Ride Wishlist

My Ride Wishlist

This page just has a list of interesting trails and bike routes I’d love to complete before I die. Some of them are more doable than others given my current situation as a college student in Pittsburgh, but hopefully I’ll eventually get around to doing all of these.

First, some rides that are (relatively) close to Pittsburgh and could theoretically be done before college graduation:

  • It’s slowly becoming a goal of mine to visit all of the major bike trails in the Pittsburgh area before I graduate. I’ve been fortunate enough to ride a lot of them already, but a few I’m yet to see include:
    • The Westmoreland Heritage Trail, an 18-mile trail East of Pittsburgh
    • The West Penn Trail, a 14-miler that seems to serve as an extension to the Westmoreland Heritage Trail
    • The Armstrong Trail, a 33-mile trail through Armstrong County, though it’s probably a bit far to do in a day-ride
    • The 46-mile Ghost Town Trail in the far eastern reaches of what I can even begin to consider as “around Pittsburgh”
  • I’d love to bike up Mt. Washington at some point, even with however many breaks I would need to do so.
  • I’ve visited Ohiopyle before, but I would love to do an out-and-back ride where I can spend a full day hiking or rafting there.
  • A ride from Pittsburgh to Toledo, Ohio via Cleveland - Something about riding in Ohio has spoken to me for months now (I think it’s that Ohio is just reachable from Pittsburgh while still being a great distance away), and a route between these two cities would be particularly easy logistically.
  • Ohio to Erie Trail - The closest uber-long trail to Pittsburgh (besides the Great Allegheny Passage, of course). The trail stretches over 300 miles from Cincinatti to Cleveland, and would make a great successor trip to my GAP ride if not for how hard it is to get to Cincinatti with a bike and without a car.

Now, some truly far-out bucket list rides:

  • Katy Trail - Billed as the longest rail trail in the United States, stretching across Missouri from Kansas City to St. Louis.
  • Empire State Trail - A trail network spanning the width and height of New York State. I’d love to do the section between Buffalo and Albany in particular.
  • Cowboy Trail - A nearly 200 mile trail in northern Nebraska. This one isn’t quite as long as some of the others here, but something about biking across the Great Plains really speaks to me.
  • Some sort of ride on the Pacific Coast - I’ve seen truly beautiful pictures of the highways there and I think a bikepacking trip between two western ciites (San Francisco and L.A, Portland and Seattle, etc.) would be amazing.
  • Along the Florida Keys (think Key West to Miami) - Again, a beautiful area I wouldn’t mind exploring.
  • This one’s particularly far out, but it’s been a dream of mine to bike across the United States from coast to coast. I could even string together several of the rides above on a single trip, killing an arbitrarily large number of birds with one stone.