Wellsburg to Wheeling WV along the Ohio

11/19/11 46m 55F

I had the occasion today to deliver a youngster to Franciscan University in Stuebenville, Ohio, and I had about six hours until it was time to retrieve the yute. Since it was 55F I decided to ride my bike along the Wheeling Heritage Trails, which includes the Ohio River Trail and the Wheeling Creek Trail.

Before I could ride, I needed to repair the flat rear tire that I discovered on Friday. I had indications of a slow leak, but as long as I pumped it every few days I was able to evade the issue. On Friday, after five days of no riding, it was flat as a pancake.

I have had too many flats lately. I average one flat (and one fall) every 500 miles, but I'm having more flats per mile this year than in recent years. I've got good tires, but I've recently put some gouges into both tires, and they've both got a few boot-kludges inside of them.

I had stopped at REI and purchased some tire liners and a Slime-filled inner tube.

I would love to get through the winter with my present tires, and more than that I would love to change my recent pattern of changing flats in adverse weather. I installed the tire liner and new tube in a parking lot and then made ready to commence the ride.





It's a very nice trail that passed through both industrial areas and natural scenes. I saw a few people on the trail north of Wheeling, and then in the city boundaries there were quite a few people.

Today's "Most Photogenic" award goes to Cooper The Dog; second honors to his driver for the kicky Bern Helmet.


When you start on the north end of the trail in Wellsburg, you'll see a circle marked on the pavement labeled "Sun". They've used the trail to present a scale model of the solar system, and as you travel south you pass a marker for each planet. It's an interesting way of demonstrating the tremendous distances of the outer planets as compared to the inner planets.

I had a headwind on the first leg going south. I continued past Wheeling to the southern trailhead in South Wheeling, then turned north and took the Wheeling Creek Trail a few miles to the east. The Wheeling Creek Trail involves a few blocks of marked bike lanes on city streets; they've done a very good job of it. There's a cool viaduct and a lit tunnel as the trail climbs away from the river, and the WCT ends at a nicely built skateboard park.

All the various trail sections are well marked, easy to follow, and well maintained. There's not many mile markers, but there are signs for restrooms and food, and signs indicating the local emergency contact phone number.

I wish I knew more about bridges, because this ride takes you by several generations of bridge designs - old, old bridges, some restrung with modern cable, 1945-ish bridges, modern wishbone bridges.

My last hour on the trail was after sunset, which is probably a technical violation of trail rules but I think there may be a waiver for veterans. It does get very dark along the trail.

I have the impression that my tire, with the tire liner and the Slime-tube, takes a bit more effort to accelerate, and tends to slow down just a little bit faster. Or it may be that my legs were dodgy after a five-day layoff.

This was a very nice ride on a great paved trail, and it was good to be out on the bike again.

11/11/19 Week 43

this week: 78 miles

[4th quarter: 843 miles]

2011: 4109 miles

South Shore Riverfront Park at Southside Works

3/29/11 #233
26.7 miles road 40F

Had a very nice ride, went out to a Starbucks, treated myself to a slice of pound cake and a hot chocolate, returned home at 8pm in the dark.

How cool is this? The day after I post about the very way cool new development at Southside works, bemoaning that I don't have a photo of it, the Post Gazette provides one.



You'll see the rear of HofbrauHaus and the American Eagle campus above the trail.

The accompanying article, Donation received for riverfront park at Southside Works by Diana Nelson Jones, says this:

Riverlife has received a $50,000 donation from American Eagle Outfitters toward completion of the South Shore Riverfront Park, an approximately 3.2 acre amenity that links to the trail network on two levels and includes a promenade, a plaza and a 2,000 seat amphitheater.

The hillside will be built with a series of switchback ramps and terraces that eventually will link to a public marina. A new bulkhead wall will provide tie-ups for large and small boats.

The upper portions of the project -- behind the Hoffbrau House in Southside Works -- will be open this spring, said Stephan Bontrager, spokesman for Riverlife. It is a collaboration between the city, the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Southside Local Development Corp. and the Soffer Organization.

I am a bit amused at the revisionist naming - we used to have NorthSide and SouthSide, now we have NorthShore and South Shore, but if they're willing to build a trail on it they can call it the Monongahela Riviera.

This picture, by the PostGazette's Darrell Sapp, shows the new Riverside Trail surface above the rmains of the J&L Pumphouse:

Southside Works 2011 Bike Trail

3/28/11 #237
27.8 miles 34F

Had an excellent ride today. Started in South Oakland, road the Jail Trail to the Penitentiary Trail, out along the Riverside Trail to Millvale. At the end of the trail in Millvale I had planned on stopping for a snack at Pamela's Pancakes, because every great ride needs a great food stop. Unfortunately, I got there at 4.30 and Pamela's closes at 4pm, so that foodventure will have to wait for another day and another blog post.

Back along the Riverside Trail, out on Herr's Island, back to the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, Ft. Pitt bridge, and the Station Square and Southside Trails.

The transition from the Southside Trail to the Baldwin Borough Trail, and specifically the section between Southside Works and the Hot Metal Bridge, has always puzzled me. Here's a picture from Google Maps, with a few key landmarks - The HofbrauHaus, REI, and the American Eagle building marked for orientation.



The trail designers have done so well in so many ways, but the current "Tunnel Park" segment seems non-intuitive and somewhat neglected. From the ground-level perspective, even the name Tunnel Park hasn't made sense, at least until I learned there's a train tunnel under there. This picture shows the path of the train tracks at either end of Tunnel Park.


This picture depicts the bicycle trails as routed in 2010, which really do leave bicyclists to fend for themselves. I've commented before that I don't know how an itinerant bicyclist manages to find their way through there, and it doesn't surprise me that the folks at American Eagle's corporate campus are finding bicycles riding on their sidewalks.

Today's Discovery

Today on my ride, I happened to ride to the back of the HofbrauHaus plaza just to see what the river looked like from there. Below the HofbrauHaus is a busy construction scene, building what looks like a magnificent trail section. It's breathtaking, quite dramatic. It seems like this will be the trail route from the Hot Metal Bridge along the Monongahela, past American Eagle and HofbrauHaus. This picture shows the apparent route of the future trail:


I have thought that the new Millvale connector trail might be the most elegant trail design in the area, and I have looked forward to what promises to be a very sophisticated design on the Mon Wharf Trail, connecting the Smithfield Street Bridge to Point State Park. The trail design along the river at Southside Works beats them hands down, it's very impressive.