Day 3: Cannondale, Flight 93 memorial, & a very long day

Destination: Ligonier, PA

Mileage: 42

Destination fun facts:

• Ligonier is the site of a reconstruction of Fort Ligonier, an example of a frontier fort of the French and Indian War
• Known for its downtown square, the Diamond, which has a bandstand in the middle

....yeah I just copied that straight from Wikipedia

Day 3 started with a 9 am tour of the Cannondale factory in Bedford, after an amazing breakfast at our host. By the way, all of our bikes are Cannondales. The factory was pretty cool, but kind of depressing because the factory used to be booming but about 10 years ago they started outsourcing to China and laid off 75% of their workers. The factory was gigantic but there weren’t a lot of people working. We got to see some cool bike frames and got a sneak peek at the 2014/2015 bikes ;)

The tour lasted longer than we expected and we didn’t really get on the road until 10:45. A few of the guys from the Cannondale factory joined us for the first 7 miles of our ride. We basically asked them if they wanted to ride with us, they shrugged and said sure, got their biking gear on, and left! Must be a pretty sweet job that lets you do that.

After getting a late start on the road, we had some grueling hills and a 6-mile climb up Mt. Ararat. We were all sore from the previous day's mountains and hills as well.

Lookout Point, halfway up Mt Ararat

Looks like a safe spot to stop for lunch.

4K lunch van looking official at our lunch stop.

We then stopped at the Flight 93 memorial. It was very somber but a nice memorial. We got to talk to some locals and learned that locals are actually upset about the memorial, because they bought a bunch of land and destroyed houses to build it. The old memorial apparently used to be more personal. These were people we stopped on the side of the road to talk to, so that’s an example of something we only found out because we’re on bikes!

Flight 93 crash site.

Coming out of the memorial, the ranger recommended a path to us that was supposedly a “shortcut.” It ended up being gravel roads a little way in, and was pretty much a disaster. There was no way we could bike on those roads and we ended up walking for a while. The team was frustrated in more ways than one. Our riding groups have been composed of one of our strongest riders and then 4 other random riders. Ability levels and personalities were all over the place and by this point people were getting frustrated, and with the route issues and walking, no one was happy. We were also WAY behind schedule, as we were supposed to arrive at a picnic lunch at 1 pm and at this point it was 4 pm.

Riders posing with Bicycle Lane.

We pressed on to the lunch host, who was kind enough to wait for us. We encountered even more grueling hills on the way, and everyone was hungry. By the time we rolled in it was around 5 pm, and we still had 18 miles to go that included a full mountain. We devoured the delicious picnic lunch, sponsored by members of a local church. One of the ladies made homemade whoopee pies, which I had never had homemade. They were AMAZING… I scored the recipe from her :)

The lunch stop had a playground...thank goodness. The swings lifted our spirits.

Unfortunately we had to cut the day short due to time constraints. Our host was the Ligonier YMCA and they had amazing showers… one thing I’ve realized on the 4K is that you learn to appreciate good showers. Unfortunately we got in too late to take advantage of their pool!

Day 3 was frustrating but we learned a lot. We had a productive conversation when we all got back and came up with a few things to hopefully make tomorrow better. Time for bed now!!