Taking this day off from walking has been a terrific decision. I walked up to Sickler’s Bike and Sport Shop when it opened at 10 and was well taken care of by Mark:

I did indeed have a very small hole in my front inner tube. The new tube I had replaced it with yesterday was in fact just fine. I think in retrospect that my air pump was malfunctioning. I remember acquiring it when I was a teenager when I got my first 10-speed and it’s been through a lot since then. I bought a new pump and threw the old one out. I also bought another spare tire from Mark, so after repairing the holey one later, I now have two spares.

Mark had almost as much difficulty as I did yesterday putting the tire back on the rim — really hard for those small tires. He also lubed the axles and bearings, and didn’t charge for any of the labor — thanks, Mark! Now my cart is ready to go again and is in even better shape than when I began a week ago!

The cycle shop is on the first floor of this building:

which used to be the old Bellemonte Silk Mill.

The Ledges Hotel where I’m staying is just below the left hand end of this building — there is a sharp drop there. Here are a couple of views from the hotel’s wrap-around balcony:

After my good cycle shop experience I headed down to Church Street to the laundramat and threw in a load of smelly clothes. I wandered off to grab a little lunch in town and this nice lady had all my clothes dried and folded by the time I got back!

The great hotel staff allowed me to dry out my tent (I guess backpackers must go through this all the time — having to pack up their tent while it is still wet with dew):

So I’m good to go for tomorrow, and probably even better prepared than when I began a week ago. I’m excited to get back on the trail and I will be undaunted by them thar Pocono hills.

A couple of general comments about blogging. One thing that I didn’t expect on this journey is how lonely walking is. In spite of the fact that I’m meeting many wonderful people, I spend a lot of time by myself. Those of you who know me know that I’m not very talkative, so it’s a measure of my loneliness that whenever I talk to someone I’m quite uncharacteristically chatty!

For this reason, I have to say that I REALLY appreciate reading everyone’s comments on this little blog. I don’t respond to all of them, but I so enjoy each one. A number of people have spoken of taking this trip with me vicariously; I can say that the inverse is true — that when people respond to the blog I feel they are here with me. So thank you for all your replies.

On a technical note, because of the big, nasty spamish world around us, I set up the blog so that I have to approve every comment before it actually appears. That way you don’t have to see some of the ridiculous, robot-generated responses on my blog. But one consequence of this is that there is often a delay between when you submit a response and when I approve it and therefore when it appears. I apologize for this, but it’s as it must be.

On another note, David, the president of the hunting club who graciously allowed me to camp on his property two nights ago, informed me that the howling I heard was coyotes.

I have one more thing for this blog post — I would like to show some pictures of my cart. Probably most of you won’t be interested, but my son Peter said his middle school class was asking about it, so I took some pictures this afternoon after I had finished all my other chores.

So here is the basic frame of this New Zealand Mountain Buggy, Urban model:

Not shown here are two canvas pieces, one for the baby to sit in and one to hold the baby’s “stuff” underneath. It also has some other bits and pieces near the handle, which were all discarded.

The frame collapses very easily:

and if that isn’t enough collapsing, the wheels just pop off:

This makes it very convenient to throw in the back of a car if I get a lift at some point. Now I actually do use the lower canvas:

I add a flashing LED light that points forward:

and I just set a large plastic bin into the frame — it fits perfectly! I could probably just leave it like that but I secure with a single bungie cord:

On sunny days I can lay a little portable solar panel on the lid and attach my iPhone:

This works really well and is important because I use the iPhone for GPS tracking of my route, for google maps to make sure I’m on track, and for keeping in touch with family and friends (especially if there were to be an emergency). With no power boost the iPhone is getting lowish by the end of my 15 miles, but on a sunny day it can be at 100% when I arrive at my destination. I have a backup battery in case I need power on a cloudy day. I have only used it once so far, the night I stayed at the hunting club.

That’s it for today!

First I need to say something about last night. After quickly writing the Day 6 post (protected against the mosquitoes by deet), I retired to my tent. That was at about 18:30. By the time I had my little house set up inside I was feeling quite tired, perhaps aided by the release of tension in finding a place to stay. I lay my head down for a short nap and slept essentially until morning — longest sleep I’ve had in a very long time.  Here’s a picture of my setup just before I retired (I forgot to post this yesterday):

Well it wasn’t uninterrupted sleep. I did wake up a couple of times with howling off in the distance. I don’t know what it was — wolves? coyotes? but I was a little scared. I rooted around in my bin and got out my Fox 40 whistle (thanks Ken!) and my pepper spray (thanks Paul!) and hung them around my neck. It occurred to me that there were no humans nearby and I felt quite isolated and exposed. At another point in the night I thought I heard some small animal noises nearby.

Anyway, the morning light was welcome and it didn’t take me long to deconstruct my camp. I was on the road shortly after 08:00. I spent all day on Route 6. It was very pleasant, with lots of ups and downs (though nothing, I suspect, to what lies in wait when I cross the Pocono Mountains). Here are a few random snaps:

At one point I passed this sign — the only one of it’s kind that I saw:

Shortly thereafter I saw this little monument (roughly where the cart is in the first picture):

One suspects that cyclist Steve Head lost his life here because of a careless motorist. I wasn’t able to find anything on the internet about it. The date on the simple monument was 2005-04-22. It made me sad for a little while, especially thinking about Tom Samson, my son’s best friend, who died last year in such an accident.

On a lighter note, here’s an honest sign:

My goal for today was to get to Hawley — about 15 miles. It’s amazing how dirty and smelly I was getting camping, no showers, absorbing road dust. So I decided that I would get a hotel and clean up. I tried to make a reservation on the way but the first place I called was closed on Tuesdays (!) and recommended a B&B, which didn’t respond to my calls. But I headed there, via google maps, anyway. I knew I was getting close when I saw Lake Wallenpaupack:

Coming out of the northern end of the lake is this monster pipe:

It’s easily visible in google maps satellite view, but I couldn’t figure out what it was for.

Anyway, I finally made it to the B&B just as my front tire got a flat! I knocked on the door and no one answered. Two blows at once. I realized that I couldn’t do anything without a working tire so I set to work repairing it. I had a spare tube and a repair kit with me but it was quite hard. It’s difficult getting a small tire off a rim and it’s even harder getting it back on. I probably didn’t have the right tool. I think I may have pinched the new tube because it wouldn’t inflate. OK, I thought, trip scuttled. Call Fiona and get a ride home — there can’t possibly be a cycle shop in this remote place.

However, I decided I would limp along to a hotel anyway. After calling around a bit I found one quite close to where I was — the Ledges Hotel. I managed to get there and found out almost immediately that there are two cycle shops in town. I was ecstatic and took this picture of the reception crew:

So I took a shower — never more welcome! — and headed over to the Settler’s Inn, the MUCH more expensive sister hotel to the Ledges. After a lovely burger and bowl of soup I was feeling pretty good! I had solved four problems: busted inner tube (hopefully tomorrow), dirtiness, homelessness and hunger! I have decided to take a day off from walking tomorrow to get the tire fixed and to do laundry. Besides it’s supposed to rain the next two days; might as well only walk in one of them.

By the way, Matthew has added a couple of new features to the MAP tab. It should show my route so far in alternating colors and then a blue line from where I am to my destination, as computed by google maps. Also, I now have an app on my iPhone that when I press a button a text message is sent to a phone of Matthew’s which he processes with a Perl script and automatically shows my location on the map. I shall try to press that button periodically. It would be nice if I had an app that could do that automatically at a specified frequency. If no one knows of such an app, maybe someone could write one. Ches?