Besides the potholes, there was so much loose gravel and garbage that it felt like we were on a slalom ski course. To make matters worse, coal trucks whizzed by, kicking up the gravel and leaving a trail of coal dust from the back of their trucks. I was wearing a yellow jersey and by mid-day, my shirt was black from all the soot in the air. I don't even want to think about what my lungs looked like.

At one point, I was flying down a hill when I hit a pot hole. I rode over it so fast and hard that my trailer lifted off the ground and bounced a little behind me. Soon after, my bike began to wobble. I pulled over to tighten all of my wheels, making sure my trailer was still strongly fastened to my back wheel. It didn't help. The wobbling didn't disappear. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I kept riding. A couple of miles later, when Alex was riding right behind me, he told me to pull over. He got off his bike and walked up to my trailer to examine my wheel. Apparently, when I hit that big pothole, my trailer tire split causing my tube to bubble and bulge. Not being near a bike shop to get a new tire (I'm carrying a spare bike tire, but not a spare trailer tire), I let some air out, alleviating the bulge, and began to ride cautiously to Bear Lake. Fortunately, my tire didn't seem to get any worse, but having a torn tire left me very susceptible to getting a flat.

Just past Wilkes-Barre is the longest climb I've had since the Rockies. The Poconos aren't nearly as high as the Rockies or the Alleghanies, but since we were at such a low elevation, the climb into them was rather imposing. The good news is, the engineers who built the road into the mountains had a little sympathy for bikers, so the grade was around 6 to 7 percent. Tough, but not impossible.