I'm BACK!

I'd be interested, Gordon.  Any before and after shots?

I have to admire someone who can lose twenty pounds, ride 710 miles in preparation, average 60 miles a day on the trip, and still live to talk about it.

Gordon, I'd love to see your stuff on FB.  Been waiting a year or so for you to answer my friend request.  I thought it was because you didn't love me.  

Congrats, Gordon---you bet I'd like top see more about it!  Glad the fall didn't take you out!  Musta been a scary deal.  Damned impressive accomplishment.

Excellent to hear that you survived!  I'll bop on over to fb and check out the pics.

What kind of bikes? Street, mountain. stingray ;-)

Nice work !!! Congrats.

Well, from the bottom to the top, above, the bikes were Cannondale "Quick" Aluminum, semi-mountain bikes that we rented from the tour organizers (I couldn't ship my bike back and forth to there for the $75 rental - it was a great deal). Don't know all the specs, but they were something like 30 speeds (3-front, 10-rear), semi-upright attitude and had what I would call an aggressive 700C X 43C semi-street tire.  

The trail was only paved for about 10% of the distance, the rest being packed gravel, sometimes 5-7 feet wide and often a pair of 16"-18" wide paths separated by a grassy strip.  It was either an old railroad bed for the C&O Railroad (west of the Eastern Continental Divide), or the towpath for the C&O Canal to the east of the Continental Divide.  It starts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and runs all the way to downtown Washington DC. 

I started this adventure just before last Christmas when I bumped into a old high school friend, Scott, at a local Christmas concert and he told me about riding the "Great Allegheny Passage" and "You used to ride bike a lot, why not come along?"  Some of you may remember me talking about my friends Scott and Robb, who both rode from San Francisco to Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 54 days back in 2010.  They did that to celebrate being 60 years old.  They're in pretty good shape for young kids, let alone 60+ year olds.  In the end, my sister in law told me:  "What have you got to lose?  DO IT!"  So the first thing I did was lose 20 pounds and, in the process, found that I'm Lactose intolerant AND sensitive to beef so my diet had to change a lot and became MUCH healthier.  

At the same time, I started walking around this end of my town, 5 to 8 miles each day and kept that up until Mid-March, when I could start riding my road bike.  Between March and June, I put 710 road miles on my bike with several trips of 60+ miles per day, knowing that we would be averaging 60 miles per day on the trip.  It was one hell of a lot of work and seemed like a drudge towards the end.  Heck, just finding places to ride to that were 30 miles away from my house was more involved than I expected, but I kept at it and was riding 4-5 days per week, sometimes more, depending on the weather.  

The toughest thing to get used to was my new pedals.  There are what are called "clip-ins", and have a special cleat that is screwed into the bottom of my biking shoes.  You line up the pedal on the shoe, apply pressure and it "clips" in, holding your foot fast so you can pull up as well as push down, thereby gaining more power from each stroke (you quickly learn to apply power in a circular motion, rather than just down).  To get out of the pedal, you twist your foot to the side and they're supposed to "clip-out" and release your foot.  Mine seem to be really tight (even though I've loosened them up a lot) and sometimes I have to work at them a bit to get them to release.  I had several instances when I was still at home when I couldn't get them to release, came to a full stop while trying and then simply fell over on my side, bike and all.  I've found this is pretty common with new users of these pedals.  Everyone tells me that newbies usually fall a few times before they get used to them......well, OK.

So, suddenly, all that was behind me and I found myself all packed, including my pedals, helmet and biking clothes, along with a bunch of diet-safe energy bars and headed for Pittsburgh.  We got there Saturday evening and caught a cab early Sunday morning for the one hour ride from our downtown hotel to the trailhead in Ohiopyle, PA, where we met up with the rest of the tour group, a total of twelve people from NJ, Upper NY state and us four from Massachusetts; Scott, Robb, Kevin and me.  The weather report was fair for Sunday, possible scattered showers on Monday, then nice weather until Thursday when one of those big green weather Blobs would be coming into the Virginia/DC area .  We met everyone else on the tour, got our bikes, got our pedals installed, saddled up and headed out from Mile Marker 347, headed for mile marker zero in Washington DC, scheduled to arrive there around noon on Friday.

Stay tuned.....

Oh.....I'm just uploading my photos from my phone to my laptop tonight, so I'll get them all organized and ready to go for tomorrow.  In the meantime, I realized that we didn't start from Ohiopyle, PA,.......we really started from Boston, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh.  Here's the starting point in Boston, then we rode the first day to get to Ohiopyle:

Dude, this is awesome. Very impressed.

I've got a few of the first day's photos tagged.  Here are the other three guys in my little group:  in the first shot, Scott's turned away, but Robb is in the middle, with Kevin on the right.  Kevin was "the kid" at only 42 years old.  He and Robb are both in the Restaurant business with three four-star eateries in the Worcester, MA, area, while Scott is a retired manufacturing guy.

I'll have a better shot of Scott in a day or so.  Scott and Robb rode cross-country back in 2010 to celebrate becoming 60 years old.  Their idea of celebrating is a little warped for some people, but it works for them........

This is the Youghohiopyle river (locally called, "The Yuck").  Not here, but elsewhere on Sunday the river was PACKED with rafters, kyakers and canoes.  I also suspect that there was some amount of adult beverages hidden on some of those rafts, even though the park rangers are on the lookout for that sort of thing.

Along the trail, we passed through Connellsville, a pretty little town which had a busy depot and business hub in the past for the coal-mining business.  This old Caboose was set up as a museum of the old railroad but I thought it was pretty cool to have a painting on the side of a biker on the trail.  The trail went by some 20 feet from this Caboose, which we sat at for about 30 minutes, waiting for the Sag Wagon to show up, until we realized we were in the wrong spot and rode another 500 yards up the trail and there it was.  We got a lot better at finding the Sag Wagon after that.

The final destination for Sunday was the Wilderness Voyageurs headquarters in Ohiopyle, PA.  They run all sorts of operations out of here:  Bike trips, rafting trips, winter cross-country skiing and snowmobiling and much more.  They're a VERY classy outfit, if anyone is looking to do this sort of thing.  They also had a well equipped and reasonably priced store where, given the rainy WX report for Monday, Kevin and I both bought decent rain jackets (complete with blinking LED tail-light) for the expected wetness the next day.  They also had BEN AND JERRY'S ICE CREAM!!!  and for lactose-intolerant me.....rainbow sherbet    

My entry for the day was:  "Made it to the first stop in one piece, kept up with everyone and even led our group for quite a few miles. First day was an "easy" 56 miles with the last 14 miles kind of uphill and we were burning along at 14 mph. Scenery was really nice along the Youghohiopyle river. Lots of river rafters to watch and the path was covered in trees like a tunnel for much of the trip with bridges across the river a number of times."

Wilderness Voyageurs also has a lodge nearby for winter sports people and they drove us up there (literally, from the river to the top of a mountain about 10 miles away) to put us up for the night.  A little primitive (it was a huge log cabin) but the food was great except that it was all beef.  I had a chat with the guides, reminded them of all the notes I put on the registration info which was done on-line and again outlined my diet problems.  Got a big, "Sorry....this won't happen again" and they made me a quadruple helping of the rice and roasted veggies to tide me over, along with two Avocados for my needed protein.  I was ok with that and let me say here; the rest of the trip was exactly to my dietary needs and they did a terrific job with absolutely amazing meals for all of us.  Rooms were clean and neat, shower water was hot, breakfast was HUGE with everything I needed and we headed out at 7:30 am for Frank Lloyd Wright's house, "Falling Water" which I'll present here tomorrow as it's getting late.  

Nite all! 

Great story, Gordon.

You may inspire some of us to try something similar - who knows?

Attaboy, Gordon! Glad you made it home safe & sound!

Well, safe anyway! 

First day highlights:  Here's a shot of a real "Railroad Man" we came upon shortly after leaving Boston on the trail.  He is made entirely of rail spikes and agreed to pose with me, Robb and Kevin.

so while we're at it, I guess I could introduce the people in our larger group.  You've met us three, so I should also introduce the guy behind the camera on a lot of these, Scott, up on his BIG BIKE:

Here are the "four guys from New York", Elliot, Peter, Harvey and Stuart.  Elliot used to manufacture appliance parts ("If you gotta washer or dishwasher made in USA, I made the pump.")  He also rode wearing a pair of headphones and listened to music.  I did too, although not often as I needed to hear what my other three guys were saying.  Peter has a bunch of car washes, gas stations, and the Ben and Jerry's store in Freeport Maine.  Harvey is an oral surgeon in Saratoga and Stuart is a doctor near Utica.

Then there's (left to right, below) Mark and Harriet (leaning) from Northern NJ, both retired teachers, Robb and Scott, Iriene and her husband Dick (third from the right) from CT, Kevin, Stuart, me, Peter, Elliot and Harvey.  None of us Spring Chickens, for sure.  My small group of four were the strongest of the group.  Elliot told me after one day that at one point we passed him "like a freight Train!"  Most people cruised along at 8-10 mph, while we powered along at 12-14 mph hour after hour.

OK, so the second day started with a ride in the van to the "Kaufman House" near Ohiopyle, PA.  The Kaufmans owned some of the largest department stores in Pittsburgh and wanted a classy weekend/vacation home away from the city.  They were pretty well off, so they commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their house and he created "Falling Water".

This home was built between 1934 and 1939 and included furnishings designed by Wright as well.  This is the most amazing home I have ever been to.  It looks as fresh and modern today as anything I have seen done lately.  It is absolutely timeless and breath-taking at the same time.

Oh, and to show you the torque advantage that Scott has over me when pedaling, well, he had a very slight height advantage, too:

Off to do errands.....continuing later today with the day two trip.

Stay tuned!

So we started the day with a side-trip to the Falling Water house (a place I would highly recommend to anyone to visit) which put our departure back three hours from 8am to about 11am.  We got back to the inter-Galactic headquarters of Wilderness Voyageurs in Ohiopyle around 10:45am and were back on the trail around 11 am.  Did I mention that it was looking kind of ominous in the weather department??  Kevin and I bought some snazzy, high-tech rain jackets at the trailhead store the day before and were all set for whatever Mother Nature could throw at us:  Gore-tex, breathable fabric, blinking LED tail lights built in, more pockets than an Edwardian Undertaker, you name it......we were ready.  At first, there weren't a lot of showers.  We always seemed to be just behind them, but that meant that we had the after-effects......mud, greasy mud, puddles and deep puddles.  Oh!  and we were now heading uphill for the entire day to get us to the Eastern Continental divide, elevation gaining from about 472 feet above sea level (asl) to 1449 feet asl at the Continental Divide.  1,000 feet of climbing, at a 2%-3% grade in about 6 hours.  "Well", said our guide, Bill, "It's a lot of climbing, but the last 17 miles is downhill on a 17% grade."  OOOOh, Boy! something to look forward to.

So we pushed off and started our usual cadence of about 78 RPM at the pedals and headed up towards the Continental Divide, into the wet and into the puddles and mud.  You quickly give up all hope of staying dry, but the modern fabrics of bicycling clothes actually keep you dry even when they are soaked.  I was amazed by this, but it's true.  I was sincerely drenched in later parts of this tour, but never once did I feel uncomfortable.  Scared, yes, uncomfortable, no.  Just to give you an idea about how bad the mud and puddles were, here's Kevin well before the really muddy parts.  Check out his legs and shoes:

We were also wearing water bladders called Camelbacks so we could load up with 4-5 bottles of water in the pack and last all day long - a life-saver on these long trails, but the Camelback took the brunt of the mud thrown up by the rear wheel:

Today, we found, was to be the longest mileage day of the trip at about 75 miles, almost all of it uphill on a 2%-3% grade.  Doesn't sound like much until you do it for 6 hours at 12-13 mph.  We rode in about 15 mile intervals when we would roll in to the sag stop, usually 20-30 minutes before the rest of the group.  Along the way, we got to what was an old train depot just as the sprinkles started, so we sat it out in the depot for 15 minutes as the storm passed and found it was an old train museum, staffed with a 78 year old volunteer lady named Ethel.  We were in there with 8-10 other trail riders not related to our tour and had a grand time watching old train videos, looking at the model trains and other exhibits and eating fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies from Ethel.  She was a peach!

Kinda hated to leave the place, but we had to make it to the hotel Gunter by 6pm so off we pushed into the lightly receding rain towards the Continental Divide tunnel.  From the depot, the path looked like this.  If you zoom in on it, the tunnel opening is about 2 miles away at the head of the path.  The Wind Turbine is on top of the Divide and yes, that is a BIG BLACK CLOUD on the other side of the mountain and we're heading right for it, even though it is pulling away to the East:

As we got closer, we got a good shot of the entrance to the tunnel.  This tunnel was pretty cool - it was only a few hundred yards long and was light inside:

As you ride through the tunnel, you can feel the exact moment when you cross the divide and start heading downhill.  You can feel it in the bike, and from that point to where we got off the trail for the night we were going downhill, sometimes at a down-slope of 17% (pretty steep) so we were, at times, breaking 30 mph as we smoked along.  

Here I am at the exit of the tunnel showing where we are on the trail elevation map:

Where we're headed is that little bump down the hill and under my elbow - a major league downhill and ending up in Frostburg, MD

A couple of miles East of the Continental divide tunnel we crossed the Mason-Dixon line and stopped for yet another Photo op.  Notice that I'm straddling the line, just to be safe:

So from here, we were really bookin' it - top rear gear, BIG front chain ring and just haulin ass all the way to Frostburg, Maryland to our next stop, the hotel Gunter.  We're making great time down the trail, sometimes breaking 25 mph, then we find out exit point and get off into the parking lot, get out our notes and see that we exit the parking lot on the far side, take a 120 degree right turn and take what-ever street to "the top of the hill".  We get over there, make the turn, look up the hill and......it is wicked steep (way steeper than 17%) and seems to go up forever.  We get down into our "Granny Gears" and, what can you do?  You just bear it and, on very tired legs after 74 miles, just grunt up the hill until it evens off a little and, what do you see?  It keeps going up, another 1/2 mile farther than the first 1/2 mile.  We grunt up the second steep hill, stop at a light and find that the hotel is up another 1/2 mile on the right, only this is just a tad less steep.  Finally, after 1-1/2 miles of clawing our way up a friggin cliff, we arrive at the Hotel Gunter for the night, tired, pretty wet, really muddy and looking for a beer, which we found at Dante's, right across the street.

The Hotel Gunter, in Frostburg, MD, was, by far, the strangest place we stayed at on the entire trip.  At one point in it's past, it housed the town jail and the jail cells are still there in the basement, now made into a museum of sorts.  The place is also kind-of Victorian so it seems to be used for a lot of weddings.  They have a really ornate lobby:

And a room on the second floor, full of dolls in wedding attire:

Day three:  OK, the Hotel Gunter was a little weird, but their breakfast was unbelievable!! Fully fueled up, we headed back down the 1-1/2 mile downhill to the trail and, once again, headed Southeast toward Washington, DC, only in a few miles we would be getting to Cumberland, MD, and picking up the C&O Canal for the rest of the trip.  The first 10 miles or so were downhill to Cumberland and the scenery was really nice:

Did I mention that we were a little muddy when we got tot the Hotel Gunter?  Hey....by this time, a little mud was the least of our problems.

This was our last, true downhill of the trip.  The rest of the trip, while technically downhill at 1%-2%, never really seemed anything other than flat.  We got to Cumberland without incident (actually, we hammered it pretty hard all the way there, because we had heard that there was a bakery with good coffee along the trail) and I found a couple of new friends:

You can see that I've already been buying souvenir shirts, right?  Scott found one of my friends a few minutes later:

This is actually a cool spot, not only because of the really great coffee shop, but because it is the westernmost point of the C&O canal from Chesapeake Bay in Washington DC to Cumberland, MD.  They were going to run it over the Cumberland Gap, but they ran out of money at the same time that the railroad arrived so the canal became obsolete, although it carried goods for 90 years and into the 20'th century before it was abandoned after a hurricane destroyed a lot of it.  Still, I got a good shot of mile zero for the Great Allegheny Passage, which we had just finished:

The trail became more of a country path; two gravel paths separated by about 3-4 feet of grass and following the old canal tow path (where the mules used to walk while pulling the canal boats) that seemed to go on forever:

Remember Elliot and his headphones?  Sometimes he would get ahead of us and we would pass and I would ask (loudly, to be heard over his music); "Elliot!  What'cha listenin to?"  "Johnny Mathis!  and you?"  "The Rippington's, Midnight in Monaco"."  "Never heard of 'em!" and we would push ahead.  I found that if I stayed with him for a while to chat and allowed my other three guys to get, say, 100 yards ahead, I would have to hammer my bike and body for 1/2 mile to a full mile until I caught back up again, their pace was so fast.  There are some truly breath-taking sights along the trail. This was a waterfall we came upon on the morning of the third day, with a cool crevasse a little bit further on:

I talked earlier about my really stiff shoe cleats.  I had fallen five times before I even started this trip, but I wasn't the only one to have problems as is evident from this picture of Kevin who pulled up, forgot to clip out, stopped, and then fell over like the guy on Laugh In.  It happens to everyone, hopefully less frequently as you get more experience.  I had a few times when I managed to clip out on one side, and then fell over on the other side:

You actually learn to fall softly after a while so all that usually gets hurt is your pride, even on pavement (if only we had nice, smooth pavement to ride on!!)

So, if you were starting out in Cumberland, this is the sign on the side of the trail.  Looks like we're about half way there:

From here, the path doesn't change a lot for mile after mile;  two walking/biking paths separated by 3-4 feet of grass, occasionally turning into one large (6-7 foot wide) path and then becoming two again.  One of the highlights of today was passing through the Paw-Paw tunnel.  It's over a mile long and was made to pass canal boats through a mountain.  There is a tow path in it, but the path is carved out of rock, is about 4 fee twide with a rock wall on one side and a railing on the other, then an 8 foot drop into the canal, it is quite slippery and very uneven underfoot.  The other three decided to ride through (yes, all of the signs say to walk your bike, but they're crazier than me).  I got about 30 feet inside, it was pitch black, the walls closed in on me, I could feel myself straining to keep between wall and railing and decided, That's enough.....I'm walkin! and walked the rest of the tunnel.  Good thing, too, because an oncoming group met me about half way through and they had a couple of bike trailers that took up most of the width of the trail.  Here's a shot coming out of the other end of the tunnel:

That was the scariest, friggin tunnel of the entire trip, bar none.  Here's a shot of the entrance, before we all headed in.  It's a big tunnel:

So we got past the tunnel and headed down the trail, humming along to pastoral elegance.  Not bad, huh?:

We were told by the tour guides that we would probably get to the next sag stop too far ahead of the rest of the group and might not want to wait for the van to show up.  If that was so, there was a small bar/general store a short ride off of the trail where we could get a snack and something cold to drink.  It was called just "Bill's".  Bill died a while back and his son "Bubba" and his wife took over.  They must have had $8,000 in one dollar bills tacked to ceiling of the place, and 350-pound Bubba didn't do anything except complain to us while his wife seemed to have to do everything else.  We got some popsicles, filled our water bottles and got a cool picture:

Oh, and Bubba complained because we used HIS water to wash the mud off of our legs and bikes (friggin Redneck).  Trust me.....I would NEVER eat there.

So, delightfully refreshed and with new stories to tell about Bill's, we headed back down the trail to the next lunch stop, and countless scenes like this:

and rolled into our lunch stop, right on schedule, 30 minutes early but our guide, "Sherpa" was already there with lunch;  Quinoa and Mango wraps.  OMG, they were delicious!!

Scott spent part of his lunch time organizing the local labor movement:

So we headed out after lunch just about when the first of the others in our tour began to arrive.  We were heading down the trail, keeping the Potomac on the right (it's always nice to be heading in the right direction) and staying on the path.  Here, the canal is on the immediate left, with the towpath elevated about 6-8 feet above canal water level, but the canal is about 10-15 feet higher than the river so the tow path is 20-30 feet above river water level.  We were riding along with Robb in the lead and me second when he came upon a tree that had fallen across the path with maybe a foot or so of the grass on the right of the path still exposed.  Robb pulls up to the branches and looks like he's going to skirt around it, so I keep following only to have him change his mind and stop abruptly.  I see this, can't get unclipped in time, come to a full stop and fall to my right, off of the tow path and down the banking toward the Potomac.  I twisted as I fell and landed on my back (with a big "Squish!" from my Camelback water bladder), spun around and actually headed the bike in the opposite direction although me and the bike was in a big heap.  Great laughter from my so-called "companions" ensued, then Scott finally took a picture:

Miraculously, nothing was hurt, although we did notice a BIG, broken off sapling a few inches away from my torso once I got halfway up and we were all happy that I landed just far enough away to not connect with it.  Definitely would not have been a good day.

A few miles down the Potomac the trail changed to a manufactured trail set up by the Corp. of Engineers right along the side of the river and looked like this:

It looks a little scary, but was smooth like glass and went for miles - a true blessing after most of a day on bumpy, wet, muddy gravel.

The end of that day, we had th option of heading straight to the hotel, or taking a 12 mile extra excursion to visit the Civil War battlefield at Antietam.  "Of course we're going!", said Robb, so off we head from the trail, following the route instructions from Sherpa.  The friggin  side road went up the side of another cliff.  We ground up about two miles of uphills after riding 50 miles all day and finally got to the grounds of the Antietam battlefield, only to find that the park entrance was another 1/2 mile further up the road.  Once we got there, we treated ourselves (except for "the kid", Kevin) to senior National Park Passes (good forever and cost $10 bucks - what a deal!) and went in to see the museum, watch the movie about the battles waged there and then went to the rooftop observation deck to see this:

23,000 soldiers lost their lives on this battlefield in a single day.  Many tens of thousands more were wounded.  It was staggering to hear the numbers, absolutely staggering.  Humbled, but rested, we headed out with our other guide, Bill, in search of Nutter's Ice Cream to end the day before heading to the Bavarian Inn:

Day four and Harper's Ferry coming up - Stay Tuned!

The next morning, we were eating breakfast when a storm front went through at 55 mph, dumping a LOT of wind and rain on the hotel.  My blog note was this:  "Lord, the fog is ok, just don't send me any fireworks and "Booma-Boomas". At least the rain will wash the bikes. 

Time to get out the rain jacket with flashing tail light." 

We all waited another extra 30 minutes for the rain to abate, then us four headed out for the trail in a light rain (what the hell, the bike seats were already wet, so why not ride 'em?)  the weather forecast was early morning thunder showers, then clearing until mid-afternoon with scattered, pop-up thunder showers.  45 mile day and get off the road by 3pm.  Easy-Peasy.

Our first stop of the day was at Harper's Ferry, which figured prominently in the Civil War (or, if you're from the South, the "War of Northern Aggression").  Harper's Ferry has been restored as a National Historical Site and is a delightful town, built on a steep hill which peaks at a rock known as "Thomas Jefferson's Rock" where he viewed the merge of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers.  We were about half way up the 300 yard walk to the rock when we were ambushed by a bunch of Rebel soldiers.  Scott managed to divert their attention to allow the rest of us to sneak away whilst he took their picture.  Looks like one of them might be a Union spy, but they were a pretty tough bunch:

Harper's Ferry is really a delightful town, made even better by a bunch of delightful shops and some world-class coffee shops:

We made it to Jefferson's Rock and had the same view as ol' Tom had, way back then:

Made it back through enemy lines to the Potomac, past the old Arsenal and back to the bike trail:

But the day is only starting.  This was Thursday and the most exciting part of the day is ahead of us.  Remember, it had been raining very heavily early in the morning, turning the trail to a mud morass and we were riding through it.  That meant that both the bikes and us were covered with mud, as shown at the lunch stop:

But by this time, it was fun, right?  But we weren't the only ones a little dirty.  Here's Elliot:

And the New York Boys:

Lunch was lingered over, but we had to high-tail it to White's Ferry which would take us over the Potomac, then a 4 mile ride to Leesburg, VA to the Colonial hotel that night.  Ahhhh....Just a short ride away.......

Side notes from my phone blog:  

Interesting things we've seen while riding along: ten zillion squirrels along the trail, 90% of which with run this way and that but then eventually jump off the trail to the right - only 10% jump to the left. Saw a magnificent Great Blue Heron sitting on a log and he (she) leapt into the water and caught a fish as we rode by. Thousands of turtles in the old canal water. No animals larger than a squirrel for the first two days, and then 6-8 beautiful deer per day (and one a 2 ft. High fawn). A woodchuck who was so unafraid of us that we got within 6 feet and it waddled along eating clover, seemingly unafraid. Several bald eagles circling above Harper's Ferry. A water snake swimming up the canal. Lots of dogs, all on leashes and ALL well behaved. A pretty cool ice cream store at the end of every day (which also had to have sherbet for lactose intolerant me). The recently built bike path right on the waters edge of the Potomac - and PAVED!! (As opposed to the gravel path we usually see) and it went for miles. Many, many, many boat locks along the canal (they number up into the 80's) to lift or lower the canal boats up or down grades. Lots of people biking along the trail, many of them traveling solo, many more in small groups.

As far as the biking conditions, as I mentioned it is a gravel path with considerable clay content making it greasy when wet. Much of the trail is overgrown with trees forming a tree tunnel canopy so the sun never reaches the gravel and it never dries out so the puddles and greasiness never leave. Much of the trail is a pair of 12"-16" wide paths about 4' apart with grass between, and some of the trail is simply a wide (6'-7') gravel path, sometimes smooth and drained and sometimes with pothole puddles and greasiness. Imagine yourself racing along that path at 12-14 mph. That's really moving on a bike on the street and we do it hour after hour on greasy dirt (yes, we gotta be nuts). They tell us that it's the same all the way to the stop in Georgetown, so we'll see. By now, we're used to it and after riding through the thunderstorm today, a little more gravel is nothing. 

Elliot has fallen off is bike three times now, a couple of those semi-seriously.  One time he was trying to avoid what he thought was a snake, only to find that it was a tree root.  He rides in sneakers with regular street shorts on his own bike. He has finished almost every day. He chose not to ride in downpours and took the sag van around one particularly hard section (remember me writing about a 1-1/2 mile climb up a cliff to get to the hotel Gunter?) but he's still out there, day after day, sun, mud and light rain, grinding out the miles and will be able to say; "I did that ride and I conquered it!" He calls us the "freight train" but he has my complete respect, as does everyone else on this tour. It's been a tough ride, but these folks keep on grinding out the miles and looking forward to their hot shower at the end of the day.  On the way to the ferry we passed by some of the coolest wildlife shots we were to see on the entire trip:

Now, we were pushing pretty hard as the sky was darkening and we were headed for White's Ferry which was to take us across the Potomac to get to Leesburg, VA, and the hotel.  We got to the ferry about 5 minutes ahead of the rest of the group and we all lined up to get onto the ferry:

Honest to God, as soon as we set foot onto that ferry the skies opened up and it poured a torrential downpour for the five minutes it takes to cross the river.  The entire group is soaked to the ass.   I seek shelter in the lee of a Ford F150 on the ferry, but it doesn't help.  Once on the other side, Robb and I took off for the hotel, which we thought was only 2 miles up the road, with Scott and Kevin a bit behind us.  We got up the road about a mile, still in a torrential downpour, and found Bill in the van.  He told us the hotel was only "3 or 4 miles up the road, right on RT 15" and we were welcome to ride there in the van.  We circled in the the road on our bikes while deciding that, by the time he got everyone loaded we could be at the hotel, so we decided to keep on riding.  It's raining like hell.  We get a mile up the road and get to the stop light at RT 15 where we're supposed to turn left.  We don't have enough mass to trigger the light.  It looks like the entire population of Washington DC is traveling up that road at Rush Hour.  We wait a long time before saying, "Screw it!  Let's try running through a hole in the traffic" and push out a bit to wait for a hole.  Miraculously, someone in the oncoming stream stops for us to cross!!  As we get to the middle, the opposing traffic stops as well!  Woo-Hoo!  

We head up RT 15, Robb in the lead, then me and then Scott and Kevin.  It's still a torrential downpour, and then we see a lightning flash.  I immediately start counting and figure it's about a mile away when the thunder hits.  We keep riding, pushing through the rain.  Then the wind suddenly picks up so hard that the rain against our bare skin feels like needles stabbing us.  Fortunately, we all still have our sunglasses on (I had changed mine to clear lenses at lunchtime).  We keep riding.  Big, Tractor Trailer trucks are passing us with lots of spray and buffeting, as well as a lot of other traffic until we get to a turn-off for the "downtown business district" which we head towards while most of the other traffic stays on the main RT 15.  I look down at my bike and, for the first tme in three days, it is totally clean.  The rain continues heavy, the lightning is getting farther off.  We keep riding into Leesburg.  

By the time we get into the center of town, the rain is starting to let up and the lightning is moving farther off to our northeast.  We stop in the middle of town.  "Where the hell is this friggin hotel?" asks, Scott.  No one knows, so Kevin calls them on his cell phone.  He tells us that the guy at the hotel doesn't have great English, but he thinks it's about 1/2 mile further up the road.  We ride 3/4'ths of a mile.  No Hotel.  We stop at a 7-11 store and ask a cop.  He's never heard of the place (things are not looking good now, are they...)  Kevin re-calls the hotel and finds that, when we made the original call from downtown, we were actually standing right in front of their front door.  $#!+....  So we turn around and had back into town.  Scott develops a soft tire.  We press on.  We finally get back to where we were and, sure enough, there's the damn hotel.  We find the alley on the side from our trip notes and pull in.  The owner comes out.  "Didn't you guys hear that there was a Tornado Alert just outside of town?", he asks.  We were busy wringing out our tunics and socks.  "Nope.....Didn't hear that!"

Later, we heard that after Bill got everyone rounded up, he told them to leave their bikes on the side of the road, got them quickly into the van and headed for lower ground after he heard the tornado alert to keep them safe.  Guess we were beyond hope at that point.  Anyway, after we got cleaned up a little, everyone else showed up in the van and the Hotel owner gave everyone free beers.  

And to think we might have ridden our way right to Oz..........And Toto, too.

Final day and our triumphant ride into Washington DC, tomorrow......

Stay Tuned!

I just remembered our stay a couple of nights before riding across the Potomac on White's Ferry.  We stayed in a quaint little B&B in a small town and they also had another house across the street from the main house, so a bunch of us were over there (called, simply, "the Farmhouse").  The room was nice, the beds soft and the shower water hot.  We came down in the morning to a HUGE breakfast and I found lots to eat for my weird diet.  Stuart, the Oral Surgeon from Saratoga, showed up a few minutes later, a bit disheveled.  "How's it going, Stuart?"  'OK, I guess.......I'm in the "Honeymoon Suite.......Gotta heart-shaped bed.  Gotta pink, heart shaped Jacuzzi tub.'  "Wow!  That's pretty cool!!"  'Yeah, but I got no hot water!!'  Not a good start to Stuart's day, I guess......

I'm really enjoying your travelogue, Gordon.  I wish I had as much training time as you did so that I could consider something like this.  The lack of hills here makes riding easier, but not if you're training for a ride over changing elevation.  I can maintain a pretty good speed, but am "torqueless" if I hit a headwind or hill.  I have to downshift to keep my cadence up, and that lets everyone go whizzing by me (kinda like a Honda S2000 at low RPM ).  I really have to get more strength in my legs.  This whole "working for a living" thing keeps getting in the way.

I learned a LOT about riding in a group on this trip.  Scott and Robb have many, many DAYS of group riding to lean on and their group habits are now second-nature.  Just a small hand flick, just right, means something and Kevin and I quickly learned what a lot of things meant and began using them, too.  Vocal keys might not work if there's a lot of wind or external noise and also have to be passed back down the length of the group.  

Also, if you're in a group that's hammering along at 12-16mph and you drop back to linger and talk a bit with others, you better not let your group get more than 100 yards away or it'll take you over a mile of really hammering your body to catch up and then you might be toast for another two miles until you recover in their wake.  

My training for this took 2-1/2 months of almost daily riding of 30 miles or more, with more days toward the end of over 60 miles, riding with Scott.  You're right about the lack of hills in the Low Country, so I alternated my training with long (30+ mile) mixed days and short (about 20 mile) days of all hills.  I'm lucky that my town is surrounded by six HUGE hills and I made up a route that did all six in a row.  18 miles and 2800 vertical feet of climbing at 13% grade or greater.  It took a while, but if you do that enough you tend to look at hills as just another thing to get over.  The pain is only there for the bottom 1/4'th and then it fades and your legs just keep going.  That amazed me a lot, especially for a 63 year old.  My legs are far better now than they were when I was 40 and cycle-commuting, and allow me now to just apply more power rather than downshift and lose momentum.  I'm doing hills now 2-3 gears higher than ever before and can maintain an average of 15+ mph on mixed terrain here in New England for 4+ hours at a time (I went to visit my parents resting place yesterday, three towns away on mixed roads and averaged 15.3 when I got home in 2 hours).  Heck, on our second day of the trip we rode for 5 hours at 12-13mph on an uphill grade of 1%-3%.  I was leading for quite a while and being able to do that blew me away!! (of course, I was beginning to fade a lot towards the end of the day, too, and was glad to have Robb or Scott in front of me, pulling me along!)

I've been riding my bike (the same bike, too) since 1980 and predated that with riding to classes in college.  I just like it.  I feel better on my bike than at any other time - it just suits me, so I was glad to be part of this adventure and am looking forward to more rides and a upcoming Century (100 mile) ride this Fall.  

BTW:  Most of the training time is dedication:  I used to take the easy way out and simply commuted to work every day during the nicer months, anywhere from 8 miles each way to 17 miles each way, depending on the company I was working at.  Scott used to be CEO of a company that manufactures high-precision mechanical gearboxes (basically, the place was a fancy machine shop) and regularly rode to work.  He retired in 2008 but is still involved with the place and a lot of community work but rides when he can (like when he rides 10 miles each way to go to the gym).  Robb owns several high-end restaurants in the Worcester, MA area and Kevin is one of his General Managers.  They either ride trainers or after work/weekends as time permits.  If you decide that this is the lifestyle you wish to have, you'll find the time to ride.

It all starts with a ride around the block.

On to day six!>>>>>>>>>>

Day six....our last day on the road.  After the storm the the night before, we had an absolutely beautiful sunset to end the day.  What's that old slogan?  "Red sky at night, Biker's delight?"  

We were hoping for the best, but the morning sky was overcast and more than a little threatening, so we were already wearing our rain jackets, both for the potential rain and because it was more than a little chilly.  

We were supposed to be going a bit less than 40 miles - quite a short day compared to some of those days we had already endured.  Remember Elliot and his headphones?  A typical passing on the trail, with Elliot singing along to his music, went something like:  "HEY ELLIOT!  WHAT'CHA LISTENIN' TO?"  Johnny Mathis!....and you?  ALABAMA....JUKEBOX IN MY MIND!"  "Never Heard of it!"  

or....."HEY ELLIOT!  WHAT'CHA LISTENIN' TO??"  "Barbara Streisand - Live at Las Vegas!....and you?"  DROPKICK MUPHYS...ROSE TATTOO!"  "Never heard of it!

After our usual big breakfast we loaded into the van to ride the 4 miles back to White's Ferry across the Potomac and away from Leesburg, VA.  We left the van a mile from the ferry and biked the rest of the way to cross with our bikes on the ferry - the same route as last night, but with a whole lot less rain and excitement.  "ELLIOT!  WHAT'CHA LISTENIN' TO?"  "The Beatles....My Guitar gently weeps"   "WOW!  ONE OF THE SONGS GEORGE HARRISON WROTE.  COOL!"  How 'bout you?"  "ROSANNE CASH......HEARTACHES BY THE NUMBER"  Never heard of it!"  "SEE YA, ELLIOT!"  Here's Elliot, on his bike, heading for the ferry - you can see his headphones that he got from his son:

We all made the short ride to the ferry and lined up with the usual morning traffic for our ride across, then exited on the other side up the slick, metal loading ramp.  The overly-coiffeured lady in the white Mercedes looked at us like we were from another planet:

After a far less eventful ride back across the Potomac, we got back on the trail and headed out, us four holding back a bit to chat with some of the others about the ride the night before.  The four guys from NY/NJ started out ahead of us and we were chatting with the others and just leisurely riding along, letting our legs work in.  

We rode the first two or three miles along the muddy, puddled trail pretty much without incident, then came upon the NY Boys who had stopped to clear a big limb away from the trail.  We looked further down the trail and saw another limb maybe 50 yards farther along.  We zipped ahead while they were finishing up and cleared that limb as they caught up.  We all went another 50 yards and found another limb and cleared that.  That was how it went for about the next 5-6 miles - ride 50 yards, clear a bunch of downed limbs, ride another 50-100 yards and clear more limbs.  Sometimes we found entire trees, 2-3 feet in diameter, down across the trail and had to pass our bikes over them or push through dense upper limbs on the trail and move on, alternating with the NY boys.  Finally after pushing through 5+ miles of this it finally abated and we could make better time without having to move or get around limbs, but we also lost two hours in moving all that stuff out of the way for others.  We sure found out where that mini-Tornado went through:

Here's Elliot, pushing through the jungle on his way to DC, still happy to be out on the trail:

After that, we started making pretty good time, but there was a LOT of touristy-type stuff to see along the way.  The trail had returned to the forest-tunnel we had grown used to, plus we had had a lot of coffee at breakfast and needed a few more stops for that, too:

We were now approaching Washington DC, about 25 miles upriver from the Capitol.  On this part of the Potomac, they've maintained the park a bit better and actually still have a few working locks and a canal boat or two to give people rides and show them how the canals worked in the "Old Days".  Here's a lock about 20 miles from DC that still is operational, today:

The upper gate is closed, lower gate is opened, a canal boat is hauled in by human effort and the lower gates closed.  Then the upper gate's smaller doors are opened a bit at a time letting water into the lock, floating the boat up to upper water level, the upper gates are opened and the canal boat pulled out by two mules:

Elliot and Stuart, getting a little help from another tourist.  (I think the little kid was doing most of the work)

Not far from that working lock are the great waterfalls of the Potomac.  All this, and only 15 miles from Washington!:

We were getting close, now.  We stopped at the lunch stop a bit early, around 11:30am and I called Kelly Frazer and my son, Chris, who was in Washington DC on business, and they both wanted to come to the finish at the Henry J. Thompson boathouse on the Potomac, or mile marker zero on the C&O Canal towpath, to meet us as we pulled in.  We had lost two hours clearing trees and limbs from the trail and I let them know the new ETA while we were riding along:

The transition from a tree-tunnel, country bike path to Urban Washington DC is very abrupt.  One minute you're riding along under a tree canopy, the next minute you're riding out in the open, still on the tow path but hearing and seeing automobile and jet traffic (a LOT of it!) all around you, and the next minute you're in the middle of the city, dodging pedestrians and car traffic:

We wound our way through the traffic, pushing pedestrian light buttons to cross intersections, looking out for walkers (none of whom had a clue that we had all ridden from Pittsburgh) and riding down sidewalks!  After a couple of confusing moments (the "trail" is not as well marked once you get into downtown Georgetown) we found our way past "K" street to the parking lot of the Thompson Boathouse and the Sag Van waiting to take our rented bikes and some of our larger group back up to Ohiopyle, PA and home.  We were staying in Washington and flying out the next day, but we found that the zero mile marker was about 1/4 mile away on the other side of the boathouse (and where Kelly and Chris were waiting for us) so we pedaled over there to get our final picture at Mile Marker Zero:

A bit over 360 miles in six days, through uphills, downhills, pitch-black tunnels, falling over, Funky B&B's, terrific meals, greasy mud, puddles large and small, flat tires, rain from light to torrential, downed limbs and trees, even a Tornado.....we'd done it all and lived to tell about it.  I think the look on all of our faces tells it all - We rode the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O towpath from Pittsburgh to Washington DC.  We beat that trail in spite of the rain and mud, in spite of the 120 miles of uphill grade, enjoying amazing views of foliage and wildlife and battlefields and in the company of a lot of other travelers on the same trail, going in both directions, all enjoying what our country has to offer if we just take the time to go and look.

I can't wait for my next "Great Bicycling Adventure!"

Gordon

The Bicycle Guy from Grafton

Fan-freakin'-tastic, Gordon!  Maybe one day I too will be able to take such a trip.

EPILOG:

After we got to the hotel in Georgetown, Scott had arranged a meeting with one of their friends who had made the cross-country ride with them in 2010 - a guy who lives in the DC area and whom both Scott and Robb described as the "strongest biker they had ever seen".  Pretty cool guy, who now teaches nearby.  We brought Chris along and headed out for gourmet Gelato at some place in DC.  Happily, they had a bunch of non-dairy flavors for me (the Honey-Ginger is to die for) so we managed to have ice cream (or sherbert or Gelato) to end almost every day's ride - Life.....as it should be.  When I left I was running 151-153 pounds, depending on what I did the day before.  When I got home I weighed 152 pounds so all that food I ate during the trip (and I was really packing it away) paid off.  I learned that I can survive on a trip, that I am now used to my slightly odd diet and that it's become just a "minor inconvenience".

So that ended our trip, except for the uneventful flight back to Boston (no, not back in PA.....back up to OUR Boston).  I was out on my road bike in New England the following Tuesday, pounding out the miles again, although now I'm not intimidated by New England Hills.  Hell!.....I've ridden over the Cumberland Gap!  Doing a thirty four mile loop in a tad over two hours seemed kinda short, actually, but it was sooooo nice to ride my old Brooks saddle again.  I'm looking forward to more rides this summer, although closer to home.  The Great Allegheny Passage bike trip is not for everyone....I know that, but there's a whole lot of neat places out there to visit, whether you're on a bike or in a Speedster or your Subaru wagon.  Get out there and see them!

Peace - Out!

Gordon, that had to be some kind of "Bucket List"....  That was the best adventure I've heard about in many, many years....  I hope the scrapes and buises are over and done with so that you can enjoy the memories....    

Gordon, thoroughly enjoyed your narrative and photos. Bravo to the intrepid bikers.

Hey!  Will and Leon!  Don't see enough of you'se guys on here lately!

The scrapes, all of which were earned by trying to move tree limbs out of the way the last day, seem to be healing up nicely.  The butt sores are all "but" gone, too (damn rental saddle) and I've backed off to a regular schedule of shorter miles every other day and if I miss a day....eh?  No big deal.  Still, this has been a major lifestyle change for me (us, really, since Kathy has embraced my dietary changes and is cooking some truly wonderful meals for me) and I want to keep it up and ride as much as practical from now on.

 I went a little fanatic on the training, but avoided riding in the rain.  Now that I've ridden through a friggin Tornado zone and torrential downpours, a little New England cloudburst shouldn't keep me home.  I am now treating my glasses with Rain-X, though, hoping that will make things a bit clearer the next time I get caught out there in the rain.  Guess I'll have to report back on that one.

BTW: Scott and Robb clued Kevin and me in on a way to TOTALLY dry our shoes overnight and it works like magic.  We would clean all the mud off and wash the shoes out (usually making a mess of the hotel sink or shower), then find as much newspaper as we could (it seems that all of the hotels along the bike trail are used to people asking and have a substantial supply at the front desk) and stuff each shoe full of wadded newspaper before dinner.  Return from dinner and swap out all of the wet newspaper for new, dry pages, then swap it all out again just before you go to bed.  When you get up in the morning, pull out the last newspaper and your shoes are dry as a bone, all ready for another day of rain and puddles!

I'm glad that all you folks have enjoyed this travelogue as much as we had riding it.  It truly was a lot of fun, even, in retrospect, the Tornado part.  Not something I might do every week, but as least I now have some bragging rights.  And I keep looking at this bike trip ad for a ride through Vermont.................it includes stops at BOTH Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory in Stowe (I wonder if they have "Rainbow Sherbet"?) and the Magic Hat Brewery in Burlington!!

Good on you Gordon ! Enjoyed the posts....What's next on the bucket list?