Starting at The End

We were heading south into The District at about 9:30 at night. The caravan or cars consisted of Jimmy in the front, F right behind, and myself bridging back to Jeff and John. Jim had a bike on his roof, so I was able to easily pick him out two cars up. F was tight behind him. And I had two bikes up, one of which had a reflector that enabled Jeff to easily track me. We were shuttling the cars from Harper’s Ferry where we had spent the previous night to the motel in Arlington, our last night of the trip.

Jimmy had his GPS programmed to take us to the motel where we were spending the final night of our four day bike trip along the C&O Canal when the little lady inside the GPS decided to play a little prank on him. So she dumped us off of the highway on the wrong side of the Potomac and we played a slightly nerve wracking game of follow the leader through downtown Washington in the dark with no idea where we were or how to get from that point back to our motel. It was a slightly inauspicious and/or ironic way to end a four day bike ride that involved, essentially, riding in a straight line for 185 miles.

The weather had been great all week long. Although a little humid while standing still, once one got rolling, the breeze usually felt great. On this last day however, closing in on the former swamp and current quagmire that is Washington, the temperatures began to bake and riding only brought on a hot breeze rather than any relief.

Four days earlier we had rolled into the Holiday Inn parking lot in Cumberland, Maryland, my sister, daughter and father and awaited the arrival of my other brothers and sister. We parked right next to this pickup truck.

A fairly fascinating vehicle suggestive of long distances and much suffering on a bicycle. Rather than riding non-stop coast to coast, we were planning to ride from Cumberland, MD to Arlington, VA in four days, but there would still be plenty of opportunity for suffering and sore bottoms.