hills and bike

taretum, brackenridge and natrona were three towns in the valley along the Allegheny river with a steel mill thrown in for good measure.  You probably could not tell one town from the other if they did not have names.  Since they were in the valley that means as you went away from the river and kept going, you would cross about 4 railroad tracks and start your way UP the rolling mountains (as opposed to the jagged glacier mountains of the Rockies.  There were three streets of great importance: Mile Lock Lane, Morgan St., and Argonne Drive.
Mile Lock Lane did not go straight down like Morgan St. did;  it kind of went in "waved" you would go down and then it would flatten out the straight again till you got to the bottom where you crossed the tracks and then toe steel mill started to your immediate left and Brackenridge was on the right.  It was probably named this because when you got tothe river was Lock and Dam #6- a series of dams to control flooding  Morgan St. Just went straight down-the was a curved path to the side and steps.  we would walk our bikes up the path to about the 10-12 block, get on Morgan St. and "ride" down.  Like Mile Lock Lane, Once the bike started you stood on the brakes(no hand brakes) and hoped for two things: that there was no trains going across the tracks and that your bike would not reach "critical speed," which means all moving vehicles from bikes to airplanes could not go over their designed top speed.. If it did, it would start vibrating like crazy and if you didn't slow down the bike (or airplane), it would start shaking like crazy until it completely fell apart.  Not a good thing. From my experience a bike could not go down the hills more than 75-80 miles per hour.  We would keep going down the streets till we got to tired of walking our bikes up.  The other "hill" I failed to mention was the down ramp off of the Tarentum bridge.  I borrowed a rich kid's English Racer(brand) which is more like the bikes today and it had a speedometer- as it approached 80mph the whole dang thing started to vibrate and I was sure it would disintegrate! I'll have a lot more to say about Argonne Dr, as it had a less severe pitch and was more parallel with the river(but not close.)  Half way down, Argonne had a pipe coming out of the mountain side with ice cold, pure spring water. 24/7 there were always cars filling their jugs and they had to put a sign up limiting 5 gallons a visit since there was at least3 cars behind you!   Morning and night