Big Macs, A New Hip & Lots of Cameras

We packed up the bikes after the Heart of Ohio ride and headed back to New England. I checked Roadside America before leaving to see if there was anything along our route that might be of interest without a major diversion. The Big Mac Museum in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania caught my eye. It touts the world’s biggest Big Mac… 14’ tall! Definitely a sight to see.

According to the Roadside America team, “The world's favorite monster burger was born about 40 miles south of here, in Uniontown, when franchisee Michael Delligatti introduced it as a menu item in August 1967. Delligatti's family now owns 18 McDonald's, and they decided to open their museum on the Big Mac's 40th anniversary in North Huntingdon, rather than at the birthplace, because this store gets more traffic. There's no need to make this any more of a pilgrimage than necessary.”

It’s an unimpressive display. The super duper Big Mac is located in the kid’s play area which was closed, so our photos were through glass and around playground equipment. There was some mildly interesting memorabilia placed here and there midst the hamburger chomping clientele. We both spouted the Big Mac jingle… ‘two all beef patties, special sauce…” You know the rest. We did use the restroom which was clean and very handy. Then we were back on the highway heading east.

The reason for the return to Pawtucket was Lin’s new hip. The scheduled hip replacement in early August had been delayed due to a positive COVID test. No one else in the family tested positive and Lin was totally asymptomatic, but rules is rules and the procedure had to be postponed for three weeks. We went off and cycled in Ohio and now we were returning to help out pre and post-op hip surgery.

Her surgery appointment was scheduled for an 0530 arrival at the hospital in the Boston area. Even on busy I-95, there was little traffic at that time of day. We left her in the capable hands of the incoming staff and surgical team. She was back in her hospital room a bit after Noon and they had her up and walking down the hall within hours. Wow!

We returned the next afternoon to pick her up. She was sore and bruised, but she’s a trooper. She was up and walking around the block on crutches within days. While Lin and I did sister recuperation stuff, played cards and yakked for hours, David found projects to keep him busy… adding fenders to the bikes, installing the cell signal booster and a hundred other little house and Blanche chores.

Photo credit: Mikael Häggström, M.D. (Wikipedia)


Then the crutches were gone and she was managing without them. It wasn’t easy for her and there was still considerable pain and sleepless nights, but she powered through it all. Two weeks to the day after we arrived, it was time for us to leave. We said goodbye, confident that she was well on the road to recovery and didn’t need big sister and brother around any more.

Where to now? We wanted to visit Brennan and Hannah in Richmond, so made our way south. Due to previous weekend commitments, we needed to visit during the week… difficult for working folks. We meandered through New York and Pennsylvania, stopping here and there as it suited our fancy.

One such stop was at the NPS Visitor Center at Dingman Falls in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. It was a drizzly day. The Visitor Center building was closed, and a lone ranger sat under a tent and welcomed us. She suggested the short, easy .6 mile forested path to see two sets of waterfalls.

A good portion of the path was on a lovely boardwalk bordered by tall hemlock trees. Bright red partridge berries, their glossy green leaves dotted with raindrops, provided a lush ground cover.

Silverthread Falls, an 80’ cascade, appeared first.

A bit further down the trail we spied Dingman Falls. This 130’ waterfall is Pennsylvania’s 2nd highest cascade and was quite impressive.

Another day we stopped in Allentown for a walk and admired the. Albertus Meyers Bridge. A native son of Allentown, Meyers was a music conductor and cornet player and bandmaster of the Allentown Band. Originally named the Eighth Street Bridge, the bridge was renamed in 1974 to honor Meyers, Spanning the Little Lehigh Creek, the bridge is reinforced a concrete open-spandrel arch bridge and when it was opened in 1913, it was the longest and highest concrete bridge in the world. We found it to be pretty impressive as we walked under it.

We finally made it to Richmond. As luck would have it, Hannah had a scheduled work conference out of town, so we missed seeing her. Brennan, however, had some available moments and we spent some quality, albeit limited time with him to catch up.

CameraMatics, an Ireland-based company, is Brennan’s employer and they’re always looking for vehicles that put on lots of miles to beta-test their camera systems and software updates. Since we definitely fall into the ‘lots of miles’ category, Brennan and David spent a day installing an elaborate 4-camera system into and onto Blanche. Rear camera, front camera, side cameras, monitor and a DVR console. David will explain more, but the system is far superior to the single small, barely intelligible rear view camera screen that came standard in Blanche.

All too soon, it seemed, our busy kids needed to deal with their hectic schedules and we were off once again. Join us next time as we make our way slowly back to Ohio’s cycling trails with some interesting stops along the way.