Blue View - Eastern End of the GART: Done

Intro

We’ve now finished bicycling the eastern end of the Great American Rail Trail (GART). It was an awesome bike trek, and now that it’s done, I thought I’d put together some observations and statistics.

The Route

The map below shows our route. On the map, the red trail segments are gaps in the trail network, and are actually roads that connect between completed trail segments. We biked some of these gap routes, but not all. The white blocks are future connections, usually with no suggested routing. We used maps.me to find bike routes through some of them, but if the improvised routing took us on highways, through busy urban areas, or roads we didn’t feel safe biking on, we skipped them. Our goal is to ride the entire GART as it currently exists, excluding sections that aren’t yet completed, and with that rationale in mind, we’ve now completed the eastern section.

The GART is actually made up of dozens of local converted rail-trails and towpaths. The map below shows most of these local trails. The Ohio to Erie Trail, which is shown as a 163 mile trail segment, is actually made up of about ten smaller trails, which I didn’t break out.

Some Stats

We “yo-yo’d” most of the route, which means we’d park Blanche near the trail, ride along it for 15-20 miles, then ride back to Blanche, for a total of 30-40 actual miles. The next day, we’d park Blanche where we left off and repeat the process. Thus, we ended up riding most of the trails twice. (As our biking guru and nephew, Erik, pointed out, that way we got to see both sides of the signs along the way). An exception to this was a segment of the Great Allegheny Passage Trail (GAP), much of which parallels the Amtrak train route. We biked from Connellsville to Cumberland, stopping at hotels each night, then rode the Amtrak back, so we only did a one-way on this section.

Trail miles ridden: 748

Actual miles ridden: 1520

Number of states (including Washington, DC): 6

Trails ridden: 32

Average speed: 12.3 mph

Days of riding: 51

Average miles per day: 29.8 miles

Most miles in a day: 40.2 miles

Some observations

As with most exercise-related activities, we got better with time. When we started, 30 miles was a pretty good day - much more, and our butts were quite sore. It wasn’t the first day, but the second, third or fourth consecutive days of riding chafed our butts. By the end, however, forty miles was a reasonable day; I think I actually have calluses down there. Guess we are getting to be real hard asses…

We took a lot of falls during the first few weeks on the trail, but managed to stay upright more later in the trek. Part of this was due to improving our skill levels, like knowing to cross railroad tracks and ruts at a right angle, or getting better at maneuvering through narrow gates without catching a pedal or handlebar. Our balance improved as well, as did our confidence levels.

With all the practice we had, when we did fall, we did it much more gracefully. ‘Don’t break the fall with your arm, tuck those elbows in, ‘keep your head down and roll with it’ became our mantra.

Now that we’re in shape, it would be great to stay that way. Our plan, once we get back to Las Vegas is to keep those calluses on our butts by taking a long, 20-30 mile bike ride two or three times a week. We’ll see how that works out.

See you next week...