Year 2 - Day 4 Bensalem PA to Newark DE


 

Shortly after leaving the hotel, we technically crossed into the City of Philadelphia, but it was quite a few miles before anything began to look like the city itself. Other than the row homes and traffic, it could have been any urban town. We came in on Torresdale Ave and wound around to eventually end up at Penn Treaty Park. 



Once we got to the end the trail, we got dumped onto Spring Garden Street! We rode up Spring Garden all the way to Pennsylvania Ave and Kelly Drive. We rode around the PA Museum of Art and accessed the Schuylkill River Trail. 

As we rode up Spring Garden, I stopped to take several photos of the Philadelphia skyline, including one showing the Jefferson building, where coincidentally a lot of Gower money has gone in the past several years!



We continued southward on Grays Ferry where Bob picked up a piece of copper electric wire in his rear tire. It was lodged between his tire, brakes, and fender. He heard it, but due to all the traffic noise, thought it had become dislodged. He rode a little further until I told him to stop. We wrestled with this wire for several minutes before we could tactically dislodge it from his bike. I kidded that he should wait till closer to the end of our tour before beginning to assemble recycling to take home!

Riding in Philadelphia was not as difficult as I expected. There were adequate bike lanes and traffic was, for the most part, very courteous. My largest and most overriding observation was how dirty and littered it was in most of the city. Yes, around the National and State Parks and building it was clean because there is a team paid to clean up, but everywhere else litter rolled around like tumbleweeds! 

The other observation was how bad it smelled in many areas! Especially when we were departing and crossing Grey’s Ferry Bridge over the Schuylkill River. The Philadelphia Waste Management Waste Transfer Station lies just to the right before crossing the bridge! Wow! Take a couple deep breaths of that as you climb up over Grey’s bridge!

From there we meandered through South Philadelphia and eventually entered John Heinz Environmental Education Center and Wildlife Refuge. It’s hard to believe that a natural area this large and beautiful is so close to a large city and an international airport. 

Then it happened! Gary got another flat! The roads through the Environmental Center were gravel with a few areas of larger stones. Apparently, his rear tire may have been a little under inflated and he hit a larger stone that caused him the get what bicyclist’s call a snake bite. That is when an object strikes your tire hard enough to compress it against your rim, thus causing the tube to be punctured on each side by the pressure of the tire hitting the rim. When you remove the tube, it has a hole on each side, thus looking like a snake bite. 



We stopped for lunch at the Sungate Diner in Marcus Hook, about a mile from Delaware. Good food and service. 

We continued through Wilmington, took a tour of the Delaware Bay in New Castle, and then proceeded to our overnight location in Newark DE. 

Our total mileage so far this year is 280 miles and a total climbing of 8,015 feet in elevation. 

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