Day 2: Pittsburgh to DC to Catonsville

From the prior rain soaked day.

Mile 174, Camping Overnight On the C&O Canal

Bright and chipper morning selfie with burritos and a Tyvek suit. Surprisingly, those
burritos Paul bought for himself and Jeff lasted 2 days at room temp.

I woke up to a cloudy sky at 7:30.  Everyone else was still sleeping. I caught a glimpse of a beautiful sunrise over the Potomac, but couldn't find my phone in time to take a picture.
Aside from the trains running and a brisk breeze, I slept beautifully. This was my second time hammocking and I was curious to see how my DIY/Hacked sleeping system worked out. As I didn't have a super warm/compact sleeping bag, I opting for a clothing layering system. While the clothing was bulkier than a super compact down sleeping bag, I did have the assurance I could re-use the clothing on the ride.

The secret weapon I had been itching to try out was a full Tyvek body suit. With fleece pants, tops, and a lightweight 50 degree bag, I was curious to see if I could comfortably sleep in the low 30's.

My main concern was drying out and staying warm. From previous endurance rides, I've gotten extremely cold. Arriving at camp the night before, I was wet from rain and sweat. We did intentionally slow down near the end so we weren't as hot, but the humid night didn't allow us to dry out.   I completely stripped myself, toweled off with a microfiber cloth and threw on two base layers, the fleece top and bottom, a neoprene balaclava, winter gloves, and finished off with the Tyvek suit. Aside from looking like a member of a bio hazard clean up crew, the Tyvek suit worked out beautifully. It was wind resistant and breathable.

In my full Tyvek glory!

I slept toasty in the low 40 degree temperature with 10-15 mph winds. Part of me wished it was colder to test out the lower range of the sleeping system, but I am thankful everything worked out. I might have been cold if the temp was 10 degrees lower. The camping pad totally saved my ass and kept warm during the night. Jeff later complained he had a cold spot underneath, which is common from what I read.  Neither Jeff nor I worried about Paul in his Taj Mahal hammock setup.
With everyone sleeping in I decided to clean my drive train. Last night, in the rain, my drive train was grinding with lots of gravely, sandy goodness. It drove me nuts. An advantage of having a bottle (as opposed to relying just on a water bladder) is that you can use your bottle to blast out the dirt in your drive train. I suppose you could suck and spit with a bladder, but I am glad I didn't need to resort to that. It took about 5-6 bottles of delicious iodine impregnated water to clean the drive to silent satisfaction.

Repacking my things, I strategically thought about what I really needed for the day and what I wanted to shovel into my 20 L dry bag. I had wanted more layers, less bulky clothing, and rope during the ride. I still kept the fairly minimal first aid kit in my camel back for easy access, although I though about relocating into into the dry bag.  It was a good thing I kept it accessible as we would need it later that night.

Fully loaded bike next to the iodine enriching water pump.

We finally rolled out of camp at 10am. 10 am! According to our plan, we wanted to leave at 7:30 am, just 45 minutes after sunrise. We were now a good 5 hours behind our initial plan if you factored in the 30 miles we didn't hit the day before. I had always envisioned finishing some time next day at like 4-6 in the morning, and it appeared we were on for a later finish. 

Mile 183.3, The Paw Paw Tunnel

Entering the Paw Paw

Unlike the previous day, today was wonderful. At some points, we had to shed down to our short sleeves.  We encountered the Paw Paw tunnel, which was a bumpy lumpy ride in the dark. Lights are required if you want to pass through the tunnel without groping your way along the walls.

In case you wanted to know what was on the other side of
 the Paw Paw

Mile 215 1:00 pm, Hancock MD-Where the best damn burrito in the world is made

Note to self: Potatoes and kale are good for a 200 mile single day ride. By the second day, the potatoes were getting gluey and the kale a little flat. PB&J would still have been good, except for the bulk. As we passed Hancock, MD we decided to stop into town to refuel our supplies. I was very grateful. 

Quiet coincidentally, we stopped at a Sheetz gas station that I had stopped earlier that summer coming back from Deep Creek. At that time, I had enviously eyed several bikers riding the C&O. Now, I was the biker in this situation.

When Paul and Jeff wanted to stop at the Sheetz here for food, I was highly skeptical. Gas station take out food is not on my typical eating rotation. However with my burrito envy the prior day, I decided to get a steak burrito with tater tots. I don't know if that Sheetz was a secret 4 star restaurant or if there was a hidden culinary talent lurking in the kitchen, but that was the best steak and tater tot burrito I had ever eaten! There was something divine about the savory meaty goodness combined with the crispy crunchy tater tots that gives me goose bumps to this day. To keep this memory alive, I have foresworn eating any steak and tater tot burrito without first riding 200 miles.
On a technical side note, I was worried about cramping again as the day was significantly warmer than yesterday. I bought 80 ounces of liquids to carry along-2 x 20 ounce cokes kept in bottles and 2 x 20 ounces of energy vitamin water thrown into my camel back. The vitamin water at this point of the ride was glorious and picked me up.

Dirty bikes

Always bring straps! Jeff's broken pannier and
had to strap it to his seat bag.

Turns out Paul is a big fan of hot dogs.

230 miles, Mental games 

A friend had told Jeff how riding the C&O is monotonous. Whereas the GAP changed scenery with with multiple river crossings, small towns, and forest views, the C&O had a consistent feel to it. I am not going to repeat these words here, because they are dangerous to a rider. It gets in ones head and kills motivation. While the day was beautiful, I could tell the morale was lagging as we pushed onward for leg 2. We came up with a game to start naming things in alphabetical order.  Knowing Paul liked dogs, we attempted dog breeds. That didn't last very long as we stopped on letter E. Plants were Jeff's forte and we covered the alphabet easily with that topic. It's fascinating how your mental acuity decreases when you are physically fatigued.  But we moved on and as the group morale improved, we rode faster.

A beautiful spot to take pictures and lose your gloves. I was so tired, I hadn't realized I left my gloves behind
after taking the picture. 

240 Miles, 4:30 pm Paul gets dropped.

The stretching I had done the previous night helped me out. I was still stiff, but managed to feel stronger as I warmed up during the day.  Jeff was looking good despite his lack of sleep.  And Paul?
Wait-where's Paul? Jeff and I dropped Paul! What? Without a doubt, the strongest rider in our group looked tired and we had just dropped him. His wife later told us that we needed to relish this moment. That's why I wrote it down in the blog. To relish.
The sun had been shining all day, but we were sheltered in trees. We came along a stretch of concrete that radiated heat. It felt wonderful.

Showing off our farmers tan.

Okay-let's figure this out-how much more do we have to ride?

At this point we had over 100 more miles to go. We could finish by 8 am the next day! It would only take another 12-15 more hours. . .  Paul however, had been running the numbers in head and said he was going to stop at 10pm no matter what. We would log another 30-40 miles and then only have a 70 mile ride home the next day. Paul wasn't going to do a death march ride in to Catonsville at some ungodly hour. I hadn't really thought about taking an extra day. Jeff commented that his only goal was to hit DC. A decision needed to be made.
Was two days really the goal or just completing the trip? Was the endpoint DC or Catonsville? Looking back on our original objectives, 2 days wasn't the primary goal. It would be totally safer to ride from DC to Catonsville when rested. Riding to just DC that night was still doable, but we hadn't arrange for a pickup that night in Georgetown.
In the end, we agreed that staying an extra night wasn't going to kill us and that stopping at 10pm would be good. I had planned this ride around miles and time, yet really never enforced the two requirements together. Only in my half conscientious state did I realize my error. We either were going to have a lax ride and finished whenever, or we march ourselves to a painful finish. We chose the former.

Mile 265, 6:00pm 20 miles north of Harpers Ferry. 

Dusk was setting in. With 90 miles of riding under our belt that day, Paul starts to pull standing up again. He's done this a number of times through out the trip, but this one would be for the record books. At this point, I couldn't standup and pedal for more than 5 strokes without burning out my quads. Jeff is in a similar boat. Paul finishes his mile of pulling standing up and keeps going. At 16 miles an hour, I am not complaining. It would be great to put as many miles as we can in the next 4 hours. It seems that Paul needed 100 miles of riding to warm up. 

Paul was leading standing up, Jeff was in the middle, and I was trailing at the end. As the sun set, we all turned on our lights. I had plugged my light into my battery earlier in the day for the Paw Paw tunnel, but hadn't checked it since. With all the zipping and unzipping of my bag, the cable must have shaken loose as my front light began flickering with each bounce. Not good. Since we were making such amazing time with Paul standing up, I didn't want to disrupt the flow, so I fell farther back not wanting to crash into Jeff with limited visibility. 

The miles started ticking off with Paul standing up. 2, 3, 4, 5. I would have cramped up after the first 1/4 mile, but he kept on going. Both Jeff and I were amazed that he could have kept up this pace standing up, but he said he just started feeling good.  Miles 6 and 7 rolled by. Paul asked when he started standing and I muttered something about 6 miles ago. I really had no idea. Paul announced a goal to finish 10 miles of standing.  Hmm-okay. I hope I got that start mileage correct. Mile 8, 9 ticked off. It was getting much darker and it felt like we were going faster. With a flickering light, I was having a really tough time staying in the paceline with out fear of crashing into them. Just a bit longer and then we can stop to reattach my light. And then it happened.

Mile 275, The Crash

I was watching a movie. There were were two bikers shrouded in a sea of black. Only the ambient light from their headlamps defined an oval cone of visibility. The lead biker viciously lurches and flies over his handlebars. The second biker with no time to react crashes and rides over the downed biker and careens off to the side of the trail. A loud moaning/cry and wailing erupts. "I can't breath! I can't breath".

Oh shit. This is isn't a movie. Trailing further back, I had enough time to stop without running into Paul or Jeff. I run up to Paul to check if he's okay. He's tangled up in his bike paralyzed with pain and or the wind being knocked out of him. Verifying that no bones were sticking out, handlebars had punctured his chest, or blood streaming out of his eyes I calmed down. Jeff who appears okay, comes scrambling up to check Paul as well. With everything calm down, I collect my wits and tell Paul not to move. I had to find my phone. Not to make an emergency call. To take a picture of course.

To be honest, I wasn't trying to be a dick and capture a moment of defeat. This was a very serious accident, but if I could make people laugh and keep calm, I felt this was the best medicine for the team. Here it is folks:

I had to capture the moment. By this time Paul had regained his breath and stopped screaming.
Of course I did make sure he wasn't hemorrhaging blood .  . . ;-) 

Mile 275, But I brought the Tampon!

We doubled checked Pauls vitals again. He wasn't bleeding but did show signs of going into shock. Jeff and I gradually helped him upright as we extracted him from his bike to inspect his wounds. He landed on his shoulder, but thankfully it was his non-surgery shoulder. It looked like his helmet and shoulder took the worse of the fall, which is why you should always wear a helmet kids. With my first aid kit handy in my camel back, I pulled out the alcohol and start scrubbing away Paul's wound. I couldn't tell if the alcohol or the fall hurt worse, but Paul was a trooper as I scrubbed away at his shoulder and ear.

I am thinking"Hey, I brought my emergency tampon along. I could use this to bandage up the wound." Apparently Paul wasn't in as much shock as I thought he was as he vehemently rejected the idea. Jeff followed a similar suit. Are you kidding me? I purposely packed this tampon for life threatening/bleeding injuries. Granted, this wasn't exactly a life threatening injury nor was there a lot of blood, but I wanted to say I used a tampon in an emergency field situation. While the team voted the decision, I hoped that I'll never have to use one in the future. Later that night, this exchange would have us all rolling with laughter. 

The aftermath. Going straight down at 16 mph.

Good helmet. I did it's job. 

With Paul potentially going into shock, we got him dressed up and gave him something to eat and drink. The question remained-what happened? Does Paul's lack of technical skills preclude him from riding over smooth gravely terrain? When we lifted his bike up, we confirmed it was his lack of technical skills. Or perhaps this club had something to do with it.

Good old club in the wheel. Makes it hard to ride . . . And stay on your bike.

Jeff is thinking if we need to break the a few spokes to get the stick out.

Mile 275, 7pm Game time decision

Paul said he was out. C'mon-the crash wasn't THAT bad. I had delusionally thought Paul would pick himself back on and continue riding. We were approximately 10 miles north of Harpers Ferry, so it was just another 70 miles to Georgetown. I did not print out the queue sheet from Georgetown to get back to Catonsville, as I was relying on Paul and his Garmin. With Paul out of the picture, we would struggling finding a way home. Jeff and I looked at each other. I knew we had the strength to finish the remaining 70 miles tonight. So riding from Pittsburgh to DC was physically feasible for us in two days. Tacking on another 40 miles up hill to Catonsville would definitely be challenging, especially on road and not knowing where to go.
We had to make a decision. I knew Jeff was calling Georgetown the goal. Do we try to finish the trip without Paul? It was a tough decision to make and I wrote about it in a prior article back but I felt that our commitment was first to the team and making sure Paul was safe. With that in mind, we decided to call Paul's wife to come and pick all of us up.

Mile 275, 7:30pm Let's get this party started!

Fortunately for us, we had wrecked 10 meters from a campground. There were lights ahead of us in the woods. We were perplexed why no one came out to assist an audibly wounded person. So I headed down the trail to search for some help while we waited for Paul's wife. 

I encountered Brittany at the first campsite.  Introducing myself I asked if it was okay if we brought an injured friend to her campsite. What was actually said was a friend going into shock and if she wouldn't mind sharing some heat from her fire. On-and why the hell didn't you come to help?  She heard a crash and screaming a few minutes earlier but since she was alone, didn't quite feel the courage to check it out. Made total sense. Her boyfriend was going to join her in a few minutes, so it wasn't just us stalker crazy bike riders and her at the campground.

Jeff and I dragged Paul over the campsite and we began to tell them of our tale. Her boyfriend Jake eventually showed up and that's when the mood kicked up. Apparently Jake and Brittany had only been dating a few months and Jake goal this camping trip was to prove he could cook a full meal over the campfire. There was plenty of stew for all of us, so the couple and the three scraggly bike riders shared a hot meal. Jeff, Paul, and I pulled out the rest of our food stash and contributed to the potluck. Paul ate his final Burrito, some 40 odd hours after he had picked it up, Jeff shared some odd pineapple kale power bar, and I had my ginger to go around. When I asked Brittany and Jake if they knew the special properties of ginger, Brittany responded about how it is suppose to calm your stomach. Hallelujah, I was vindicated after preaching to Jeff and Paul for the last 40 hours!

Somewhere along the way a bottle of Southern Comfort appeared and that's when the party really started.  The fire rose higher and great stories about biking, camping, and accounting were told. The party stalled when Brittany couldn't find the wine opener. Never fear, Jeff or Paul used the chain breaker on the bike tool to liberate that cork.

Finally, we capped off the fire with a quiet eulogy:

Mile 275, 8:00pm Uhh-that's a Maxipad . . .

At some point in our tall telling of tales, I showed the tampon that I wanted to use on Paul. Everyone laughed at me. Apparently I was holding a Maxi Pad. Paul said "You totally could have used that on me". Oh man-missed opportunity. I had been traveling with pads the entire time and due to minor mis-classification, I missed my chance in using the Tampon....uh Maxipad. I begged Paul for me to put the tampon Maxipad on him, but he refused. Damn-he was no longer in shock . . .

For my educational reference, I went into the stores to reconfirm I had the right taxonomy.

I am still probably going to mix this up in the future.

Mile 275, 10pm-home

Paul's wife Leesa, came and picked us up. It was a bitter sweet moment finishing in Catonsville via car, but we knew in our heart that 1) This was an epic trip regardless of the crash, 2)we could have totally crushed it to Georgetown and 3) most importantly we had a team that stood by each other.

I am looking forward to future rides with these gentlemen again.

Until next time, keep riding.

TL;DR

Second day of riding-late to get started. Beautiful day, best tatter tot burrito ever from Sheetz. Jeff and Jason drop Paul. Paul begins epic 10 mile standup. Crashes. No broken bones or puncture wounds. Tampon offer for clean up. Refused. Met Brittney and Jake at campsite. Party/potluck begins. Discovered Jason has Maxipad. Maxipad still refused. Leesa picks up and we arrive safely at home in Catonsville.