3 hrs, 2 kms

Actual date: Oct 14, 2015

The seemingly insignificant town of Duncansville is actually the site of one of my biggest Parkbench Tour misadventures to date . Not since my Egypt disaster has my journey been brought to such a grinding halt.

Almost 6 months ago I was planning on a full 2 days of town hopping through Cambria county on my way to Johnstown--excited to finally get to an area with towns packed closely together, perhaps allowing for some 5-7 town days.

Then... the transmission went out on a vehicle I had just bought 3 months before. To make the story short... I ended up junking the car and riding/pushing my bicycle 141 kilometers home through the mountains.

It was a painful experience... but I figured something like this was going to happen eventually... riding all over the countryside in an old, cheap vehicle. I decided to take this as a sign that I needed to take a break from my Parkbench Tour for a while and just focus on making money.

This lull in my journey lasted 3 months... Then it took off with a bang again with trip to Central America .

... And now, 2 1/2 months after that, I'm ready to come back and pick up where I left off.

I don't tarry in Duncansville though... I do a quick parkbench session in front of a couple of French colonial style buildings that give the town a touch of class...

I quickly head up route 22 east... pausing at the Shrine of Catherine of Siena shrine, which has a meditative walking area past various statues of Jesus, Mary and the disciples.

Interesting to see two very different towns of my journey linked in this way. In 2013 I parkbenched Siena proper--right during the celebration of their famous horserace-in-the-piazza.

I decide to google St Catherine to see if I missed anything interesting about her. Turns out I did. It turns out that in Siena, her head is on display. After she died in Rome, folks from her hometown of Siena wanted her body, but it was too big to smuggle out, so they settled for just the head. As the story goes, when the guards stopped them and checked the bag all they saw were rose petals. Then later the head rematerialized, and can still be seen today at the basilica in Siena.

Damn! I missed it!

I read further about her life. In one of her writings, she described her "mystical marriage" with Jesus in which she received a ring of skin from him... his foreskin...

Strange times... them 1300s...

Actual date: Oct 14, 2015