Sandra Rides


The Great Allegheny Passage
October 6th to October 10th 2007

About the Ride

Planning

Unlike our ride on La petite train du Nord in Canada, there were no packages available as a result we needed to make individual reservations.

Transport

I had planned to rent a vehicle. leave my transport at Frostburg and then transport out bikes back from West Newton. That did not work out, the rentals were prohibitively expensive ($250) or simply not available. Sadly no co-operation from Hertz, Avis, National, Budget, etc. at a reasonable price.  As a result I cycled back and then drove to the next stop, there was one exception where George drove us from Connellsville to Rockwood. At our final destination in West Newton we found that the local bike shop would have taken us and our bikes to Cumberland for between $125 and $150.

Accomodation

We stayed at the following B&B's
Follow the links for comments

Thank you all!

See Images from this four day ride over a 120 Miles on the GAP



The Cycles

Sandra had a full left hip replacement in March 2007 because of an accident and a full right hip replacement a few years ago because of arthritis caused by an accident.

Sandra once again rode he tadpole trike, the Catrike Road.This cat is stable and very capable, geared well for hills and can easily achieve 20mph on the flats. The only problem was with the idler roller, there is an L shaped chain retainer which hit a curb and caused the chain to rub on the bracket. This was straightened but continued to cause minor problems with the idler failing to rotate.

I used my old Trek 1000 road with a Burley Nomad trailer overnight and changes of clothes, toileteries, water, tools and energy bars. As mentioned under transport, the original plan was to cycle from B&B to B&B and then rent a vehicle for the return. The Nomad has more than adequate carrying capacity and was easy to tow.






Thanks to:

  • New England Baptist and Dr's Bierbaum and West for Sandra's highly successful hip replacements
  • Catrike for their successful Tadpole Trike models