Indiana, Blairsville, Latrobe, New Stanton, Greensburg

by Joan

In the morning, Aunt Helen served us up one of her famous, huge, excellent breakfasts. Then we all got on our bikes and headed out for the last two days to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was the finish line for our ride from New York. But more important, for Eric and me, Pittsburgh was the finish line for our 26-month trip around the world.

[ERIC: 10 miles or so from Indiana at a Sheetz, the Walmart of minimarts and the center of activity in many of the worse little towns, we had a strange encounter. A scary looking guy sidled up to Katy and Joan and asked them if how they could ride those bikes and how on earth could they fix their flat tires. He basically was under the impression that women could not fix flats. But maybe he just didn't believe anything. Because hen he walked up to me and started talking to me about our bikes. I told him that we had ridden pretty much clear around the world. He was incredulous. "What did you do when you got a flat tire?" he demanded.

"We fixed them," I answered simply. Then I told them we carried a comprehensive toolkit and in fact we had very few flats in the previous 6000 miles.

He remained disbelieving. "You couldn't give me one of those bikes. My son's had those bikes and they fell apart right away."

I figured he'd bought $79 bikes right here at the Sheetz or something and I was a little irritated that he didn't seem to be listening to me. So I said, "Well, if you pay good money for a bike you can get one that doesn't break so easily."

"I did pay good money. The bikes broke just around here. No you couldn't give me one of those bikes," he said.

"Well, I'm telling you," I was getting angry, "these bikes have taken us 12,000 miles without ever leaving us stranded. I've repaired many things but always been able to keep them going."

At last he left. The strange thing was, he saw us riding through town and had stopped at the Sheetz just to tell us that our bikes aren't any good.]

We rolled into Latrobe in time for lunch. Latrobe is the home of Rolling Rock beer, Mr. Rogers, the banana split and a golfer I can't remember the name of [ERIC: Arnold Palmer]. I was thinking it would be like Indiana, Jimmy Stewart's hometown. Indiana is small, busy, thriving and interesting. It has wide streets, old churches, old timey stores. Latrobe is just as old as Indiana, but not nearly as interesting.

First hint that something was wrong with Latrobe: although it's the home of Rolling Rock beer, we had an extremely difficult time spotting a bar that served Rolling Rock. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Rolling Rock. But I figured, there's no way we can ride past that beer's home town and not try it. We did eventually find a bar--a dark and depressing one.

We had a hard time finding the town itself. Eventually, we happened onto a main street. Then things started looking up. It looked a little more lively. We went into a place called the Mozart cafe. The cafe is in the ground floor of the town's old opera house. The cafe is great, and the owner was really nice. He's the one that told us that Latrobe is the home of the banana split. We were psyched. We had to have one. The place that invented the banana split was just down the street. But it didn't serve banana splits anymore. So we decided just to have one at the Mozart. But a banana split wasn't on the menu.

Gamely, the Mozart cafe guy said he could make a banana split. And he really tried. It was good, but he only had vanilla ice cream, and he only had one kind of topping. I don't mind being short a few toppings, but how can the hometown of the banana split serve up a banana split with only vanilla ice cream, and not very good vanilla ice cream at that? I don't hold the Mozart cafe responsible. I hold Latrobe responsible.

While we were there, I went to the bathroom and came back to find Katy with tears in her eyes. She said Eric had made her cry. It turns out they were having a joke about Latrobe. They were saying how they were really glad that their ancestors hailed from Indiana, PA, and not Latrobe. "Mr. Rogers is no Jimmy Stewart," Eric said. And from there they tried to imagine how Mr. Rogers would handle Jimmy's roles.

Rear Window: Look, our neighbor is going on a vacation. He's taking his suitcase. What's in his suitcase? Can you say body parts? I think you can.

Vertigo: Have you seen this lady before? I think you have.

And on and on.

After that it was really hard to respect Latrobe.

After Latrobe, we passed through Greensburg. Greensburg is a great symbol of how depressed western Pennsylvania is. Greensburg has a gorgeous old courthouse. A real beauty. Great columns, great little sculptures all over the outside. And then when you ride up to take a look, the main door is closed. Taped off. There's just a bent rusty old sign saying something like, "enter at side." If you want to go in, you have to use some crappy side door. The only other interesting thing we saw in town was a "Women's Christian Temperance Union" water fountain, carved out of stone. There was nothing else to look at. Almost all the stores were closed--many were closed for good, not just for the day. And everything else looked really boring. The traffic was bad, too but the hills were absoulte misery. Steep up then steep down with three traffic lights before you start to climb again so you can't even go fast down. It was just hell for a cyclist.

Unfortunately, Greensburg was a symbol of what lay ahead.

We did survive the traffic. That night we slept in New Stanton. We decided that we would really like to have a little luxury again. So Katy splurged and booked us all into a fancy hotel! We were in heaven once more. Great beds, gorgeous furniture, and a big screen television. There's nothing more you can want at the end of a long cycling day. That night, we ate at the .... Eat'N park.

In the bathroom, Eric had a flashback to the movie Witness. He was sitting on the toilet when he saw eyes peeking through the crack. At first he was irritated but when Eric got out, he saw three little boys all wearing identical straw hats and blue collared shirts under overalls. The little Amish boys were just standing with gaping mouths, looking all around, like they had never been in a public bathroom before. They were completely amazed. Eric laughed to himself and smiled at them. Meanwhile, two guys were washing their hands at the sink. Both wore big blue coveralls with huge oval patches covering their backs saying, "MAYTAG." He felt like everyone was wearing a costume except him.

The next morning, after a big breakfast at the same Eat'N Park, we headed west for the last 40 miles to Pittsburgh.

Next: US Chapter 9

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