Displaying his usual propensity for last-minute delay, Stretch noticed that he had a broken spoke. There was no way to tell whether the spoke broke in the UHaul or whether it had been broken for years. The wheel looked pretty good, so after much hand-wringing we decided to ride on. Linda would buy a selection of spare spokes at the local bike shop and meet us a few miles down the road. If the wheel looked bad we could perform emergency spoke replacement surgery.

It was about 9:10 when we actually started riding. The first 200 yards of the trail were paved with bricks.


But soon the trail turned to gravel or crushed limestone.


We met Linda at the Irons Mountain trail access. Stretch's wheel was holding up so I just stuffed the spokes in my bag. There were only six of us there because Curt suffered the official first flat tire of the trip when he ran over a golf-tee-sized splinter of wood a few miles earlier. Eventually the rearguard pulled up and we headed out.

It wasn't long before my back tire went down. Not because I ran over anything, but because of poorly installed rim tape. I patched the tube and started riding again but soon the tire started getting soft again so I pulled over and replaced the tube. This time it held. Curt had another flat the next day.  He and I were the only riders to have flats all weekend.

It was a beautiful day except for temperatures in the low 90s. Fortunately, we were riding in the shade most of the time with the canal at our left and the Potomac on the right.




Thirty miles into the ride we crossed the state line into Paw Paw, West Virginia for lunch. We all piled into the Sweet Magnolia Family Restaurant. The turkey sandwich was excellent. I drank about 12 cups of iced tea and water. Then I went across the street to the convenience store and bought some more.

Back at the trail we met a guy who was in the last week of a transcontinental bike tour pulling a BOB trailer. We later learned that that he is a database guy from State College, PA named Paul Rito. His weblog is here: http://www.ritosoft.com/blogs/bikeblog.html. We sent him off to the Sweet Magnolia and headed for the most thrilling part of the entire trip: the Paw Paw Tunnel.


The tunnel is about 1/2 mile long and very dark. The light behind you helps for about 100 yards. Once you get more than halfway you are blinded by the light at the end of the tunnel. On the left there is a wooden fence that keeps you from falling into the dark, cold water--home to unnamed terrors. On the right is a brick wall. Underfoot is a very uneven dirt surface. Lacking a light, one might think it wise to walk through the tunnel. But I'm too lazy to walk that far and it wouldn't be nearly as scary.

Scotty and Kevin had lights and went first. Then it was me and Dave. I tried to keep up with Kevin, but I soon fell back. In order to avoid hooking a handlebar on the fence I kept steering to the right and crashing into the wall. I'm amazed that Dave never ran me over. In the middle we passed some pedestrians with flashlights. After several minutes of terror Dave and I emerged from the tunnel. It was fun.

Jeff, Tony, and Curt came through a couple of minutes later followed by Stretch and Melissa (who had lights, but appeared to walk anyway...hmm). There was a copperhead swimming in the canal at this end.

So on we went. Every five miles or so there are hiker/biker campsites along the towpath. Each site has a picnic table, porta-john, and water pump. Because of the heat we would stop at just about every pump to refill water bottles. Some of the pumps produced better water than others. The water quality ranged from heavily metallic and orange-colored to somewhat less metallic and sort of greyish. Over the course of the weekend my water bottles became more and more stained--but I'm sure I received my RDA of iron.

On and on along the winding Potomac under a canopy of trees. Looking at a canal that was either full of green water or trees and undergrowth. It apparently hadn't rained in a week or so because the towpath was dry. A very pleasant development since both of our previous C&O rides were heavily mud-based.


We rode past Little Orleans and Cacapon Junction and reached Hancock at about dinner time. For a while we rode parallel to the paved Western Maryland Rail Trail, but we didn't cross over because we would miss the precious water pumps. By the time we didn't need water we were too far from the trail for it to be worthwhile.

At Hancock we rode into town and hit the local Subway, which turned out to be a good choice. Most of the locals seem to hang out at the Sheetz, which is directly across the street, so the Subway was uncrowded. The food was fine and I bought a big pile of goodies to eat for breakfast at our camp.

Kevin stopped at the local bike shop to replace a screw that had come out of one of his cleats. But the shop did not have a screw or a cleat (normally I carry a bag of such hardware but I didn't on this trip). Instead they fixed him up with a single pedal and clip. So he rode the rest of the way with one clipless pedal and one clipped. It didn't hurt him.

Paul Rito rode up as we waited for Kevin. He was also going to grab some dinner and then head down the trail to one campground beyond ours.

We resumed our ride on the Western Maryland Rail Trail to gain some relief from the constant vibrations of the gravel towpath. After about eight miles we rejoined the towpath for the short ride to the Licking Creek Aqueduct campsite. It was a nice site and nobody else was there so we set up camp.