The Mason-Dixon 500

PPRAC rides offer several attractions to riders—some great scenery, a physical challenge, and meaningful purpose. The 2011 ride offers a fourth—a field trip.

You’ll begin in coal and timber country, reach the highest location in Pennsylvania, overnight in a canal and railroad town, glimpse the Shenandoah Valley, crisscross America’s most famous boundary, visit a Civil War battlefield, and admire farms of “plain folks.” This field trip will not require a ride in a yellow school bus or a permission slip from your parents. The only requirements are your bike and, of course, strong legs.

Here’s what to expect on ride XV on the way to raising $150,000.

Elkins, West Virginia, in the heart of the Allegheny Plateau, once a center of coal mining and lumbering, will be the starting point of the ride. There's a reason for the mountainous backdrop in the PPRAC logo. Riders will pedal north through an uneven terrain that is not for flatlanders. The destination is Morgantown, home of West Virginia University, a college town that will provide a contrast to the remote miles of morning roadway.

Tuesday’s goal is a ride to the top of Pennsylvania: Mt. Davis, the state’s highest elevation, though at a mere 3213 feet you won’t be riding “into thin air.” Crossing the Mason-Dixon line a second time, the route now turns south toward Cumberland, MD, endpoint of the C & O Canal, but an intermediate point on the railroad made famous by Monopoly, the B & O. Not only will this be a “high” day, it may be a long one…a century long.

Next is a day of ridges and valleys as you ride south and east, arriving, thanks to an erratic state boundary, in West Virginia! Martinsburg, at the northern end of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, is the halfway point of the 2011 PPRAC.

The next morning you’ll wake up happy knowing that the toughest days of climbing are behind you. The route now heads north toward Hagerstown and beyond, to a final crossing of that well-known line (this is the “Mason-Dixon 500”). Gettysburg’s fields, woods, and rocks once again quietly await visitors from the south, and make for a fine side-trip on the way to the chips and pretzels of Hanover, PA.

The Perimeter Ride has crossed the Susquenhanna at numerous places, but perhaps none as wide as Thursday’s ride into Columbia. From there the route skirts the rich fields of northern Lancaster County, where careful riding will be the order of the day because of Amish buggies, wagons, scooters, and, yes, bicycles. The final night on the road will be in the college environs of Myerstown (or another town along U.S. 422).

Home to family and friends in Palmerton will be everyone’s goal on the shortest day of the ride, but not necessarily the easiest. Somehow, somewhere you’ll have to climb over or slip past one more ridge, Blue Mountain.
Five hundred and more miles of effort, friendship, and common cause through a sampler of this country’s remarkable geography and history are your challenge and reward..

2011 PPRAC Route (subject to change)

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