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A Test of Bearing
Buckhorn Mountain, Pennsylvania

Day 7 - Sunday - June 9, 2002

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Having enough with the Lincoln Highway and its stoical straightway of going over mountains instead of flowing around them, I decide to head north along Route 26 and then north again along Route 36. I hope that this route will be flatter and hug the creeks and rivers of the valley rather than just be some asphalt through over a mountain for motorists to plow through.

Here the roads are windy yet relatively flat. The Colonel Drake highway leads me through more farming villages, Lutheran churches, gurgling creeks and the occasional country store. I spend most of the day with a smile on my face. Though by now the sun has burned past all my attempts with SP 30 sunscreen, I feel cool from shade of the forest road.

During midday I take a siesta at a pine grove at the junction of route 26 and 36. There I read parables from the Gospel of Matthew, and poems by Seamus Heaney, and Wordsworth. I awake refreshed and ready for more road.

Along the way a pickup truck tosses a can of beer at me. Its froth douses my left side. Luckily the can misses me, but for a while I smell like cheep beer. Surely this is a sign plainer than any yellow road sign: "Caution: We don't like no bikers out here. So git!"

And that's what I did, I peddled onward until I hit Buckhorn Mountain. It is around 7 PM. This is around the time in my daily routine when I start looking for a place to camp. After lung-burning my way up the hill I see a tavern with an ATV, a couple of dirt bikes, and some pickup trucks parked outside. I was feeling hungry and tired but I definitely wasn't about to walk inside wearing spandex and gloves. Instead, I resolved to knock on somebody's door and ask him or her for water and some yard to camp on.

Kathy Clapper not only gave me permission but also invited me into their house to sit down (despite my sweat-drenched jersey and my malodorous presence) for some iced water, pizza, and watermelon. She introduced me to her husband George. They told me about their six children and the black bears that rummage through the "neighborhood's" trash.

That night I fall asleep with the stars upon me, which I could see through the bugscreen of my tent and mountain dew dropping on my forehead.

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