Today all the interesting parts shifted from what was going on around us (rocks, bridges, towns, etc) to the actual drama of the riding itself. We switched trails from the GAP to the C&O. The GAP by the way is the Great Allegheny Passage (named for the mountains not the river), while the C&O is the Chesapeake & Ohio. The GAP is a “rails trail” meaning it’s an old railroad line, but the C&O is a canal towpath, meaning the area next to a canal where horses would tow boats from the shore. What this means is that the path went from being wide enough for a train to wide enough for a horse; e.g. not wide at all, and much less improved. That means mud, and boy did we have mud. The last 15 miles we switched to a neighboring rail trail, but the first 45 miles we had mud, mud and more mud. I was once again so grateful for my bicycle because I ask it to do all these things it isn’t made for and it never complains.
What did complain, however, is my achilles, which is very inflamed. It got pretty painful today but I am soldiering through it.
I feel very lucky to be here doing this, and today served up a reminder of that. At about mile 40 I rode up on a scene of several of my teammates, including Nick the doctor, standing around a man who was obviously down and off his bike. He turned out to have a very, very bad concussion and I ended up riding like a crazy person for about 5 miles so that I could get enough cell service to notify my teammates to call an ambulance. I think the guy’s gonna be fine but it was pretty scary.
Other than that, it was just a nice, challenging day of riding. The scenery has gotten much more lush and lowlands, meaning kind of a swamp. Every time I’m in this part of the US I think about the Civil War and basically all these guys standing around in swamps just waiting to get dysentery.
