Day 93 08/23/22
Well best intentions die hard. We ended up spending another day in Cumberland and not riding today. We did take the opportunity to make our final plan to get to DC, landing us there this Sunday the 28th. We have had to face calling it quits while being so close but neither one of us want to do that. Not all was lost today we did eat at Chick-fil-A which made things feel familiar for some reason.
Hopefully I will have some change in my circumstances by tomorrow and we will get back on the road.
Day 94 08/24/22
We didn't have to check out of our room until 11:00am so we milked it for all it was worth and checked out at 11:00am. During breakfast we met another cyclist (Mark) and thankfully he was able to give us some good intel on the C & O trail (Chesapeake and Ohio). The C & O was originally a manmade canal controlled by locks. Boats were pulled through the 184 mile canal by mules walking on an adjacent path next to the canal. Today that path is used for cycling. After chatting with Mark we realized what we have found to be true over and over on this trip; expect the better and it usually is. He gave us a reasonable expectation for what was ahead. After breakfast we had to return to the pharmacy where I had my penicilin prescription filled. Sarah discovered that we were shorted three days of pills. We got it rectified but were amazed by the fact they did not apologize or seem the least bit disturbed by their error. Customer service is not what it used to be.
The city of Cumberland has some beautiful buildings to see and streets to walk which we took time to enjoy after leaving the pharmacy.
I was definitly not looking forward to planting my rear on the seat but the time came and I sucked it up. The day was beautiful and the trail traverses some amazing stretches of forest with the Potomac river on one side and the canal on the other. The C & O is a little more rugged than the GAP or the Katy trail but it certainly isn't the trail that most people describe. Aside from the bumps it is a really great ride. In order for me to ride I had to lower my seat to help with pressure points. Normally we ride stretches of 10 miles before we take a standing break but today we cut that to five miles. One great feature of our tanden is that either rider can pedal independently. Today Sarah did more solo pedaling than usual which allowed me to stand on my pedals through the bumps and ruts and narrow parts of the trail where I needed more control and less pressure on my rear. I guess you could say she really saved my blessed assurance today. We ended up in Paw Paw, West Viginia in a camping cabin at the Canal Cabins.
Yes, we are in West Virginia again after being in Maryland for a few days. We went into town to get some dinner and met a guy named Andrew. We ended up sharing a meal and talking about our faith and families. There are just some people you wish you could get to know better. He wanted to buy us dinner but we insisted on buying his because we have had so many acts of kindness directed toward us.
Hope to get some rest and recover for a few hours because tomorrow is coming. I heard a great quote today, "The hard is what makes it great or everybody would do it." Could not agree more.
Rode 30 miles on a bad bum today.