Lancaster, Part 2

On Sunday I took what the cycling club calls the Witness Ride, as it takes you past the farm where they filmed the movie Witness. I started at the Strasburg Train Museum, which is kind of easy to spot as you drive by because of, well, because of the dozen or so trains right by the roadside, including a working steam engine that you can ride on.

This proved to be a much more difficult ride than Saturday's. First, my legs didn't have nearly the same kind of pep after riding 36 miles, about double the length of my previous longest ride this year, the afternoon before. Second, this course is noticeably hillier. But above all, the final 8 miles were (and I can't blame the bike club for this) done in a downpour. I had to stop 3 separate times because it was just too hard to see, so those last 8 miles took well over an hour.

Until it got to the point where I couldn't see anything anymore, it's a very pretty ride. The Witness farm is lovely, though I'm not sure why they chose that one versus any of the other attractive farms in the area. I did eventually make the connection that if the name of the road had the words "hill" or "summit" in it, that I should be prepared to climb. It did make me wonder what the courses marked "Hilly" (as opposed to "Rolling Hills") would be like. But once you climbed the hills the view was terrific, if you like looking at farms and corn and alfalfa and (I think) tobacco. I got to pass another horsedrawn cart. I rode through Bird-In-Hand and Intercourse.

Riding in the rain is somewhat entertaining if you don't demand actual fun out of your entertainment. Instead of just staying to the side and trying to keep on smooth road and away from gravel and horse poop I was having to find the high spots on the roads to keep from having to ride through puddles. Fortunately, there were very few cars anywhere on the ride. Nonetheless, my feet were squishing after 15 minutes or so, and it's hard to gather any momentum when you're pushing through water.

If part of what I wanted to do this weekend was to get my mind off everything else, this was good because you really can't think of anything else when you're riding in the rain and have no idea where you are. Note to self: next time, make sure tip sheets are printed in waterproof ink. Another note to self: Next time, make sure to bring 2 copies of the tip sheet. Yes, I lost my tip sheet during the rain. Fortunately, by that time I was pretty close to the end and remembered just enough to find my way back.

It had stopped raining by the time I got to the car. Not that it did me any good; I was drenched. I had already picked out a place to eat lunch near where I'd parked, but I couldn't bring myself to stop, so I drove back to the hotel, took a shower (which, by the way, failed to remove all the road grease from my shins in spite of vigorous rubbing) and returned to Strasburg, where I lunched on Corn Chowder (probably the best I've had) and a Reuben at Isaac's Famous Grilled Sandwiches. I then went to the Strasburg Creamery for some ice cream. I'm not so hot on these old-timey places, but when you walk in you can smell the waffle cones being made and that was enough for me. There was a young woman near the rear of the store with a semicircular counter in front of her with 8 waffle irons, and she was cooking and rolling (around a cone-shaped mold) as fast as she could.

Back to the hotel for a nap and then out for a round of mini golf. Thanks to Yelp, I found Village Greens, the most kick-ass mini golf I've ever played. By the 3rd hole I'd stopped keeping score and started tracking how many times my ball went off the course. They have buckets of extra balls at several holes in case you didn't feel like fishing your ball out of the stream, and course is designed to maximize the water hazard potential of the stream. In the woods and very pretty. Highly recommended.

Finally, I had to do a Smorgasbord. I wanted to know how a smorgasbord was different from a buffet. Answer? It isn't. I think there's more stuff, but that doesn't strike me as a fundamental difference. I chose to eat at Hershey Farm because it was close to the mini golf and was both well reviewed and open.

One of the nice things about riding 35 miles on a bike is that you can stuff yourself later. This was a good place to do it. The web site says over 100 choices, and even keeping in mind that this includes the salad dressings and the different kinds of bread, there was a lot of stuff to eat. Almost everything was very good. Or maybe I was just very hungry. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves too, and it didn't seem like there were more fat people there than in the general population as I would have expected at a smorgasbord.

And that was it. A short ride in the morning and then home.