A Very Yinzer Spring Break

I was sitting on my apartment couch writing a blog post, watching some TV, and listening to the maintenance worker in my bathroom installing some new drywall.

He was using a drill, and then all of a sudden, I heard gushing water and a loud "Oh f*ck!" coming from my bathroom.

Apparently he accidentally drilled into a water pipe in my ceiling and it burst. To make matters worse, it took him and other maintenance guys almost an hour (seriously, almost an hour) to find the water shut-off for the house. By the time they got the water shut off, there was water spewing out of a light fixture in my hallway and dripping into my bedroom through the ceiling.

Opinion: No Backhoes in the Backcountry

Loose rocks clatter against my steel frame and mountain laurels scrape my arms as I weave my bike down a steep rocky chute on Wildcat Gap Trail. It's a mountain biking trail in Rothrock State Forest in central Pennsylvania, although you might not guess that from the looks of it. There are no berms. There are no jumps. In fact, there are barely any turns. For the most part, it's extremely steep and points straight down the mountain - a trail style known as a fall line trail.

Many trails in Rothrock State Forest share a similar background. They began as a logging access road; a way for loggers to access the forest and remove the harvested timber. Many of these access roads were carved as early as the late 1800s, and after falling into dis-use, they began to be converted to trails for recreational use. Over time, the wide logging paths devolve back into singletrack.