Delaware Water Gap

Updated: Dec 3, 2022

Delaware Water Gap (DWG) is a little trail town on the Appalachian Trail. The entire town caters to hikers passing through and most everyone you see in town is connected to the Trail somehow. As a biker, I was clearly an outlier and was looked at as if I had an extra eye in the middle of my forehead. Aside from the curious stares my bike attracted, the folks in town were pleasant. I started the day having breakfast with my cousin Valerie and her daughter Lily. It was great to see them both. I believe that was the first time I’ve seen Val in the past 20 years (at least) that didn’t involve a funeral. It was nice to be able to catch up and not talk about the dearly departed!

The DWG is also a National Recreation Area that stretches for 40 or so miles on both sides of the river and is known around here for its hiking trails, river access and a bit of history thrown in. It is not known for the high quality of its roads. What started out as an annoyance last night with a road closure about two miles from the end of my ride, developed into a full-on pain in the ass today. I don’t mean the kind I experienced early on in this journey. I’m referring to the sort that we are all familiar with. The main passage (it was more than a trail but only loosely resembled a road) was called Old Mine Road. I spent about 30 miles on this “road”. The trouble began early. After crossing back into New Jersey and making my way onto Old Mine Rd., I was greeted by a sign that said one-lane road and there was one of those traffic lights in the middle of nowhere so you could wait for oncoming traffic to pass. Of course the light was red so I dutifully waited, by myself for a minute…then another…and another. I had no idea how long the one-lane stretch was but exactly zero cars had come through. Having brazenly ridden down the closed road yesterday, lifting my bike over the barrier at the far end, I was on a roll and felt like I should risk it again. I went past the light, and was about a quarter mile until I got to the light on the other side. That light was also red and there was still no one waiting to pass. I expect I would still be waiting there for the light to turn green. From there, it was straight to survival mode. When I first turned onto Old Mine Road, I assumed they were referring to some sort of copper or other precious metal mine. After spending the next couple hours carefully, but not always successfully, picking my away around potholes, broken pavement, loose gravel, dead porcupines, and downed branches, I now believe the reference is to a minefield where someone found a bunch of old land mines and detonated them all over the road. To complicate things just a little bit more, it was overcast and had rained either last night or early this morning. So the road was wet in parts, but difficult to see because of the poor light. The nice thing about this road was that there was no traffic - as in I was passed by 4 vehicles going my direction in nearly 3 hours. There were perhaps a dozen going the other way. This allowed me to spend way more time than I would normally be comfortable with in the oncoming lane, because it seemed like there were more chunks of uninterrupted pavement over there. It was actually would be a really nice ride if the road quality was better. There were lots of hills, including several 1st gear testers but I I enjoy the downhills enough that I didn’t mind. There are a few things that riders do mind, though. I’ve documented to death the rumble strips and roadkill. The debris in the bike lanes (a mattress would be the strangest thing I’ve had to avoid so far) and loose gravel. As disappointments go, stop signs or railroad tracks at the bottom of a downhill are total buzzkills, mostly because they’re usually followed by an uphill and you just lost all your momentum. As true life-threatening or at least bike-threatening problems though, nothing is worse than potholes. After working up the hills and starting down the other side, there were countless times today where I was on full brakes, wasting a beautiful downhill, because I had to make sure my bike and I didn’t disappear into a massive chunk of missing pavement. Just as bad are the smaller ones that were filled with water from the rain so you couldn’t tell if it was just a puddle. Which brings me to perhaps the most embarrassing moment of the trip so far. About 25 miles onto this road, I got the call - from nature. As there was no indication of any sort of rest facility, I decided to just use the vast outdoors. Like I said, there was no traffic on the road so I leaned my bike up against a telephone pole and answered the call. You know what happens next. Vehicles 3 AND 4 of the ride are coming down the road. I quickly packed up and was standing there pretending like I was just taking a rest. I did not realize that where I had stopped was just next to a handful of those water-filled potholes. I don’t know if those two pickups knew what I was doing before they came around the corner but both of them took the opportunity to hit ALL of those potholes and completely sprayed me, my bike and my bags with a gallon or so of muddy water. I think the odds of vehicles coming by at that exact moment were less than the odds of me running headlong into a moose.