Walpack Center, NJ to Hulland, NJ

I awoke behind the church slowly. I got up around the time I usually leave, but didn't actually get riding until close to 9:00. It was a slow start, too, because I was climbing some hills in the valley, or up the side of the valley, I suppose. At one point, I was climbing at a whopping 2 mph! That's hard to do! Eventually, I got to the top of those hills, pretty and shady they were, and headed back down to the river for the last 10 miles or so of the Delaware Water Gap. That is some beautiful biking in there! I was very sad to leave it behind.

After exiting the Water Gap, I crossed the Delaware River into a new state for me: Pennsylvania! I stopped and ate lunch at a restaurant (yummy turkey club with homemade potato salad), then continued on. Not far along, I was enticed by an ice cream stand, so I stopped and got desert. A friendly family noticed that I hadn't added "Pennsylvania" to my trailer's flag listing the states I've visited. It turns out they lived not too far (5-10 miles) from the ice cream stand, and they actually passed me driving home! I figured that would be the second and last time I'd see them, but then a mile or two later, I passed a driveway with two of the cutest little boys, probably 7 and 5 years old, waving and smiling, just waiting to see me pedal past!

Much of the rest of this stage was uneventful. I stopped and used the library for over an hour in Belvidere, NJ, having crossed back to the Eastern side of the Delaware River. I also grabbed a change of address form from the Post Office so I can have my mail forwarded from Exeter to Massachusetts. I thought that was pretty cool, grabbing the form several states away from both the states involved in the change.

The best story of the day comes from stopping at a bike shop in Philipsburg, NJ, right across the river from Easton, PA. I got into town at about 5:45 on a Friday evening, and I suspected the bike shops would be closed or closing at 6. I called, fearing the worst with my still broken spoke(s). As it turns out, the local bike shop stays open until 7pm on Fridays, and they were happy to give me directions patiently as I struggled to understand them. They didn't get upset when I couldn't hear them over the loud traffic. And their directions were good.

When I got to the shop, I brought my wheel in, and Russ, the mechanic told me I only had one broken spoke and one very loose one. This makes more sense. Anyway, in the store were also Linda and some other folks including Rich Fay. We get to talking and they ask where I'm riding to. I tell them I'm riding to the Juggling Convention, and they ask for a demonstration, so I do a little juggling. I really didn't do much, because I didn't even get my props out of the trailer, but they seemed happy enough with me juggling four bits of bike chain (a good little challenge).

Rich, it turns out, is a Yankees fan. We got some good ribbing in, and congratulated ourselves as having the best rivalry there is. He had to leave before my wheel was done, but it was a lot of fun talking with him. When he was finished installing the new spoke and tensioning all the others correctly, Russ handed me the wheel and said, "That man paid for your repair." Wow. I was blown away with the kindness and random generosity of Rich Fay. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

One scary moment was when I was riding along in NJ next to the river and I came up over a rise and around a bend at the same time and BAM! There on the horizon, "larger than life" for me were the twin towers of what must have been a nuclear power plant (on the PA side).

Another moment of fear was riding along the route and coming to another "Road Closed" sign. Again, as in Stage III, I ignored it. I wasn't sure if my luck would be better or worse than last time. I figured a small bridge over a creek was out, and I figured the worst thing would be I'd have to carry the bike over the creek myself. Happily, there had been some washouts in the road, so they closed the road rather than fix things up right away. The road never got more narrow than one lane, though which lane was not covered in a pile of loose gravel shifted a couple times.

The most annoying bit in this ride occurred at dusk, as I was riding along on a very narrow river road through a quiet and happy community when a hard shelled bug hit my left eye. Riding without glasses, sometimes you get a bug in your eye, but this was different. It HURT! Ow! I had to stop and my eye was crying and it was a few minutes before I got it out and I could continue.

I didn't stop until after dark had just about settled, when I wasn't sure of which way to go at an intersection. A short squat man in a small pickup truck drove by, stopped, started to back up and noticed there was traffic coming. He drove on, turned around and proceeded to pull up alongside me facing the wrong way in the road lane. He asked if I needed help and where I was trying to get to. He had one of those quiet, gruff, rumble voices with a few snorts thrown in. He said I had better hurry up and find a place to camp. While he was at it he suggested I try a boat launch not far from where we were talking. Thanking him for the directions and the suggestion, I pedaled on, and found the boat launch with its sandy spots satisfactory. it was only a quarter mile off my route, it seemed quiet enough, and comfortable enough. I was probably 25 feet from the river, though it makes almost no noise there, being wide and deep.

Total Stage III Distance: 64 miles

Stage Time On Bike: 5 hours, 34 minutes

Total Stage time: 12.5 hours

Total Trip Distance: 314

Net Elevation Change: -???

On to Stage VI

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Check out the libraries I've used--I love libraries!