My awesome day.

Two things happened in the past couple of weeks: firstly, I won!  Secondly, I had a crazy work week, which means lots of sitting at a desk acting responsible and educated and shit and not out riding one of my gorgeous and wonderful bicycles.  Okay, so what did I win?  I won a jersey.  Apparently.   I was actually riding my bike home from the bar when the winning event occurred, but thanks to Stacie and the social networking giant that is Facebook, I was well informed.  Every time I win something from a random drawing, I channel my inner-dad-from-the-christmas-story.   It doesn't matter if it's a size XL cycling jersey that I probably would not even have received if it wasn't for Stacie who gave it to Katie who gave it to me at the bar.

It was 84 degrees,  I was past mile
50 here, and a little tired.  But seriously,
why didn't I zip it for the picture?

And the jersey was beautiful.  White and mesh; superior fabric for summer riding.  It was just an unfortunate size.  Now I ride more times in a week than jerseys I own, and at some point this winter I got hooked on having back pockets, so having an extra jersey lying around would be pretty optimal.  I used the internet to learn where this place "Top Gear" was located, and it said this place was out in the suburbs in a direction I'd never even looked at on the map about 20 miles away.  20 miles out and back, plus a few more for good luck sounded like a perfect long ride!!
When would this ride occur?  Simple solution: take an afternoon off work because I'd been working so much that it ate into my weekend.  And that was the wonderful plan.

It was a beautiful hot, humid spring day and I took the cyclo-cross bike up the 31'st street bridge to the trail that goes to Millvale.  I usually hate to ride on limestone, but not on this beauty!  We actually kept going along the path next to the train tracks past Millvale, rocking out to the beautiful day, and because you can do that kind of stuff on a cross bike.

I'm not really sure of the best way to ride to Wexford.  I was actually hoping that this trip would help me learn the best way to ride to North Park, but I didn't figure it out.  I sidetracked along the way to ride up a few long hills as practice for the Tour of Tucker, and rode my butt off with traffic on Babcock.  At Willie's Ski Shop (which is where I got my XC skiis), I turned onto route 19.  Single and double numbered roads scare me, but I wasn't there long before I went onto this road called "Highland".  It was amazing!  Traffic was minimal, there was clear white line, and most phenomenal: you were either going up or down on this road.  No flats.  Talk about fun!  You could just ride up and down that road and be a happy cyclist. Not too long after this, I arrived at Top Gear.  Holy Crap! That place is beautiful! It's like this fancy barn with a patio where you can leave your bike out without a lock.  And the inside was like a nature center only full of bikes!  My sweaty ass pulled a green newspaper bag out of my rear bike bag and unrolled from tissue paper the carefully mint conditioned size XL very important prize.  And seconds later, I was holding one in small!  A few minutes after that (once my sweat dried a little), I was wearing it and looking fine!

North Park

I bought some snacks, got my water bottles filled up, and was on my way to North Park looking as snazzy as shit. We (my bike and myself) rode around North Park exploring.  I'd only been there twice before: once to use the amazing swimming pool, and second to go cross country skiing.  There were people sitting out in chairs tailgating.  I wanted to do that.  Instead, I rode over interesting looking things on my cross bike and successfully jumped my first curb!

I really tried to find the best way home from North Park.  After climbing a long hill, the google maps had me zig-zagging through neighborhoods, which was kind of fun, except at some point the road I was supposed to take was closed and had a detour.  Thinking like a car, I was like "oh, I'll take the detour".  This detour had me climbing some gnarly hills, and at the worst part, turned onto McKnight Road and went down it for several blocks.  I rode real fast!  Then the detour had me bike across 4 lanes of traffic and take a left up a steep hill that only had one lane but two way traffic due to construction.  I can say I got some real good practice sprinting there.  Then, I got to where the detour met up with the road only to find out it was a 1.5 mile stretch that was closed and open to residents' vehicles.  I totally could have kept my odds of staying alive higher if I'd just plowed through that orange sign.

Chilling on Pittsburgh's North Side.  Not to be confused with
North Park, which is about 15 miles north of the city.

The rest of the ride back to Pittsburgh was uneventful.  I was at mile 40 when I hit Millvale, and the day was so beautiful that I decided to ride downtown and sit by the river.  Since I was on the cross bike I also rode up and down the gravel trail on Washington's Landing going la la la my bike is fun.  I rode to the end of the North Side trail, looked at the baby ducks, took the Eliza Furnace trail back east, and was on my way out when I ran into none other than Velo Femme's hot new up and comer Jackie Libby, on her way out for a ride.  So I rode to the end of the South Side trail with her, which was fun, but I was tired.  My bike said 66 miles by the time I got home, so with the 4 miles that I rode on my commute to work that morning, put me at an even 70 for the day.

So who's in for some road riding on Saturday!!!??!