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| | Day 2, finally! Sorry I haven't posted this sooner, but now that I am home for the break, you can expect all of the next installments of our amazing bike adventure blog!
Day 2:
The plan for Day 2 was to bike from Confluence to Cumberland, MD, 63 miles. It would be the shortest but most uphill day.
The forecast for the day 2 morning was rain, so we didn't want to get started too early and end up wet all day. Sure enough, it was raining when we woke up, so we took our time to eat 2 boxes of macaroni and cheese and the rest of the pretty gross dried-out, seedy, clementines we had gotten the night before. This left one box of macaroni and cheese and a stick of butter remaining, which for some reason we decided to pack and carry with us. It just seemed too delicious to waste. I also spent a fair part of the morning scrubbing the hose of my camelback with scorching hot water so that I wouldn't have to keep thinking about that bird poop every time I took a drink. This was the day that Jason and Patrick would be leaving from Pittsburgh, and while we were biking a paltry 63 miles, they would be doing the full 130 miles to the same end destination, Cumberland Gap in Maryland. The rain let up eventually, and we took off at about 9:30. We knew that Jason and Patrick had been planning to leave at 5:00 a.m. or so, so we calculated that if they could go 15 miles/hour, they would reach Confluence in only 4 hours or so, and could theoretically have already passed us. However, we knew that with the rain, it was unlikely that they made it in only 4 hours, and maybe they didn't start right at 5, so we were left wondering how close they might be and when they would pass us.
Here we are, well-rested and chipper at 9:30 a.m., leaving our cute little trailer. Nate had an actual helmet cover, but his shoe covers were from the lab. I had actual shoe covers, but my helmet cover was a shower cap. Even though it had stopped raining, you can see how gray the sky is, and we wanted to be waterproofed because the air was extremely moist and a little bit spitty still.
The biking was slow-going. First of all, we had more steep uphill this day than any other day. Here is the elevation map of the whole trip (though keep in mind that the y-axis is in feet and the x-axis is in miles). On day 2 we were traveling from Confluence to Cumberland, so we knew to expect about 40 miles of uphill followed by about 20 miles of downhill. We planned to stop for lunch near the top of the uphill so that the hard part of the day would be over.
The other reason the biking was slow-going was that the ground had been rained on, and the consistency was that of wet sand. It was much harder to pedal, and our bikes quickly became encrusted with the wet crushed gravel -- it stuck in all the gears, it sprayed up from Ryan's tires into my face, it sprayed up from all of our tires onto our bags and backs. Combined with the uphill, it made for a terrible riding surface, and Nate quickly began lamenting having brought his 500 pound backpack. Here we are at 10:30 after only 10 miles. You can see me and Nate are already feeling the strain.
Ryan is fine of course, even though he's carrying both of our stuff. You can see the path behind him, which looks deceptively easy and pleasant.
We realized looking ahead that our 10 mile stop was right next to the Pinkerton Tunnel, which is a closed tunnel that apparently has sustained 1 million dollars in "freeze" damage and is no longer safe. Instead we would have to take a detour around the tunnel.
Looking ahead to the tunnel from our 10 mile rest, and then arriving there at 10:45.
Never being one to go the long way or keep it safe, Ryan thought that maybe we could just go through the tunnel anyway. We found a way around the side of the gate that a person could fit through, maybe even with a bike. Ryan went to explore. When he entered the tunnel, I swear a million bats started flapping around, and their wings were making that creepy, flappy, echo-y sound. Ryan says they were birds, but I'm still imagining they were bats. Ryan started walking through staying close to the edge where there was no evidence of the ceiling falling in, although the ground was super soft and wet, and his feet were sinking in. I already knew there was no way I was going through this tunnel. This was confirmed when I thought he was almost to the other side, and it turned out he was only 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through (I found out the tunnel is apparently 800 feet long). At that point, the ground along the edges was full of little ponds and rivers, and the only drier ground was the soft stuff in the middle, under the falling rock. Ryan was creeped out enough at this point that instead of continuing on alone, he tried to convince Nate to come in with him. I guess that way when the roof caved in, maybe one of them would avoid being crushed and would be able to save the other one? I don't know. But Nate wasn't going in, so Ryan came back.
Even Ryan was comfortable taking the detour after his creepy foray into the tunnel.
An hour later, at 11:45, we reached our 20 mile rest spot. We found a nice little gazebo to sit in. We were pretty coated in dirt and mud already, as were our bikes and bike gears, and I was pooped.
Ryan still looks fine. You will notice that he is also wearing the lab shoe covers.
We must have slowed down at this point, because We didn't reach our 30 mile rest until 1:05 or so.
Nate
Ryan, still fine!
Also, that rest stop was in a cemetery:
Finally, finally, finally we reached Meyersdale, our lunch stop near the top of the hill! Of course, this time we had to go way downhill to get to lunch, and way back uphill to get back to the trail after lunch. We explored the town a little bit before settling on Subway as our lunch destination at 1:45. I actually wanted to go to the restaurant next door, and it looked cheery and nice inside, but the sad truth was that we were far too dirty even to be eating at Subway. As we rode through the town, I was thinking to myself that it might not be such a bad place to quit. I didn't know how much more of the uphill sludge I could take, but of course lunch revived me somewhat, and afterwards I continued on, knowing that there would be a big downhill ahead.
Hungry!
Ryan is still smiling!
In fact, I was so dirty that I actually left a pile of dirt in the seat when I stood up. I promise I did my best to clean up after myself!
Now, Meyersdale seems to kind of advertise itself as being the top of the peak, and it's the last town listed on the elevation map before the peak, but the truth is, there were about 9 more miles of grueling wet uphill before we reached the actual peak. During this time, Nate and I were in pretty low spirits, and I think Ryan was too since I kept forcing us to go really slowly. I was starting to decide that the trip was too hard, and if I could just make it through the second day, I would have accomplished something! It was 3:10 when we finally made it up the hill. We had not yet seen Patrick and Jason pass us, and we kept wondering if maybe they had passed us on our lunch break.
The top of the peak was more rewarding than I had hoped! First of all, there was a big sign announcing that we had reached the Continental Divide. Water on the West side goes to the Gulf of Mexico, and on the East side, it goes to the Chesapeake Bay. This sign really made me feel like I had reached a special destination that had made the last five and half hours worth it.
This may be the first time Nate smiled.
The next reason it was awesome, is that we got to then ride through a big lighted tunnel, the Big Savage Tunnel, that is only for bikers and hikers -- no cars. It was such a good change of pace, like we were finally getting somewhere, and it was super long at 3,300 feet!
Then, making it even better, when we got to the other side of the tunnel, it was like being in some kind of mystical fairy land. It was quiet and extremely foggy, and we were super high up with what would have been an amazing view if not for the fog, which instead made it feel like we had just biked into a cloud. I tried to make a facial expression to show my amazement, although maybe I look more slack-jawed and tired here:
That's better!
Now we knew at this point that there would be a downhill, but it was already 3:30 when we reached the end of the tunnel, and so we only had about an hour and a half of daylight to make it the next 25 miles or so. We were worried too that the "downhill" we had psyched ourselves up for was going to be barely detectable. When we had done training rides, for example, the way back was supposed to be downhill but felt basically flat. We hadn't wanted to get too excited. But the trail after the tunnel was more than we had even dreamed! The surface of the trail changed to a harder faster one when we hit Maryland, and the hill was undeniable -- we got going faster and faster up to about 18-19 mph and could sustain the high speeds while taking breaks from pedaling -- it was an honest-to-God hill! And a hill that was 20 miles long! If you know the exhilaration of coasting down a hill on a bike, you can only imagine how it must have felt to do that for 20 miles after pushing through uphill went sand for 6 hours. We were giddy. We were laughing and almost a little delirious, and we eventually noticed that we were the only ones making tracks in the trail surface, so it didn't seem like Jason and Patrick had passed us. This also made us very happy -- not because somehow beating them when they had to go 130 miles would be an accomplishment, but because if THEY beat US, it would be a little bit sad.
We rested an hour later at 4:20, and you can see we are actually having fun now!
Our bikes were still very dirty!
We actually reached Cumberland at 5:00. It was a cute little town and we found our way to the hotel just as it started getting dark. We were absolutely thrilled.
We had no idea what we were going to do with our dirty bikes though, until we got to the hotel and Ryan found a hose on the side of the hotel. Could it get any better than this?!
Before we had even checked in, Jason and Patrick arrived, so we were glad to see them safe and alive and arriving just *after* us. Perfect. And I have to tell you, I have never imagined someone could get this dirty on a bike.
Patrick:
That night I attempted to do our laundry, but Patrick and Jason's clothes were actually so dirty, that my, Nate's, and Ryan's clothes came out of the washer dirtier than they were when they went in. Oh well. We ate dinner at the hotel that night because Patrick told us we needed to eat the right kind of food like pasta and protein, not fatty food like pizza. We all agreed and pretended to be healthy until our orders were brought to the table and we discovered that 4 out of 5 of us had ordered the fried food sampler platter in addition to our "healthy" meals. Mmmmmmm. Later that night, after much argument about who would sleep where due to snoring concerns, Erika and Matt showed up. Matt would be joining us for the rest of the bike ride, and Erika was our angel of a team captain who drove our conference bags to DC, made us sandwiches, and generally helped us the rest of the time when we were mentally not all there. More on that in the next installments!
Day 2 complete!
| | | Posted 12/24/2008 12:17 PM - 32 Views - 0 eProps - 1 Comment
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