i {heart} biking

I fell in love yesterday...with biking.

Bonnie mentioned while training one day, that she wanted to go on a biking trip as cross training exercise. She loves biking at their beach rental. Me, well I'll try anything once.

Actually I knew how to bike....as a kid. Haven't really done it since I was 12 or so. Occasionally at the shore. Certainly not in the last 10, 15 maybe even 20 years.

My friend Angel, and her daughter "Bug" came with us. We met at Angels house. They actually owns bikes and have a rack for the car.

It took about an hour to get to Jim Thorpe, aka Mauch Chunk. Town was dead when we arrived at 9:15 am. Bonnie and I went to the rental place and picked up our bikes, and a map. Then we returned to the car for the rest of the gang and we were off.

At first I rode like a drunk. All over the parking lot, side-to-side. I went to switch gears and fell off. My only fall.

We did the canal path, and then entered Lehigh Gorge State Park. It was beautiful. I have pixs posted in my webshots album. (If the link doesn't take you to page 6, go there. The train is the first pix.) We went three or four miles and then turned around and came back. Our first stop was at the Glen Ono falls. Angel stayed with the bikes, and we headed down the path with the child.

We never found the falls, the child was happy just throwing rocks in the river, and watching people jump off the pilings. She also was intrigued by the hobbit hole on the other side of the river. As we hiked around we noticed it was more of a cave, not a hole. Turns out it was an old railroad tunnel. The pilings were the old railroad bridge.

Bug decided it was a bear cave. Of course, we saw a large sign that said watch out for black bears. The power of suggestion and a good imagination comes up with bear cave.

So we hiked up to Angel and told her all about the bear cave, and where we thought it was. When we arrived at the location Angel again stayed with the bikes, and Bonnie and Bug went one way, I the other. I found nothing and returned to Angel. The others weren't back yet. Soon a little person came running out of the woods that they found it, and did we want to go. Of course we did. So Bonnie stayed with the bikes and off we went with our very excellent 6-year-old trail guide. That's Angel and bug in silhouette on the left.

It was beautiful, and exciting and cool and dark. I had a flashlight in my backpack, but I left it with my bike. Silly girl.

Finally we rode back to the car, returned the bikes and had a lovely picnic in the town park. They even had a band and singer entertaining us. Jim Thorpe was packed with people at this point, and we headed out of town.

I'm ready to do it again.