Biking Across the U.S (hopefully)
Racoon Creek Park, PA - Lisbon, OH 41
Yikes, it was a painful 40 miles. I kept turning on Google map's terrain view to see how bad the next hill would be. But, I have zero clue how to read a terrain map... so really I just turned my music up and put the bike in some lower gears. Thankfully, because I am such a strapping young buck, I only had to put it in granny gear a couple times. Fingers crossed I'm out of the Appalachians/valley regions for good after tomorrow. Have you ever watched two Star Wars movies, drank coffee all day, gotten a tour of an entire Ohio county, AND baked oatmeal raisin cookies all in one day? Well this dude has. I stayed with Sally, a retired school bus driver who makes woven cane chairs as a side biz. Once the Doppler radar showed a full day of rain and thunderstorms she graciously let me stay another day, dry and inside. Pretty perfect way to spend the day with some tired legs.
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Connellsville - Racoon Creek Park 85
Holy hecking heafty hilly hills. My legs are pretty shot. The day was a pretty pretty hot and a big blur. On other long trips I'd have fantasies of if food - just plates of steak, pasta, or pasteries. Now I'm occupied by images of the flats along Lake Erie and the leveled roads of Michigan. I still have another two days of north-westish travel before I can head due west. Even the road up to Racoon Creek State Park was a mile climb. And I hate raccoons... if I see one I'm going to slap it in the face. Just kidding, I'm going to hide in my tent and zip it up real tight. Frostburg - Connellsville 75
Didn't tend to my rainfly very well since it wasn't supposed to rain overnight... which it did, so woke up to some wet gear. I guess my bike got an extra cleaning. From yesterday into this morning the climb was a steady gain, thankfully spread out over many miles. It still wasn't super fun. Whenever I had something hard, difficult, or stressful to do my mom would say 'you just gotta do it'. I know it sounds like the Nike slogan, but she meant it as; whatever is facing you, just get it done. You know you have to do it and there's no other choice. That's how I look at these hills... just gotta do them. Since the start of the C&O trail and the GAP trail I've seen a billion animals. Turtles, snakes, rabbits, deer, turkey, badgers, peacocks (don't know why), chipmunks, cats, probs a million other wildlife... and now a bear. I'd just gotten past the marker for the Mason-Dixon Line and saw a silhouette come on the trail. First thoughts were 'that's a big dude'. When I realized it was a bear I thankfully had a little bit of distance, so I turned my bike in the other direction in case it charged or something. I only saw half of The Revenant, but my guess is the second half wasn't him and the bear becoming friends. I then just started singing at the top of my lungs, because that's the advice my dad gave when we were kids. Or it was just his ploy to get me to do something instead of sitting in the middle of the trail asking to be carried. The bear came back on the trail and stared at me for a couple seconds, then went back into the woods. I was singing Rocky Racoon by the Beatles, so I guess the bear just has bad taste in music. Or maybe he isn't cultured, which I imagine would be hard to be if you lived in the woods. I sped by the spot where I saw it as fast as I could, and my riding shorts were still dry. Pretty awesome day overall. Sunny and right by the Youghiogheny River. Passed over probably a million bridges and through half a million tunnels. Great day overall and they have some hiker/biker camping shelters in Connellsville park. Sweet deal. Cumberland - Frostburg 17
Hotel rooms are the best, and this one had a continental breakfast which was amazing. Not necessarily the food, but the fact that there's as much of it as you want. I totally grabbed stuff for later. The rain continued in the morning, and for whatever reason they let me have a late checkout of 2pm. So with a ton of time to kill until the rain let off, I decided it'd be a good idea to clean my bike... in the hotel shower. Makes sense right? Everything gets washed down. Nope. Not only was there three days of mud caked on the whole thing from the rough trail, every bike has a ton of chain grease that gets all over everything. So after the initial mud got washed down I was left with a plastic tub covered in chain lube that won't come off with a towel. So of course I was freaking out about getting charged to replace the whole tub. I spent the next half hour using my pot scraper soaked in chain degreaser with intermittent shower flushes to get it all out, and it still wasn't perfect. But no call from the Ramada yet. Once the rain let off I made a meager 17 mile uphill trek to Frostburg, MD. It was a steepish climb and will continue to be for a handful more miles, my legs were beat from the last two days, and the next camping spot wasn't for another 30~ miles. Before my last trips my mom would tell me to be smart and be safe. I've proven not to always be the former... so I guess I'll be the later and call it a short day. Best part about the town is a $5 all you can eat pizza place. Hancock - Cumberland 65ish
I've slipped into survival mode a little bit. Last summer it took at least a couple weeks to get to this point, now it might just be ingrained in me on long trips like this. I started wearing my uv bandana around my face to keep the the sun off, so I look like some sort of stupid biker bandit... and I smell exactly how you think someone would after biking for a weekish without laundry and substantial showers. I was originally avoiding the water pumps for hiker/bikers along the trail since it's just the Potomac with some iodine in it (I hope a little filtered), but now I've probably consumed a bajillion gallons of it. I also resorted to peanut butter sandwiches, which will become a staple of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Halfway through the ride I reached Paw Paw tunnel, which is supposed to be the prettiest and most visited site of the trail. But it was closed. The whole tunnel, closed. And they build tunnels through the side of a mountain so you don't have to go up and over it. But that's exactly what NPS made all people using the trail do... lug loaded bikes up a flipping mountain on a hiking trail, then back down. I love the national parks service, but not this day. I dropped multiple F bombs myself. The second half of the ride went by quick, not because the trail got better, but because a storm was coming overnight and into the morning which meant HOTEL ROOM! I pulled into Cumberland and went to the local bike shop that graciously let me use their computer to book a place and bam, I had a roof over my head and a pretty hard/uncomfortable mattress under me. And there was a washer/dryer right next to my room. Phenomenal sleep. F bombing amazing. Leesburg - Hancock 85
Last night, before nonmurderous Ed and I were going to turn in, this guy lugging a trailer behind a mountain bike screamed into the campsite. Being the nice dude I am, I went over to talk to him, and he proceeded to drop the F bomb countless times. I like the F bomb as much as the next person, but after every other is a little much. I turn in early to be woken by sweary mcswearerson at 3:30 in the morning banging the outhouse door open and closed... and talking/laughing with some other guy who walked up to the campsite at some point. At one point they were talking about the race war down in Mississippi.... and I really didn't want to stick around to find out which end he was on. The early day meant riding with less humidity, so I crushed the first couple handful of miles. And by crushed I mean at a relatively ok pace. The Chesapeake and Ohio towpath is slowly killing my bike with its huge mud puddles and loose gravel. It'll be a miracle if I make it to Cumberland where it turns 'nice'. First town I got to was Harpers Ferry, where John Brown got got trying lead an armed insurrection against slavery. Then hopped off the trail for 15ish miles to follow the historic 'Civil War Heritage Trail'... which was pretty perfect because I haven't read a single historical plaque I've passed by. First, I hate reading, and second, if I read everyone I'd be dismounting waaay too often. So this trail forced me to go by Antietam, the bloodiest battle America saw during the civil war - but a decisive Union victory leading to Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. I totally just Wikipediad that. My brother was a total civil war nerd growing up... but I never really cared, so instead I just walked around the battlefield and looked at the cannons. I felt like the $5 museum charge was too steep for just a bunch of reading. Heard some talk of a storm coming Sunday or Monday... so kept moving so I could be a days ride from Cumberland before this trail becomes a mess. Found a campsite and got in my tent/threw in ear plugs because I was the only camper there, and the woods can be a touch unnerving at night. North of Richmond - Fredericksburg - C&O 70
Woke up at the A crack of dawn again to get some miles in before the soaking humidity set in. Which was good, because only 30ish miles into the ride o took a little spill over pothole I didn't see... to my credit it was kind of dark. Bent derailleur hanger, nice dude with a pickup truck, and one commuter train later and I was back on the road... in Washington D.C. Not exactly what I wanted, but that was the only place with my hanger in the area. On the super plus side I got to start out on the C&O Canal path that links up with another trail and will run all the way to Pittsburgh. On the downside, it'll put me too far north to go through Millwood and see my dad who's playing music with a bunch of other like-minded folk for the week. Bummer. Riding through D.C was semi terrifying, and some cop in front of the White House yelled at me for abandoning my bike to take a picture. Really, it just sounds more authoritarian that way... he said please. The C&O trail was a pretty scenic ride for the first half, its right along an old canal system on one side and the shallow Potomac with exposed rocks and small falls on the other. And turtles, I saw like 85 turtles. The trail got a little dicey after that with big washouts, rocks, and mud tracks. I wish I had changed out my tires for larger ones... but who would've thought every road/trail wouldn't be pristine, newly formed pavement? Camping at a hiker/biker spot along the trail with some dude named Ed. I don't think he'll murder me. Chickahominy park to north Richmond - 60
I guess every bird in Virginia likes getting up at 5am to start being jerk faces. Which made it good to hit the road early because, holy crap I'm out of shape. Even though I didn't pack much at all it felt like I was lugging a case of bricks after a couple miles. I definitely should have done some training... it's too late now. Buuut I did passed like 4 retired dudes on the trail, so at least there's that. The ride into Richmond was pretty easy. Passed a ton of historic stuff on my way in... a couple battlefields, courthouses, and plantations. None of them warranted a photo though. I was too busy trying to get my legs back. Made it to the place I'm crashing for the night pretty early since originally they were calling for a storm. Shower, food, bed. Yorktown to Chicahominy Park - 30
Leg one of the journey over with! I got up at the butt-crack of dawn (had a teacher once who didn't appreciate that phrase... told him it was better than the alternative, he didn't like that either) to get everything finalized before jumping in the car at 8am-ish. Somehow I convinced my buddy Ray to give me a lift out to Yorktown, VA to start this whole thing. When you put two studs like us in a car together for three hours, naturally, conversations go to the ramifications of time travel and historical battles. We're both super cool. We bummed around the beach of Yorktown and their used bookstore before snapping a few pics of me ceremonially dipping the back wheel in the Atlantic... and then fully loaded it. I didn't want sand all over my nice new panniers (just kidding I was just being lazy). Ray got back in the car and and did my first easy miles to my campsite for the night. Right in time for a ginormous storm to blow in and make me hide out in the bathroom until it was over. Cool part of it was I met a father/daughter team of 'extreme amusement parkers' who were at the campsite to hit up Busch gardens everyday for a week. Their advice: Get there when the park opens and head to the back, working your way to the entrance. Ride rides when people are eating and eat when people ride rides. Always go left... most people are right handed so naturally turn to their right, so therefor do the opposite (not sure about this one but I like it). |
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