Shoppe Along the Way, Burgettstown

Fri Jan6, 2017 17m
mtd:32 ytd:32

Today was cold but (following on my previous post) I had a higher likelihood of dressing successfully for 22F as opposed to 45F.

Parked at the Panhandle-Montour Connector and rode west on the Panhandle to Burgettstown, thinking I would go to Walden Family Restaurant, get some chow and warm up, and reverse. Discerning humans know that whenever a story begins with "what I was thinking was...", the original path will not come to pass.

Walden's was closed when I arrived, as the sign listing their hours clearly states. But now I was kind of in a jam because it was VFC (very f'ing cold) and I really needed to warm up before reversing. So I tried the door at the newly opened Shoppe Along The Way, a general store on the Panhandle Trail which was open, heated, and smelled like coffee.

Very nice people. I'll be back there again. I think they're in a perfect spot once springtime gets here. A fair amount of cross-country riders use the Panhandle to get to the Montour Trail, to get to the GAP Trail, to get to DC and eventually Yorktown, Virginia which generally is understood to mean the East Coast. I think The Shoppe Along The Way is in a good position.

But more than anything, I'm grateful that a business that was staring at closing time on a slow day, extended hospitality to a cold transient who was hoping to warm up.

The ride back was great. No wind, fortunately. It was dark by the time I was strapping the ECR onto the bike rack.