Ride report: NCR/YCH 2 day solo tour


Hi Folks,

Here's a trip report, consisting of my pre-ride info
with post-ride notes added.

Jonathan

Pictures can be found at 
https://biengroup.net:8100/jonathan/york_2004.html

What: Northern Central Railroad (NCR) and York 
County Heritage (YCH) rail-trails

Dates: 10/10-11 (Sunday-Monday)
      start riding around noon on Sunday

The trails were in good shape throughout the 41 miles on
MD and PA, except for some spots of erosion and two spots
of trail maintenance gone bad (one spot where the trail
had been patched with rough gravel and a 50-yard stretch
of nearly-unridable 2-inch-deep cinder dust), both on the
YCH trail.  In many places it was almost like riding on
pavement.

Like most rail-trails it was nearly flat.  I could have
ridden it with my single-speed urban bike (setup at 68
gear-inches in case anyone's wondering), but I was glad to
have the option of taking it easy sometimes.  It did have
a general uphill slope to the Mason Dixon line (mile 20 of
42) and slight downhill thereafter, which makes for a nice
ride.  The reported peak grade is 3%.

Plan: ride 41 miles to York, clean up, have a look 
     around, enjoy beer, etc., ride back the next 
     day after breakfast.

I rode this on a Dahon Speed P8, which is the only bike I
own that has gears (my third bike is a Surly 1x1 mountain
bike, geared for singletrack).  It's a folding bike with
single chain ring and an 8-speed cassette.  It's sort of
like a hybrid, but with 20-inch wheels.  For this ride I
used 1.35" semi-slick tires (which is what was on the bike
when I got it).  This worked, but fatter tires might have
been comfier (the bike has no suspension). 

This was my first experience with bike-touring, so I tried
to keep it simple.  The bike was lightly-loaded with two
large water bottles, a pump, lights (just in case), a
rack, a basic Ascent trunk bag, and an Arkel "Bug" single
pannier.  I had just enough carrying capacity for clothes
(post-ride casual wear, including sneakers), personal
items (toiletries, palm pilot, cell phone), tools, jackets
(one warm, one wind/rain shell), food (4 energy bars,
candy, some powdered Gatorade), and other odds and ends.

The bike was fine for the ride, its longest since I bought
it in August.  It finished the 84 miles of cinder-trail
riding with a flat tire (I patched it without trouble, but
it was flat again after the ride with a second puncture). 

Expected weather:  sunny, high 70 low 40

The ride itself was beautiful and sunny; good riding
weather.  Trees next to the trail provide a beautiful
canopy and for much of the ride.  Several of the road
crossings featured food for sale, though little free
drinking water was in evidence. 

BTW, do any of you know what's up with all the "W"  signs? 
(see picture "03_whats_up_with_W.jpg").  There were lots
of them in MD and PA.  Perhaps the result of some sort of
Bush-campaign guerilla action?  (just kidding). 

[It turns out that these mark curves in the path where
the engineer should sound the train whistle]

In any case I took my time, covering the 42-mile distance
in about 4 hours, with a similar time taken on the return. 
There were lots of people out hiking and riding.  On the
way out I stopped for a few photos.  On the way back I
stopped to read the historical markers.  Fall colors were
beginning to come out, which was nice to see. 

Directions to beginning of ride:

  From DC:  95 N to 695 N to 83 N
    Take SHAWAN ROAD/20A-B exit towards COCKEYSVILLE
    Bear right onto YORK RD (Rt 45)
    Turn left onto ASHLAND RD (Rt 145)
    Left onto Paper Mill Rd (Rt 145)
    Left onto Hunters Run Dr and park 
    (then bike back to Ashland Rd, turning left to 
    get to the trailhead at the end of Ashland)

This took a less than 90 minutes to drive to from my house
in Arlington.  Fast food places on York Rd near Shawan Rd
provided handy amenities (restrooms) for pre- and
post-tour.

Parking:

  The plan is to park in the nice neighborhood
  and leave a note with my cell number on the
  car, visible inside the windshield.

After looking around, I decided to park on Ashland Rd,
near the parking lot at the trailhead.  One reason for
doing so was that Paper Mill Rd did not look bike friendly
at all.  The car was unmolested and no one saw fit to
contact me about it. 

Ride info:

  http://www.bikewashington.org/trails/ncr/ncr.htm

  The only food stop on NCRT is at a small general store 
  in Monkton (around mile 8). The trail's visitor center is
  also there.
  YCH has amenities every few miles.

More amenities have sprung up since the above info was
posted to the bikewashington.org web site.  For example,
there was at least one nice-looking trailside ice
cream/sandwich shop north of Monkton (mile 7) and well
south of New Freedom (mile 20).  Maybe at mile 11; I
wasn't taking notes.  On the way up, I had lunch at the
general store in Monkton.  The food was good, but
vegetarian which isn't necessarily the best fuel for
riding (IMO). 

Lodging:

  Sadly, there are no rooms at the historic Yorktowne Hotel, 
  but this place (also in downtown) has rooms for $45/night 
  including tax:

  Economy Inn of York
  132-140 N George St
  York, PA 17401 
  Phone: 717-843-8974

The Economy Inn was a mega-dump.  Holes in the sheets,
stuff growing in the shower, stained towels... yuk. 
Seriously, this is the worst hotel I've ever stayed in in
my adult life (before that I wasn't paying much
attention).  The only good thing was that the counter
clerk gave me good pointers for dinner (Waterside Inn, on
Philadelphia, just across the river from downtown) and
breakfast (Central Family Restaurant, on George, just
across the river from downtown).  Warning: restaurant
names may not be exact. 

York was otherwise quite dead (not surprising on a Sunday
night, I guess).  There was a theater downtown showing an
art film which turned out to feature waaay too many
art-film clichés (lapsed love, forbidden flirtations,
secret guilt about events long past, deeply-meaningful
exquisitely-prepared food... FYI, the film was called
"Facing Windows"). 

Lessons learned:  1) Be careful about bringing the right
tools.  I found that I couldn't get my pannier off my bike
at the end of the ride because the multi-tool hex wrench
would fit into a tight spot;  a regular hex wrench would
have worked.  If I had done all of my pre-ride setup with
the tools I was planning to take, I wouldn't have had this
problem.  2) If riding solo, I may try staying in a B&B
next time, just for a bit of company.  In any case I'll
try to do more research on lodging (that hotel kinda
creeped me out).  3) The Pearl Izumi Kodiak jersey is your
friend: thin and warm on and off the bike.  4) Thin tires
are OK for a cinder trail, but beefier tires (>1.5") might
have been more comfy.  5) It's easy to put 150 miles on a
new bike without noticing that the stock seat needs to be
replaced.  The seat that came with the Dahon is just fine
for the first 20 miles of any given ride, but is less so
thereafter.  6) If you're willing to tour solo, you can
decide to go touring on short notice, based on expected
good weather. 

--end--