The day started better than we expected. It was cloudy and cool, which was fine by me. It was the first morning on the whole trip that I didn't start out wearing sun glasses, yet the rain held off.

We couldn't really decide what route we wanted to take across Pennsylvania, I think because we know there isn't an easy way across. I originally planned to go through the middle, pretty much along Rt. 80. I found a Pennsylvania truckers map which showed lots of steep grades on that route so we decided to stick to Rt. 6 and go across the top of the state.

Rt. 6 does a north-then-south bend and there is a combination of state roads going straight so we thought it would be best to go east than north and south. Shorter is better. We started on Rt. 27 and were to connect to Rt. 127 and then Rt. 227 and then Rt. 62 which came back to our familiar Rt. 6. We missed our first attempt at Rt. 127, it wasn't marked, we are telling ourselves. We kept going on Rt. 27 and were to cross Rt. 127 again. Nat was out front scouting the road, Dan had gotten a phone call and I was climbing a hill when I saw Nat driving back toward us. We'd missed Rt. 127 again and it looked to be back at the bottom of the hill where Dan was.

We made the turn and immediately hit a big, steep hill. It was a lung buster. We hadn't seen anything like that since Colorado. The rest of the road was in good shape and there was little traffic, mainly because it wasn't Rt. 127. We stayed with it and luckily it came out where we needed to be.

The roads continued to be in good shape, just a lot of up and down. We went through many small towns and they were amazingly depressed. I saw many houses that looked abandoned and yet they had people inside. One house looked like it was sliding off the hill. Literally part of the house was collapsed, the aluminum siding on the side of the house was buckled and the roof line was bowed. Outside the front door, amongst a lot of junk, was a little boy sitting on a tricycle.

We went through one town where every commercial building was vacant. There were only about a dozen buildings, but everything was empty. One had a Pepsi machine that wasn't working and a 50-cent sticker on it. In the next town, all buildings were empty except a bar.

As we hit the 97 mile mark we had a big surprise: an extremely big hill. No, it was a mountain. That is not what you want to see after 97 miles. Especially when the hill is over a mile long and another lung buster. So Dan and I took our time, climbed the stinking mountain and flew down the other side.

Just a mile to go and, yup, one more big hill to climb. It felt like some kind of cheap trick. I'm tired, I've ridden 99 miles and I don't want to climb another big hill today. So I gather my energy and stand up to get some extra power. As I am leaning over the front tire, it feels soft. Soft isn't good. I want my front tire hard and firm, just like my... ah, back tire. Anyway, that sucker is slowly going flat. I keep my eye on it as I make it up the hill. It is getting softer but still has enough air to ride.

Now I have to decide whether it will last the half-mile down the hill until I can get to the van. I go down the hill really slow, which I hate to do. The tire held up and so did I.

Dan heads for more Pennsylvania mountains..

Mt. Jewell features a big, beautiful mural.

As I rode past, I noticed all the kids belonging to the bikes were in a pool..

The middle of northern Pennsylvania is the first place I think of when needing Swedish items.