together something in the cafeteria. It was basically some sugared muffins and left over cold pizza…disgusting. Easily the worst meal of the trip so far.
We got on the road and just kept pedaling. In my paceline was Rich (Iowa), Jorge (George Washington), and Brian (Colorado). The roads were pretty good, nothing too bad. However, those rolling hills from yesterday started to appear again but worst. We got a pretty good idea what the Appalachian Mountains were going to look like. Once we hit past the state line, we stop seeing the never-ending sight of farmland and instead started to see these old fashion towns. They were pretty nice, each with a little downtown and streets of small mom and pop shops.
Rack point was pretty lofty at 55 miles by 10:30, especially considering the terrain was much tougher than anything in the past month. Considering that Jorge was in my paceline, I was particularly nervous, but we pulled through. For a while, we got to the point where rack point was going to be tough, but after giving Jorge a little motivation, it worked out. Right before we entered the city of Pittsburgh, we had lunch. For lunch, we had McDonald’s, a chicken sandwich, a double cheeseburger, and half a box of French fries. It was nice to know that all the calories that we with great effort burned, were gained backed by in roughly 10 minutes. We were about 10 miles away from lodging. Due to the unsafe-for-cyclists bridges all over the Pittsburgh, we were given a police escort into lodging. It was pretty sweet to go through the streets of Pittsburgh, especially as we got to pass by Heinz field and Pitt’s campus.
Once we got to lodging, which we were lucky enough to stay at a Holiday Inn, we had to wait a couple hours for our rooms to get ready. It wasn’t much fun just sitting outside the hotel when all I wanted to do was to shower and then sleep.
We finally got our rooms and got cleaned up. Afterwards, we had a sponsored event with the parents of a Pi Kapp from Virginia Tech who did Journey of Hope the previous year. We went across from Robert Morris University to a bowling alley from cosmic bowling. Of course, bowling isn’t my specialty, so I tried to not be the worst one there. I don’t know how, but I succeeded. For the third game, our group got a little too bored, so we put bumpers up and tried to get the lowest score possible. It was a pretty good twist to bowling and finally, I was competitive at bowling.
After bowling, we went back to our lodging. For the rest of the night, I met up with one of my closest friends from Michigan, Jason Banish, and the rest of his family. Him and his brother, Shawn, picked me from lodging, and drove me to his hometown, Houston, about a half hour away. His house was nicely tucked away in the foothills. I was lucky enough to been at Jason’s house before, a couple years ago when the frat when to Pittsburg to volunteer for a weekend. I met his parents and we all just hung out in their patio. It was nice to just relax. Jason prepared some appetizers, fried okra and green tomatoes. He picked up a couple recipes during his internship in Mississippi from the past summer. Ever since I started Journey of Hope, I started to hang out with a few guys from the south, so I knew how good fried okra is, but Jason’s appetizers were scrumptious, a good sign for dinner. For dinner, his parents prepared a traditional Pittsburgh home-cooked meal, with chicken, mashed potatoes, vegetables and a Polish dish called kielbasa. I found out a little later that there is a very large Polish population in Pittsburgh, which is very influential on Pittsburgh’s cuisine. After dinner, we had some mocha cake courtesy of Shawn, and some icecream. The cake was so good down to last bite. The entire meal was perfect and just what I needed to get through the last week of the trip. It was also very nice for the Banish family to wait for me to arrive to have dinner. After dinner, Jason and I caught up a little before it was time to start heading back. The whole dinner was great, and I felt like I was at home during my stay at the Banish’s.
Before we headed back to the hotel, Banish gave me a quick tour of downtown Pittsburgh. We stopped off at Washington Street, where you could see the entire skyline of Pittsburgh reflecting above the river. Breathtaking. We then went past the pro stadiums including the new hockey arena for the Penguins. Pittsburg surprisingly reminded me of Indianapolis due to its big city skyscrapers but with it’s small town feel.
Once I got back to lodging, it was already close to curfew so I went straight to bed. All though I get to sleep in, I would still have to wake up by 8:30.
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