Maryland

Yesterday, I crossed another goal off my list of biking destinations, Maryland. This accomplishment means I can now take credit for riding to five states from my apartment: Pennsylvania, of course; New Jersey, no big deal; Delaware, it counts; New York, big deal; and Maryland.

I had to decide between to general routes two reach my target, the very northeast corner of the state. I could either head straight to Wilmington staying close to the Delaware River and then cut east or I could follow a more northerly route. I had used the former to reach Wilmington in 2008; the challenged a tougher ride with more hills. I ended up taking the northerly route out and southerly route back.

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The forty-plus mile ride out took a little over four hours including one fifteen minute break, about average for me. Hills posed more of a challenge in the last twenty miles that I expected. It seemed I was either struggling up one or coasting down another. Though forty miles is not a terribly long distance for me, I felt rather fatigued as I reached the Maryland stateline.

Before crossing in to Maryland, I stopped to find the stone marker at the point where Delaware's northern border with Pennsylvania transitions from an arc to a straight line. I won't go in to the history, which is interesting, but also quite confusing. Here I also set-out on foot to find the tri-state marker where Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania meet. I had trouble finding the trail and when I did discovered there wasn't much path between the thorns. Still a half-mile away after one-mile of hiking in twenty-minutes, I abandoned the effort.

After resting a the arc monument, I continued west and officially entered Maryland. A quarter of a mile later, I was back in Pennsylvania.

The ride back was not particularly pleasant. I wanted to take a the most direct route, and that entailed riding on more-heavily trafficked roads than I usually prefer. It was also mid-day and the temperature was close to, if not over, 90 degrees with very high humidity. Still the comparatively level terrain and southwesterly wind blowing off Delaware Bay aided me most of the way. With some effort I maintained an 11 MPH average, pretty good for me under the circumstances.

As I got closer to Philadelphia, I calculated the ride would be short of a century (100 miles) by about ten miles, the approximate length of loop around the Schuylkill River in Fairmount Park. For most of the return ride, I doubted my endurance would permit this extra appendage to the ride, but after a spontaneous rest stop in Sharon Hill, I got my second wind, which was enough to allow me to add the extra miles to the trip.

An interesting post-script to the trip: Today to kill time before my haircut appointment, I browsed through a Borders and came across a book, How the State got their Shapes, that describes exactly the kind of geographical oddities like the arc monument I saw on my ride.

Elevation Profile







Statistics
Length: 100.6 miles
Time: 11 hours 30 minutes
Avg. Speed: 11.2 MPH
Max. Speed: 34.0 MPH
Avg. Cadence: 55 RPM
Cumulative Ascent: 5250 ft.
Max. Elevation: 447 ft.

I forgot to bring my camera. Here are a couple of pictures of the Arc Monument I pilfered from the Internet.