One of my first week-long bicycling adventures was a ride from Pittsburg, PA down to Washington, DC. Somewhere around the fifth day we had to cross the Potomac at White's Ferry to get to our hotel. This is the "ferry":
As soon as we pushed our bikes onto the ferry it started to rain. Half way across, the wind picked up, lashing us from all directions. We had to use the vehicles on the ferry as barriers from the wind and rain. When we got to the other shore, we were pretty well drenched and decided to forego the offered Van ride to the hotel, 4 miles away, to just ride our bikes there, since we were already soaked, anyway.
We took off and quickly ended up on a dual, 2-lane highway, over in the breakdown lane, slogging along in the heaviest downpour I had ever seen. It was raining so hard it would hit the ground and come back up into our faces. It was around rush hour, so we had all kinds of cars and (BIG) trucks going by as we pedaled ahead in the rain, and the wind force had picked up quite a lot. We missed the hotel, at first, and rode right by it in the rain, only to then ask for directions and backtrack a mile to find it.
We finally arrived at the hotel, stored our bikes and went into the bar/restaurant to wait for the rest of the group. The bar's TV was on CNN which was covering, live, a Tornado that just touched down in Leesburg, Virginia. My friend asked the bartender (who looked at us drowned rats and offered us free beer) where Leesburg was. He looked at us fools and said, "Leesburg? You're IN Leesburg!..... Did you fools just ride through that Tornado?" pointing to the TV.
The next day with sun shining and warm temps, we went back across the Potomac on White's Ferry to continue down the tow path along the river. About two miles south of the ferry we hit a stretch of maybe half a mile where enormous trees along the tow path were toppled all over the place, some with trunks 3' - 4' in diameter at the base. We had to climb over the tree trunks, lift our bikes up over the downed trees and pass them over to another rider on the other side to keep going.
It's a ride we've talked about, ever since.
