Two Wheels, Few Bags

  This is a loop around Raystown lake... taking a pretty long way! The loop passes through a very wide variety of sceneries, from the Mennonite farms of Woodbury, to plenty of doubletrack, and to the remote singletrack on the Eastern shore of Raystown lake. A good starting point for this route is the parking at the trailhead of the Lower Trail, which is less than 2 h from Pittsburgh.  There are plenty of camping options around the lake, many of which are marked on the map. The best seasons to ride this loop are spring and fall. In winter there will be very often snow on the peaks; in summer the lake gets busy with tourists. This route follows all the rideable parts of the Terrace Mountain Trail (TMT), a 26-mile hiking/biking trail along the eastern shore of Raystown lake. There are 6 miles of rough singletrack along the TMT, all concentrated on the north shore of the lake after the "wooden shelter" (see map). The singletrack can be bypassed by continuing straight on John Bum

Sometimes, it's not about the roads themselves, but about what lies under them... oil. Over 150 miles of dirt roads have been built in the Allegheny Nation Forest to reach the oil reserves underneath. The forest is dotted with oil wells, pumpjacks, piping and valves, storage tanks, and oil distribution buildings. The pumps are small, perhaps 6 to 10 feet tall, unlike the majestic ones you may see in the southern states. In any case with all the dirt roads connecting these facilities, the possibilities for bikepacking are endless: It was fun to spend two days trying to not get lost along the twisted roads that connect the wells. Both Francesca and I are chemists; for this reason we are both attracted and repulsed by the power of the black gold. It powers the world and it is used to build many materials, including monomers and plastic. For our job, we both use and manipulate materials derived from petroleum every day, which gives us an especially intimate relationship with it. I mean