Mileposters News 12-11

On December 13, we asked the Adult Organ Skaters at Romp’N'Roll, in Glenshaw, PA, to assist us in a fundraiser for the Pittsburgh Area Nursing Home Chaplaincy. We were delighted at the response, since about a dozen of them joined our effort, not only skating, but contributing on the spot! Father Ray was especially helpful, and our own original Mileposters skaters were of course indispensable! We got a total of 815 laps altogether. The photo below shows only five of our helpers, since the rest of them were camera-shy. By December 16 the kids and I had wrapped up 136 appeal letters and mailed them — a new record for a speedy campaign, for which we thank God!

December 11 was Games Night, and we used our own Jenga game for the first time. (Last month we borrowed one from the Pilgrims; the kids had played it with them before.) We had a super cliffhanger tower at the end, with the whole works incredibly teetering on two center blocks stacked in the same direction! It didn’t last forever, of course, but I did get the picture below first!

On December 18 we went Christmas caroling; our first stop was the customary call at the Woods Run fire station. This year they let us pose for a picture with a fire truck! After caroling, instead of McDonald’s, we went to Wendy’s.

Mileposters News 11-11

As a followup to the trip from Pittsburgh to Cumberland in August, in support of the campus ministry at First Trinity Lutheran Church, a “booster” ride of ten miles was made in November, starting at the Eliza Furnace trailhead, at the foot of Greenfield Avenue in Pittsburgh, making round trips to downtown Pittsburgh and the Glenwood Bridge, including a total of seven riders. Four members of First Trinity participated, including the son and daughter of the senior pastor, who rode their bikes from home to the trailhead, giving 14 miles for them. Also joining me in the effort were our 6-year-old DC through-rider from 2005, who is now a youth captain, and one of her friends, who this past summer rode from DC to Pittsburgh with her mom, in only three days, which means one of the days was a century ride (100 miles)! I took this picture on the south ramp of the Hot Metal Bridge.

A much-anticipated event each year is the Thanksgiving celebration with the Pilgrims on Troy Hill. Besides dinner, this year’s activities included a rousing Uno game, among others, and making a Thanksgiving tree — on the leaves were written things for which to be thankful.

Mileposters members have been increasingly involved in Urban Impact’s performing arts program, which recently gave its ‘Light the Night’ Christmas program. One of them, who just joined this fall, was invited to sing a solo at the performance, pictured below.

The Mileposters tradition of Christmas caroling will be upheld, possibly as a fundraiser for the Pittsburgh Lutheran Chaplaincy.

Winter-season roller skating continues, with the possibility of one upcoming session as a fundraiser; there could also be a Polar Bear ride on a local trail.

Mileposters News 10-11

One of three summer candidates for junior captain made his qualifying ride on October 8, making a round trip of ten miles between Greenock and Dravo Landing on the Youghiogheny River Trail, part of the Great Allegheny Passage. He is pictured with his stoker at Dravo Landing, by Milepost 25; it was the ninth ride for the stoker, who is five years old. To celebrate the event, the picture is posted in cross-eye freeview stereo (3-D) format. To view it in stereo, get about eighteen inches from your computer screen and cross your eyes. Allow your eyes to then relax slightly until a three-dimensional image appears straight in front of you. Ignore the ghost images on either side. If viewing is difficult, it might help to back off from the screen a little bit. If you can’t view the picture in stereo, it will simply appear as two ordinary pictures.

Roller skating for the winter season has begun, and two fundraising events are coming up. But before those will be a booster ride for the campus ministry at First Trinity Lutheran Church, on the Eliza Furnace Trail and South Side Trail. A total of seven riders are slated to participate, including two veterans (one of them a youth captain) and five first-timers.

A winter visit to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, south of Cleveland, is in the planning stages. It is hoped that the scenic railroad’s RDC (rail diesel car) will be brought out for the season. There were several pleasant Mileposters visits to ride an RDC car on the Fayette Central Railroad, starting in Uniontown, but the car, which had been borrowed from the B&O Museum in Baltimore, had to be returned.

Mileposters News 9-11

The tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center is an event which demands attention. When the news broke, I was teaching in the classroom facing the playground at St. Matthew in Pittsburgh. Pastor Bryan Borger came through to tell us. I was having a hard time visualizing just what was happening. Then came the news of the second plane. The world has changed for the worse since then, and our actions and prayers are critical.

The trip to Cumberland was August 17-20. Pastor Eric Andrae, campus minister at First Trinity Lutheran Church in Pittsburgh, beneficiary of the ride, joined us as far as Cedar Creek. His older daughter was disappointed that she was not allowed to ride with him! The trip totaled 130 miles, with overnight stays in Connellsville, Confluence, and Rockwood.

The complete story is on the Mileposters site. An encouraging event on the final day was encountering the new monument at Deal, PA, just this side of the Eastern Continental Divide, commemorating the 2003 campaign to restore and open Big Savage Tunnel for trail use. The Mileposters contributed to that effort, so our name is on one face of the monument, along with many others.

Our five-year-old stoker completed his eighth ride on August 28. We paused for a picture on the new bicycle causeway south of Millvale, braving the blazing sunshine.

An untapped treasure for the Mileposters has been the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. There, a scenic railroad runs parallel to the abandoned Ohio and Erie Canal, with bicycling on the towpath and a bargain rate for riders with their bikes aboard the train. An exploratory visit September 3 found a line waiting to have their mounts hoisted into the baggage car — and they do accommodate tandems! The return home crossed the fabulous 1905 Newell Bridge across the Ohio River.

Three junior captain candidates are currently in various stages of training. Completion will mean a record number of captains for the Mileposters, enabling trip combinations which were previously not possible.

Mileposters News 8-11

Our new five-year-old stoker completed his sixth ride on August 11, to Douglas Run, pictured at Milepost 25 with two veteran riders. On that same ride we encountered an especially friendly butterfly.

Our third trip to the Bud Harris Cycling Track was for a special Games Night in August. The track was built on the location of the driver testing section of the former state police barracks on Washington Boulevard, now a city police station. Facilities include air-conditioned rest rooms and vending machines.

Junior captain training for 2011 has begun; there are currently three candidates. Captain training involves ten or more miles alone on a tandem, to become familiar with its handling characteristics, and a similar distance with a selected stoker. Qualified junior and youth captains are responsible for the safety of the stokers who accompany them. Our second junior captain returned for rides in August.

After several delays, the trip from Pittsburgh to Cumberland for 2011 has been scheduled, and you can read about it on these pages!

Mileposters News 7-11

July opened with overhauls to two tandems, particularly the smaller 20-inch bike, which is perfect for our up-and-coming five-year-old tail gunner, who has completed five rides; the larger bike received Biopace chainrings, which make pedaling a delight! The small tandem, along with our first homebuilt machine, appears in the photo below, which is among the first taken with our new 3-D (stereo) camera. The picture is in cross-eyed freeview format. To view it in stereo, get about twelve to eighteen inches from your computer screen and cross your eyes slightly. Allow your eyes to then relax a bit until a three-dimensional image appears straight in front of you. Ignore the ghost images on either side. If viewing is difficult, it might help to back off from the screen a little bit. If you can’t view the picture in stereo, it will simply appear as two ordinary pictures.

More 3-D pictures appear on a special page on the Mileposters site:

http://web.totalusa.net/tandemcat/milepost/stereo.htm

On our most recent ride with the new tail gunner, we visited Dravo Landing, where he made his acquaintance with the hand pump there. A veteran rider helped him to actually get some water out of it!

Longtime Mileposters friend Fred Durbin, an author who lived in Japan for the last twenty years, has settled in the Pittsburgh area, and joined the group leader for a 32-mile round trip on the triplet from Greenock to Cedar Creek. The picture below, at Dravo Landing, is also in stereo.

Our first ride on the Bud Harris Cycling Track was made, using the new tandem. The track, with its velodrome-like end curves, is an excellent location for short rides.

Both captain candidates are still on the slate for instruction, and an additional stoker has requested junior captain training.

Plans for the ride to Cumberland are continuing, but scheduling it so far has been about as difficult as two years ago. Recent developments offer promise that it might take place after all!

Mileposters News 6-11

In June, the Mileposters rode the newest section of the Great Allegheny Passage, from Munhall to Duquesne, right after the celebration for the official opening of the segment, with an interview by a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Mayor Ray Bodnar of Munhall and Linda McKenna Boxx, president of the Allegheny Trail Alliance, were among the many speakers. Mayor Bodnar himself welcomed us through the gate onto the first bridge, which crosses Kenny Yard, a joint operation of two railroads: Norfolk Southern and Union. The most difficult section of the trail to complete, it required easements through 13 separate properties and building bridges over railroad tracks at two locations, at a total cost of $6 million. It is rail-with-trail for its entire length, paralleling very active railroad lines. Perhaps its most spectacular view is of two different roller coasters, on the bluff below Kennywood Amusement Park. It is the next-to-last missing link to connect the Point, in downtown Pittsburgh, with Washington, DC, via the Great Allegheny Passage to Cumberland, MD, and thence via the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal; the other is the section through Sandcastle water park, which will possibly be completed in November.

The new aluminum mountain tandem for Mileposters has been completed. It was designed and built on a small frame, with youth captains in mind. While the original youth captain will be its primary pilot, our second youth captain will also be qualified to operate it. Another youth captain will be in training this summer.

A bicycle repair clinic at a home in the Brighton-Woods Run neighborhood attracted a number of kids who needed attention to their bikes. It is expected that some of them will become Mileposters riders.

Mileposters News 5-11

Rather than just a bike ride, the Mileposters event for May was a trip of over 100 miles through West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle, and on into the eastern edge of Ohio, visiting the famous Homer Laughlin China Company, which was founded in the late nineteenth century and is still producing dinnerware in its original Newell, West Virginia plant. Lunch at the Newell Diner preceded the crossing of the Newell Bridge over the Ohio River, one of the first all-steel suspension bridges built in this country (1905). The toll bridge (75 cents one way; a dollar round trip) is in excellent condition because of meticulous maintenance. It is owned by Homer Laughlin. Another structure visited was the Aetnaville Bridge, which is currently for pedestrian and bicycle use only, crossing the back channel of the Ohio from Wheeling Island (West Virginia) to the Buckeye State (photo below). Noted were the many houses on the Island built up extra high to avoid the frequent floods which plagued the area before dams were built on the river.

Other sites visited were not nearly so pretty. At least the Market Street Bridge, crossing the Ohio River from Steubenville to the Mountain State, is being reconstructed, which is necessary since it, unlike the Newell Bridge, was not taken care of. The Bellaire Toll Bridge is not so fortunate — it is slated for destruction. Worse than that is the former Satralloy chromium smelter in Cross Creek Township, Ohio. There, huge piles of lime laced with hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen, were for many years used as a recreational area by dirt bikers, and several people perished in that way and in exploring the abandoned buildings on the property. The site has now been fenced, and cleanup is underway, supervised by the Ohio Department of Environmental Protection. It is a clear opposite compared to Homer Laughlin China and the Newell Bridge. Offering the hope of God’s Good News to this ravaged community, which also receives a daily trainload of garbage from New York City, is Kolmont Community Church.

The day did close with a triplet bike ride on the Wheeling Creek Trail as far out as Elm Grove, on the roadbed of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s original line to the west (we saw its massive original headquarters building and station, now occupied by Northern West Virginia Community College), passing over a stone arch bridge and through a tunnel, with pizza for supper. The return to Pittsburgh passed by the amazing stone S-Bridge along U.S. 40, the original National Road from Cumberland, Maryland to Wheeling, which opened up the Midwest.

Games Night for May was held outdoors. Then came the final Pilgrims event, at independent Grace Lutheran Church on Troy Hill; Pilgrims and Mileposters joined to put on a play titled “Fruit for Thought,” about the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives.

Mileposters News 4-11

The Mileposters scheduled two roller skating events, on March 26 and April 9, at the Neville Roller Drome, to support victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, through Lutheran World Relief and Human Care. A total of ten skaters participated, completing 1,400 laps on the floor. Following each event there was a time of fellowship at a fast food restaurant along Ohio River Boulevard. Three donations have already been received; the Mileposters will prepare and send appeal letters to other potential donors. The staggering disaster in Japan leaves 25,000 dead, at minimum, and nearly 500,000 homeless. The LCMS has as its partner the Japan Lutheran Church, and that body has been working with Japan Lutheran Emergency Relief to meet the needs of the people there. Because of a longtime relationship with author Frederic Durbin, a graduate of Concordia College in River Forest, Illinois, who lived in Japan for over 20 years, the Mileposters have a special interest in this country. Durbin left Japan two days before the first earthquake hit; he is planning to make his home in Pittsburgh.

In practice sessions at Romp’N’Roll, the original Mileposters skaters met a mother and daughter preparing for competition at the four-day 25th Valley Skating Center Annual Invitational, the largest invitational artistic roller skating competition in the United States, which is held in Donora, Pennsylvania; three Mileposters skaters visited the competition on March 19 to observe the daughter’s final event. Besides U.S. contestants, there were some from Australia!

For February, the Movies Night showing was the earlier film of Martin Luther’s life. A confirmation student in the group asked a number of intelligent questions about what was going on in the movie, and found it a valuable addition to the instruction she has been receiving. She will be confirmed at St. Thomas on Palm Sunday, the first confirmand in several years. Games Night for March, in a change of pace, saw two long games of Uno, the second abandoned in favor of a conclusion with hide-and-seek. By request, the March movie was a live taping of a show by Taylor Mason, Christian ventriloquist, with Paco the Pig, Sumo, and Colonel Corn. Movies Night for April featured the Veggie Tales Easter movie, which contrasts Christian spiritual values with the worldly thirst for wealth through technology and commerce. Movie offerings on into the summer will include both traditional fare like Shirley Temple as well as challenging films like In Search of Noah’s Ark. Games Night will soon be moving outdoors for the summer season.

In early April, Mileposters, working with the Pilgrims, of Grace Lutheran Church on Troy Hill, prepared and delivered potted plants to the residents of Canterbury Place nursing home in Bloomfield.

Outdoors as well is the start of the 2011 tandem cycling season, with first rides on new trails as well as newly-opened segments of the Great Allegheny Passage; one of these, passing underneath the Rankin Bridge, was the location of the first Mileposters ride for the year. It connects the Waterfront section with the stretch on the bluff below Kennywood, which must be reached by long bridges on either end, to cross multiple railroad tracks.

The connection on the far end, at Duquesne, has not yet been opened, nor the part through Sandcastle. The hope is that the entire Passage will be open, all the way to the Point, before the end of the year.

During the season, new riders are expected, and a new aluminum mountain tandem. This year’s big ride is from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, and training for the event will be far easier than before, because of extensive roller-skating sessions during the winter (it has long been recognized that cycling and roller skating make for an excellent cross-training situation). Highlights of the ride will be crossing Salisbury Viaduct, 1,908 feet long, near Meyersdale, the climb toward the Eastern Continental Divide, elevation 2,392 feet, passing through Big Savage Tunnel, 3,294 feet long, and the descent of 1,763 feet in elevation from the Divide into Cumberland. Efforts like this will continue to be directed toward the support of PALM and other LCMS ministries.

Mileposters News 3-11

Since as I write this it is already late April, it is necessarily only a “placeholder” post. We’ve been doing a lot of roller skating, and even attended a national roller skating competition, as observers. The first bike ride of the season was an exploration of a newly-opened (and frustratingly short) segment of the Steel Valley Trail (part of the Great Allegheny Passage). For the full story, see the April post.