700 mile bike ride from DC to Pittsburgh and back

 Preface

T minus ten days to kick stand up. In five days, I graduate from college into the unknown world of Covid-19. For the first time in a long time, I will be free of the bonds of education. 

Ever since elementary school, I have been wanting to ride the entirety of the C&O trail. I’ve made a few weekend camping trips along the trail by myself or with friends from Boy Scouts but never before have I had the time to bike the whole trail. As I waste away, quarantining in my parents’ house, my mind is atrophying. I need a challenge. I need a purpose. Something other than half-assing elective classes online and binging TV shows until 3am. The plan, before the virus, was for my family to take a long car trip to Idaho,  between graduation and the time my summer job starts at an outdoor camp. With the pandemic that changes everything. My deliverance from boredom will come in the form of this herculean bicycle venture. 

 

The plan: to bike the 184.5 mile towpath of the C&O canal from Georgetown in Washington D.C to Cumberland, Maryland. From there, I will take the 150-mile-long Great Allegheny Passage to Pittsburgh. Once I’ve reached there, it’ll be the whole thing over again in reverse: 669 miles, plus the 15 miles from my house to the trailhead. 

 

The preparation: After talking to a mentor of mine who hiked the Appalachian Trail, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of hammock camping. It’s lightweight and smaller than a tent, plus you don’t have to sleep on the hard ground. Camping hammocks that include bug netting and a rainfly cost anywhere from $300 to $1,200, but I’m a broke 22-year-old, so I use my Eno hammock, a construction tarp for a rainfly, and a separate bug net for $50 from REI. I sleep on my stomach naturally, so before the journey I spent several nights sleeping in my hammock in my backyard in an attempt to train myself to fall asleep in a hammock. I’ve logged over 100 days camping with the Boy Scouts and may have easily doubled that number by my summer camping job and taking my own trips. Still, much of that has either been car-camping or only weekend trips. I don’t have much experience with long-term trips or carrying non-perishable food. 

Camping stores are closed for Covid-19, and buying freeze dried food online is impossible, because it’s sold out everywhere as people plan for the worst. Normally the C&O canal trail is very forgiving, because towns line the path. On my last excursion, I met two older men who biked with nothing on them but their lunches for the whole trip, because they could stay at motels and eat at restaurants along the way. I don’t have that luxury with this trip, as the point is to avoid people and not get sick. So, I stuff my panniers with what non-perishable food I could find in Aldi: Ramen noodles, PopTarts, baby food, Vienna sausages, etc. If I supplement the rest of my meals with fish I can catch in the Potomac, I reason that I can stop for food just once or twice on the estimated two-week venture.

Day 1 (5/23/20): My doorstep - C&O mile 43

            I wake up at eight and am ready by nine, after having one last meal of civilization (fried egg and cheese sandwich). I weigh myself and all my gear one last time: I’m 170 lbs.; gear is 30; food is 27. My departure is delayed as my parents insist on taking pictures and saying long farewells, but I manage to get on the road at 10. Frustration builds: people are blocking the sidewalk, in my way, and ignoring the sounds of me ringing my bell. When I finally reach the trailhead to begin on the C&O, it’s an unceremonious crossing. 

            I tried to conserve my phone’s battery power for as long as possible, but I grow bored; having made it to the trail, I reward myself with the entertainment of the Jack London audiobook I’ve almost finished, The Mutiny on the Elsinore. 

            At mile marker 16, I stop for a lunch of summer sausage, cheese, and crackers. Sitting on a rock and chewing, I glance at the river and see a brownish-black water snake (I think a cottonmouth water moccasin) swim right by me. Following the meal, the trail turns from solid gravel to mud, thanks to yesterday’s storms. At first, I’m relieved to be on soft earth, since the weight of my cargo jostled on my back going over the hard pebbles, but my gratitude falls through when, as the dirt morphs into wet slush, my wheels slide under me and I almost wipe out twice. The panniers on my bike are caked in mud splatter. 

            With my pace slowed to that of a snail, I arrive at a part of the trail where a small crowd has gathered in my path. Drawing closer, I discover a large copperhead snake sunning itself across the trail, blocking all forward motion. Because of its venomous nature, nobody is willing to shepherd it out of the way. A few people try to throw rocks near it, hoping to scare it away from a distance, but it doesn’t budge. After some time, an old man braver than the rest of us picks it up with the end of his stick and places it elsewhere. 

            I push on through the sludge, but now the weight of my baggage sinks my tires lower and lower. I stand on the pedals the entire time, trying to force the bike forward. Right as the mudslide ends, I narrowly skirt around the third snake of the day (a black rat snake, also basking in the sun and extended over the width of the path). To congratulate myself for getting through the mire, I take a snack break at mile marker 26 and finish my audiobook.

            I call it a day some seventeen miles later -- the plan was to hit over fifty miles a day, but there’s wiggle room to stop a little shy of that goal, since the markers don’t incorporate the extra distance to the trailhead from my house.

            Someone is with me at the campsite, but since there is only one picnic table, which is near her, after setting up my hammock, I have to invite myself over to prepare supper. I boil two frozen hot dogs, slice them up, and lay it with a block of cheese on a tortilla. I’d meant to first cook a bit of summer sausage, and then use the grease to fry my quesadilla, but I’m a fool and forgot to do that, so the quesadilla burns and sticks to the pan. I rescue what I can and eat it. Not bad. 

            Chatting with my fellow camper, I learn she’s on a weekend trek from D.C. and will be heading back in the morning. I can’t read whether she enjoys my company or would prefer to have to table and camp to herself. I probe the situation delicately, making small talk about the mud we went through and our mutual want to do the Appalachian trail one day. She plans to bike the entirety of the trail, like I am, between the end of her current job and the start of her new one. Still I have no read of her, until she invites me to join her at a fire when it gets dark. It occurs to me that I might have more company than expecting, since it’s Memorial Day weekend, but come Tuesday the trail will get lonely at night. 

            She says she took a dip in the river and found it quite refreshing, and I’ve got time to kill before dark, so I strip to my boxers and jump in -- being extra vigilant, because the last time I was in the Potomac, on this trail, I got a black leech on my ankle. Afterwards I towel off with my shirt, just so I can drench it in the river and rinse my sweat off it. 

            I tell my associate I’d take her up on the offer to share a fire, but she says she didn’t collect any firewood. Good thing I did. I bring mine over and we set it aflame. Around the fire we discuss the pandemic, and how now is a good time to isolate in the woods. She encourages me in my journey to Pittsburgh and back, and gives me her number, so I can let her know what the conditions are like, when she does the trip in a few weeks. With that, she wishes me happy trails and goes to bed.

Day 2 (5/24): C&O mile 43-99

            After a fitful sleep trying to adjust to sleeping prone on my back, I wake up at sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 (only to later learn that my watch is running slow). To make sure I don’t linger about breaking camp, my strategy is to not eat breakfast before I’ve put in miles from where I slept. I set out after clicking on a new Jack London audiobook, The Road -- a recollection of true stories from London’s time as a “tramp royal”, criss-crossing the country, sneaking on train’s boxcars. 

It was so humid last night that the shirt I washed in the river didn’t dry when I draped it on my hammock strings overnight. And it turns out, the clothes in my bag are even wetter, because the water bladder in my backpack sprung a leak. I consider airing them out, on the outside of the backpack, but there’s too much cloud cover for that to do any good. In fact, it’s so cold that I put on the separate sleeves I’d packed: I probably look like an idiot, wearing a tank top with separate sleeves. Oh well. It’s a towpath, not a runway.  Continuing on my way, I pass Harper’s Ferry, officially exceeding the furthest distance I had biked so far on the path, from previous weekend outings. Now into the unknown I plunge.

            I stop for breakfast five miles down the trail. I fix myself more summer sausages and gobble the last of the block of cheese, overlooking the rapids as I do so. I’d brought along some recently-purchased throwing knives, and while I’m chewing, I manage to stick all three into a tree trunk on the first toss. As the weather begins warming up, I trade my tank top and extra sleeves for my damp T-shirt.

            Already saddle-sore on day two, I give my butt a break and stand on the pedals for a while. Thinking about how raw my ass will be at the end of this trip.

I stop to refill my water bottles with my hand-pump filter by the river. Technically, the trail is closed to campers since all the rangers are working remotely, but they can’t really close the campsites, so they just removed the handles from the water pumps and closed the port-o-potties. Fine with me, because I brought my own water pump and my own trowel and TP. They can’t stop me, just inconvenience me. 

Diverging from the path, I approach the mouth of a cave. Checking for bears, I shouted into the cave, but nothing stirred or roared back at me, just my own echo. There’s a stream of water running along the bottom, and I’m in beat-up sneakers, so I’d rather not ford through it. I stuff my lunch into my cargo pockets and use my outstretched arms and legs to trace the curving walls as I go in deeper, hoping not to slip on the slick surface, and rejoicing when a good handhold appears. I creep along as far as I can, while keeping daylight in sight. (I’d actually brought my headlight with me, but I’m not prepared to go spelunking right now. Too many miles to put in.) Having found a suitable resting place at last, I bite into a chalky chocolate protein bar, watching my new friend, a skinny spotted yellow salamander, thankful he is not a bear.

Keeping on the path, nothing of note happens except the end of my fourth Jack London audiobook (The Road), just as I reach the top of Dam 4. I catch my breath while gazing at a cascade of water descending a 10-foot drop. An older couple notices me with my gear and they strike up a conversation: They’re doing the trail from the opposite direction, but have had the chance to stay in hotels along the way, so their equipment is just ““tons and tons” of water and lunch. They tell me about section-hopping the AT, and I respond that if my summer job doesn’t pan out, that will probably be my plan. 

“The water is the best part of the AT,” the woman exclaims. 

“Better than champagne,” her companion agrees. 

I fail to get either of their names, but the old man and woman do give me their trail names: Pain and Suffering, respectively. (I hope I’m able to do this trail when I have gray hair, even if I have to wimp out and stay at hotels the whole way.) They’re hungry for company, having completed most of the trail with just each other, but I have miles to go and so I make a polite exit, giving them a “Happy Trails!” as I leave.

On the way off the dam, the towpath must have eroded, so instead the bike path follows a stone and concrete bridge that runs along the river’s edge. After bouncing over bumpy gravel and sticking or sliding on mud, the smooth consistency of concrete is almost divine.

The trail weaves back and forth between the stilted path and terra firma. I zoom along before smashing on the breaks, thanks to a tiny “Caution” sign that barely warned me, going around a bend, about this crumbled concrete that’s now in front of me. Huge chunks of upturned cement. I’m forced to walk my bike precariously along the edge -- my feet and bike share a foot-wide ledge -- praying I don’t topple 8 feet down and into the rushing river. 

Finally, again, it’s smooth sailing, as I bike past Memorial Day weekenders fishing with their families. When the fishers dispersed, I’m able to bike on the left of the path, closer to the clear water with giant fish visible. I experiment with my next audiobook: I try Milton’s Paradise Lost, but find it too wordy, and reassign myself Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. 

The landscape shifts and I find myself biking past the plushiest trailer park I’ve ever seen: This place brings a new definition to the term “glamping”, with golf carts parked outside enormous trailers that have multi-tied wooden patios, where they’re grilling or playing cornhole. As I ride by, people toast me with beers straight from the cooler, shouting “Power to you for biking in this heat”. 

I hit mile marker 99 at 5:30. I can keep going to the next site, which is another six miles away, but the two strong trees in the middle of this camp look as if they were planted for the sole purpose of swinging a hammock in between them. I eat some canned spaghetti and meatballs, and then chat with my folks on the phone as I fish. You could say I dropped a line in more ways than one.

Day 3 (5/25): C&O mile 99-154

            At 7-ish I wake up, but I’m in no real rush to break camp before 8. I enjoy a leisurely start to my day, pedaling for a spell, and I happen to look up and spot an owl. At this point, the solitude is getting to me, and I feel compelled to address the animal. 

“How are you, Mr. owl? Or Ms. Owl, not to assume. What kind of owl are you? A pretty owl for sure. Who’s a pretty owl? You are! You’re a pretty owl!”

I have breakfast just outside the town of Williamsport, at the bottom of some stairs that go down to the waterbank. The meal consisted of a peanut butter, Nutella, and dried-banana-chips-on-tortilla sandwich. The Nutella I had packed into the cutest little glass jar the size of my thumb, which my old roommate left in our apartment. The best thing my roommate ever did for me was accidentally give me that jar.

Back on the trail I spied three dead moles (Who is killing all the moles?), a dead baby racoon, and a garter snake with a bright yellow stripe along its side. Today I don’t listen to an audiobook, but I sing and whistle loudly, taking advantage of the fact that I’m the only human around for miles. The river distanced itself from the trail a while back, but now I’m getting low on water; a wave of relief sweeps through me where the path re-encounters the river, and I pump at the town of Hancock.

I remember that I’ve been to Hancock as a kid, returning from a car trip: My family and I ate lunch in the park along the canal. I remember being astounded when my mom told me that the trail went from here a hundred miles down to home in D.C. That was the first time I devised a plan to bike the whole thing. I hope I am making that younger version of myself proud today. 

Just outside the town, I finish the last of my summer sausage. The canal next to me merges into a smelly, stagnant swamp. I glance to my right and see another biker, on the other side of the canal. I wonder whether it’s a paved side-trail, one that I could access from my current path, or a street that happened to run momentarily parallel to the towpath. I don’t know how to cross the canal to investigate. Then, some distance later, I see an entrance that seems to resemble that parallel trail, and I walk my bike up the switchback ramp.

The sign says “Entrance to Rails to Trails”, and I remember that the C&O Canal failed because by the time they built it, a railroad had been built alongside it that carried the same cargo cheaper and faster. I notice there’s a huge cavernous tunnel with a wrought iron gate, barring passage through. I stand at the mouth, enjoying the cool, damp breeze flowing out. 

Fed up with silence, I start my next audiobook, Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick, and start up the asphalt rail trail. It’s an assent of about 45°, but I’m so pleased to be on a smooth surface that I’m going as fast as if I were coasting down. At the summit I pass Bill’s Place, a country bar and restaurant that I remember I went to with the Boy Scouts, when we camped nearby -- yet another time during my youth that I was awed by the extensive connection of the trail to my home. If not for COVID-19, I would have gone in and looked for a dollar bill taped to the ceiling, which I swear had my deceased uncle’s name on it. (This suspicion was confirmed when I told my mom about it, and she said her brother did use to come down to this area to hunt and fish. He passed away before I was born, and my mom only tells me brief anecdotes about him when we visit the family grave plot.) I would have gone into Bill’s Place and asked to replace the dollar, and bring the bill to his headstone, but alas, due to the pandemic, that was not a possibility. 

I keep going on the rest of the rail trail until it ends abruptly, at the start of what was formerly used as a train bridge. Instead I make a sharp left down a steep road, leading to a trail where I traverse a shallow stream, back to the towpath. I pedal along, taking frequent pauses for shade. It’s noticeably more humid in the marshy Paw Paw land. Mr. Spaceship ends and Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (by Jerome K. Jerome) begins. 

I pass my would-be daily requirement of 50 miles but don’t quit, hoping instead to camp near the Paw Paw tunnel. I break from my efforts at mile marker 154, deciding to fill up my water bottles at the water access. Just as I squat down, I see the long brown water snake floating, tethered to a root by its tail, with a fish in its mouth, within a foot of where I’d nearly sat my butt. I must have startled him as much as he did me, because he darts deep into the water with the fish half-eaten in his mouth.

Snake or no, I need water. So I crouch down with the pump in hand -- but then I hear a noise, and I yelp, fearing the snake is back for vengeance now that he swallowed his meal. However when I glimpse the noisemaker, I let out a laugh, realizing that it was just a frog plopping into the river. I pump my water, but I’m still skittish. Hearing another stirring sound, I almost fall in, but I manage to keep my composure despite the threats of frogs and snakes.

Refilled, I mount my bike, but on opening my phone to play my audiobook, I learn that it’s not 5:30 like my watch says, but 6:30. The next campsite (which I had been aiming for), on the other side of the Paw Paw tunnel, is probably more crowded than this one, so I end my trek here for now.

There’s just one other person I’m sharing the area with, an old lady, but I’m disappointed that I can’t play my pocket radio and walk around the camp shirtless as I’d done last night. With everything set up, I walk over to the nearby lock bridge and prepare my canned soup. I add some cut-up Vienna sausages and sprinkle in Goldfish, Pringles crumbs, and my camping spices (Old Bay, lemon chili powder, sea salt, pepper, etc., packed in a film canister). It’s really good. I’m a camping culinary genius.

While eating my soup, legs dangling over the bridge, it dawns on me that this may be the site of the legendary “ninja snake”: When I was with the Boy Scouts and we camped near the Paw Paw tunnel, we took a hike through then over the tunnel. At one point along the towpath, we saw a snake basking in the sun on the edge of the lock, but we got too close and startled it. The snake slithered off the edge, and fell on an exposed rebar, which protruded horizontally from the lock. It latched on the rebar and swung from it to another and then another, swinging down four times from different rebars, until it fell into the small bit of water. To a pack of middle-schoolers on a camping trip, it was the coolest thing since Tech Decks. 

I read my book, Call of the Wild (by good old Jack London), and go to sleep. 

Day 4 (5/26): C&O mile 154 - GAP mile 22

            I’m up at 7, and this time, gone by 7:30. Soon after I find myself at the Paw Paw tunnel, where I over-cautiously turn on every light on my bike, strap my headlamp on, and string a light to my handlebars. It’s a long tunnel, and because it’s so early, I have the whole thing to myself (which is good, because if someone had passed me, there’d be no way to keep social distance on the enclosed three-foot-wide pathway). The quiet was awfully eerie. To disperse some of the unease I whistle “Goodbye Stranger” by Supertramp, which I intended to fit with the deluded self-image of me as a wandering tramp, as I’ve thought of myself during this trip. But I miscalculated. Even and especially “Goodbye Stranger” sounds creepy in an emptied, echoey tunnel.

            At last I glimpse the light and cross through to the other side. To celebrate, I take the time out to explore, climbing up the stairs over the tunnel mouth. I count a dozens of  newts in the canal below me, but only on my descent do I notice the sign reading “Don’t climb the stairs above the tunnel.”

            Apart from all my audiobook-reading, I entertain myself with improvised songs about my travels, which I belt at the top of my lungs -- or, when I notice someone approaching from the other direction, switch to moderately whistling. One of these hit songs is inspired by a sign I pass by for a campground called Pigman’s Ferry, which begs to put in a musical number. 

“Pigman’s ferryyyyy! Pigman’s Ferry! I’m gonna take my piggies on Pigman’s Ferry. The pigs won’t hop on the boat, ‘cause they find it quite scary, but I push them all on to pigman’s ferry. Pigman’s will very fairly Ferry this man’s pigs. I’ve fattened them up so I can eat them when they’re big. I’ll celebrate my pigs with a shot or rum swig, but first I have to get them on the pigman’s ferrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyy!” 

I stop for breakfast ten miles down the trail, and call my parents while eating a single-serving boxed cherry pie. The phone call leaves my phone at 1% battery, but by some modern Chanukah miracle, that 1% lasts me, while listening to Three Men on a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) all the way to Cumberland. 

The trail diverts from the river and now I find myself on a skinny dirt path behind people’s houses. The trail provides a detour, leading through a vast field to a sign marked “Pollock Cemetery”. (At first I read it with one L, and wondered if there was a historical segregated community of Poles, but as I walk through the small plot I learn it’s for the Pollock family.) While I’m opposed to commemorating Confederate leaders in public places like the Lee statue in New Orleans or Charlottesville, I guess small family memorials on private land are fine. They are people and deserve a gravestone. The dead have to go somewhere. So I pay respects to the dead, even though calling the placards calling them “heroes” feel unjust, and learn more about the Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization. 

Back on the trail, I bike parallel to a highway, heading towards Cumberland’s Canal Place. Judging by the seeming wilderness of the trail, the 19,000-populated town of Cumberland feels like a relatively bustling metropolis. 

With no sign to pose for a photo with, marking the end of the C&O, I stop at European Desserts and order an ice cream, a soda, and a chipotle chicken sandwich. I sprawl out on the patio furniture and I charge my phone (from an extension cord for holiday lights) while scarfing down my food. I realize how savage I’ve become in comparison to the freshly-showered customers in the plaza, with their buttoned-up shirts, who don’t smell like sweat and bug spray. I don’t want to stay at Cumberland’s Holiday Inn (with a complimentary bike pump stand), so I start on the Great Allegheny Passage (the GAP trail). 

I bike past “the wrong side of the tracks” and along Willis Creek past The Fruit Bowl. The Fruit Bowl is a fruit stand with a large display of candy, which I would always beg my parents to stop at, whenever we came up through Ellerslie/Frostburg to visit family. (I had thought this trip would be a journey into the unknown, but this proves to be yet another landmark on this literal memory lane from my childhood.) 

I land on a paved trail running beside a railroad, occasionally criss-crossing back and forth. It’s a steep incline, but I assure myself “ It’ll probably be over soon” and set my bike to a lower gear. I’d only completed very preliminary research for this trip: printing out a list of campsites and their mile markers. Looking at the general overview of the GAP trail had not prepared me for the elevation. I remind myself over and over that it’s a temporary hill, and within an hour I’ll be coasting downhill. I go from false summit to false summit.

At mile marker 5 of the GAP trail, after more than an hour, I reach Helmsetter’s curve – “finally, close to the top” -- and take a celebratory picture to illustrate how high I’d trekked. A sign informs me that said curve is where trains, along the Western Maryland Railroad, can spot the last car from the first car of the train. 

Moving beyond the curve, it slowly dawns on me that this angle is going to persist for quite some time still. Knowing that only distraction has the power to make this work light, I plug into audiobook and remind myself that I’ve already completed some 30 miles today, and with this hill, it wouldn’t be cheating if I cut short of my 50-mile requisite today. “Slow and steady wins the race,” I say aloud involuntarily. Even that small self-consolation helps me to feel better, as I am repeatedly outpaced by folks much less fit and less young than I am, pedaling on one-speed beach cruisers. “They don’t have any gear. They haven’t made 30 miles today. You’re in it for the long haul, Rudy. Marathon, not a sprint.” I encourage myself under my breath.

The sun is brutal today. Before I left, my dad asked me if I’d packed sunscreen. I told him that the GAP Trail and the C&O are both under a shadowy canopy, so I didn’t need it -- I forgot about this stretch in between. And my dumb self wore a tank top today, and failed to change into my T-shirt because I’d assumed the slope was temporary, that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to change clothes. Now, I take off my sweat-drenched tank top and drape it over my shoulders, but it is too little too late: My shoulders are already burnt and radiating heat like a furness.

At one point, a large man, with an image of the Virgin Mary tattooed on each massive calf, bikes up beside me and inquires about my journey. I answer him about where I’ve come from and where I’m going; I return with questions about the section of trail, where we are, and local geography. He points out where Cumberland is, far below us, and says there is almost 15 more miles to go at this incline until Frostburg.

My plan is to proceed for as long as I can, even into the night if I have to, but I keep eyeing the trees, wondering whether I could get away with stringing up a hammock in woods that say “Posted: No Trespassing”. 

I pass through two small tunnels (Brush and Gordon), but unlike my efforts going through the Paw Paw, I don’t attach a single light -- just bike through the momentary darkness. After hours of slow progress, I reach Frostburg and refill my water bottles. I’m far from the river, so I can’t use my water pump whenever I want. Talking to some of the locals, I hear that the next campground isn’t for another 16 miles, until I bike over the rest of the continental divide. It’s just starting to get late, and I’m a little concerned, but there is nothing to do but bike on, so I push forward. ATVs and day-trippers continue to pass me by, as I huff my way up the grade, but the number or people lessens as it gets later and later. 

Eventually, I arrive at the Mason-Dixon line. I notice a tattooed younger guy there with a backpack on, and, recognizing each other as fellow wanderers, we stop for a gab -- him, on the freshly-crossed Maryland side, and me, on my freshly-crossed Pennsylvania side. He greets me with the warning that he just barely avoided stepping on a rattlesnake, fifty feet up the trail. He tells me that he’s traveled 135 miles from Pittsburg, en route to Harper’s Ferry, to then join the Appalachian Trail and hike half of it from there; he wasn’t sure which half he wanted to do. I tell him I’m considering doing the AT at some point after this trip. He offers that I could meet him at Harper’s Ferry on my way back and join him. It’s a possibility. We exchange contact info. 

The man also reports that he was able to stay in a hostel, on the other side of the continental divide, which isn’t exactly my style. Daylight is burning so we part ways. Eyes open for the rattlesnake, and not identifying it anywhere, I bike forth, resting again some time later at another false summit with sheltered picnic tables and a port-a-john. Only here do I catch the first real view of, and truly appreciate, the height I ascended today. I peer into the gully of the valley, where I’d begun, and figure out that I’ve climbed 1,800 ft over 22 miles, since Cumberland.

The number of people on this trail has dwindled as the sun begins to set. I have an idea: I can wait for the last of the people to depart and set up a camp at the covered picnic tables, and leave early in the morning, before anybody could notice this transient sleeping where he shouldn’t be. Gazing at the view, I wait for everyone to vanish. A couple next to me, also staring into the distance, chat me up: The woman is missing every other tooth, and the man seems to be the type whose cargo shorts never come off. He regales me with unprompted bear stories: “You’ll think I’m shitting you, but I once saw 35 bears in this area”. I imagine he’s trying to pull my leg, but I will admit, his stories do scare me a bit. The couple heads out before it’s dark. 

One last biker comes up the trail. Stopping to admire the lookout point, he makes small talk with me, and I feel safe to confess my plan to him, with the aim of getting a second opinion on whether the bears might give me a hard time. He laughs.

“Bears? No, that won’t be a problem here. Rattlesnakes? Maybe, or even worse, the copperheads might get you. Those bastards don’t even give you warning. No. You should be fine camping here. Good luck.” 

He sets off down the hill just as the shadow of the mountain consumes the last town in the valley; the sun is low behind the mountain and all its whirring wind turbines. I’m quite alone out here. 

I arrange my bug net across the pavilion area, and prepare my soup with all the same fixings as last night. Wary of the cargo-short man’s claims, I make sure I distance myself from, my food bags, which were recently upgraded from racoon bags to bear bags. My shoulders are redder than a tomato, radiating heat, and they hurt like hell when I try to sleep on my arm, but at least I haven’t had any ticks yet. 

Day 5 (5/27): GAP mile 22-122 (Century Day)

            My alarm wakes me up at 5 am. I had wanted to get up early and clear out before any morning joggers discover this strange man camping where he shouldn’t be. From my perch, I’m blessed to witness an incredible sunrise over the billowing mountain crest, which bestows a glorious glow on each valley town beneath. Because of the beautiful scene, I break my rule about not eating breakfast before I’ve put in miles: I enjoy some fruit while I savor the rays of piercing sunlight, and take my time breaking camp.

I had thought that the Savage Tunnel was much further beyond the false summit than where I am, but as soon as I head off, I find the tunnel just around the bend, out of sight from where I’d put my bear bags. I’m less than a mile from the continental divide. And it isn’t another false summit -- it’s the summit. I thread through the eye of the tunnel, wearing my headlamp, and in a short stint I’ve peaked the eastern continental divide. All water henceforth ends in the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Chesapeake Bay. 

Riding the (topographic) high all the way down the decline, I whoop and holler much to the chagrin of another trailer community (I was closer to civilization than I thought). When I have passed the neighborhood, I burst into my boisterous, booming baritone, with “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma!. Still coasting downward, I jam to The Beatles, The Monkeys, and The Beach Boys on my MP3 player from when I was little. I greet each animal I see, like a Disney princess with a rock-and-roll playlist. “Good morning, deer. Good morning, rabbits. Good morning, cows. Good morning, guinea fowl. Good morning, chipmunks.” There are a lot of animals this morning.

I feel a rush of freedom, speeding down the path into a mostly empty world. Only a family of farmers I pass by is awake with me; no one else is to be found along this trail, in the wee hours of the morning. Spurred to exercise this freedom, I remove my bike shorts, and keep pedaling in just my boxers; I fold my shorts in half and place it down as a cushion for my sore aching ass. 

As I ride over the Salisbury viaduct, I’m struck by the vast majesty of our land, spanning over fields, farms, and the Cassleman river. Over the river I see a bald eagle, and as hokey as it all is, I feel a rush of patriotism. This is the America I love: grand visions of nature, U.S. farming, the American ideals of freedom and exploration. 

Shortly beyond the bridge, the trail leads me through a town, so I have to put my pants back on. While I’m hunched over in the bushes along the trail, I meet a huge turkey, to which I say: “Wonderful morning, turkey.” At a covered picnic table I snack on some dried fruit for breakfast, and listen to my handheld radio. Usually I don’t like country music (although I’ve warmed up to the song “Friends in Low Places”) but during this camping trip, whenever I turn on my radio while I eat, the only stations I get are country. I’ve grown to like it. I appreciate the sentiments of working outside and a cold beer at the end of the day. But if I hear “Kinfolks” one more time, I will punch the radio. 

Before leaving the table, I carve my epitaph in, among all the other scrawls of comers and goers on the trail. I remember The Road and how Jack London described how a “hobo” would leave his “moniker” on water tanks of each town he went through. London’s was “Sailor Jack”. I stole mine from the phrase Jack London used to refer to himself; I wrote “Tramp Royal 5-27-20 DC>Pitt”. 

Knocking the kickstand, about to head off, I swat at a hummingbird, thinking it’s just a buzzing fly. I’m immediately wracked with guilt when I realize it was a graceful little bird.

Again isolated, though by now it’s 11:00, I take off the shorts once more. It’s only when I’ve joined the Allegheny highlands that I happen to come across an older lady biking, whom I greet  and who cheerily returns it back. So either she  a) assumed my boxers were shorts; b) was distracted and didn’t react; or c) noticed I’m in my skivvies and liked what she saw. Feeling over it, I elect to just wear the pants. 

Now I’m down the Youghiogheny River that’s particularly known for trout-fishing. But as I am Tramp Royal, and not opposed to bending the rules, I take out my fishing rod, which is strapped to my bike frame, and (even though I don’t have a PA fishing license, or a trout sticker) I fish for a bit, enjoying my lunch until my line catches on a rock.

Back on the path, I exceed my self-imposed 50 mile requirement but figure I’ll keep moving while there’s daylight. Maybe today would be my century day -- i.e. 100 miles in a single day. That’s something I want to accomplish at least once this trip.

Further down I encounter a “lifer” who’s wearing super-short cutoff jorts, walking his loaded bike in the opposite direction. Further still, at the Ohiopyle visitor center, there’s another lifer with no teeth on the left side of his mouth. None of these lifers seem to have proper equipment: no panniers, only gear that’s haphazardly tethered together with twine. And no water bladders, just 2-liter coke bottles filled with water, precariously tied to the handlebars with broken shoe strings. There’s some indescribable quality that stirs in me, looking at these men. I might call it fraternity -- a recognition that, rich or poor, we’re united on this trail, facing the same challenges of making miles, finding water, and having shelter. Another part of it is guilt: I can dip my toe into this lifestyle, call myself Tramp Royal, and live vicariously through Jack London, but in fact, I’m just pretending. I have a permanent home to go back to, after all this. I have bags of food and a literal “rainy day” fund to weather out the storm if it gets too bad to be camping. They don’t. More still, I’m afraid. I could lose what I have and become one of them. I might do it willingly even, let my savings slip away and stay on the trail forever.

Ohiopyle is bustling with bodies: school-aged kids with their families; young women with makeup caked on, taking selfies on rocks; roving gangs of shirtless teenage boys roughhousing each other; single young mothers with 8 kids in tow; the couple lifers I saw earlier; and others from every different walk of life. None of them are wearing a mask. Except inside the mask-required bathroom, where I see a group of young boys who are relaying the one mask they share, passing it off to the next boy in line, which seems to defeat the whole precautionary safety effect. By contrast, I wear my mask all the way through the town and then some.

I bike alongside a mother and son who, noting my pack, ask me about my journey so far. The boy says he wants to ride the GAP trail this summer from their home in Connellsville and back. They tell me that Connellsville has a free campsite in town, with lean-tos. (Unlike the towpath, the GAP doesn’t have regular free campsites along the trail every 10 miles.) I turn down their offer to camp at Connellsville, telling them I plan on reaching mile marker 122. In that case, they say, I want to stay at the nice site in West Newton.

But I can see why they recommend Connellsville; this trail goes straight through town and the town readily welcomes bicyclists. There’s a “Trail Café” and “GAP Pizza” as well as hotels, bike shops, B&B’s, and the campsite the woman mentioned, right in the heart of town. My suspicion that bikers are a big source of income for the town is assured when I see an art piece with a banner reading, “Connellsville: From Coke to Spokes”. 

Prompted by the sign “Last water until Whitsett” (another 30 miles down), I go to fill up at the Connellsville water fountain, only to find out that, somewhere along the way, I lost my 2-liter bladder and now all I have are the water bottles in my bottle cage.

After I’ve put in some distance from Connellsville, a woman on an electric bike saddles up to me and asks if I want company. I do, since I’ve had too much time to myself and have begun worrying about the trip: whether I’m going to make a fool of myself trying to get in these hundred miles, or how I can deal with the storm I’m expecting to meet tonight. Company is a welcome distraction. We make small talk about the conditions of the trail; I tell her how much I enjoy going through these tiny towns in the middle of nowhere, which I’d never have reason to visit otherwise. She says that the trail isn’t usually populated with day-trippers, but with COVID-19 and everything closed, more people are using it. I answer that it’s nothing compared to the abundance of trail-trekkers in DC that I’ve navigated through. Next she jokes that she should apologize for riding the electric bike, as it was “cheating”, but she justified the purchase by saying that she was 65, and used to bike every day. As suddenly as she’d appeared, she departed, leaving me to get back to her car at an RV campground.

Now in Whitsett, I’m flabbergasted in the face of how small and isolated the community is. The town has a population of less than 200, and consists of only a single street. As someone who has only ever lived in the metropolises of DC and Philadelphia, that size (or lack thereof) is incomprehensible to me. The trail runs right through these little villages, parallel to their Main Street, and in front of their porches. It blows my mind to glimpse, up close and personal, Trump’s rural red state -- areas not seen, or not acknowledged, when they’re sped by on a highway. Biking through, I wave to some folks on a porch, who’ve got a Trump lawn sign in their yard, even though we may differ on politics. I look into the faces of these people, thinking how horrified they’d be by the sort of people I’m friends with.

As a self-proclaimed wanderer, I want to see the world, but before I see the world I think I should see the rest of America. 

I end up at mile marker 114, some 92 miles from where I started today, in West Newton, and find the campsite a little ways beyond that. “I’ll just round up and call it a century”, I thought. The lodge is beautiful: It has outlets, electric fans, comfy armchairs, and a wooden shelter on top. Despite being privately owned, which means I’d have to pay, I’m willing to do it just to charge my phone and have a roof for when the rain hits tonight. Then, because the other campers inform me that the property manager isn’t taking any more reservations (but also because of my hubris, and my desire to do the full 100), I decide to split. No plushiness tonight, just more miles.

Exhausted and sweaty (and resentful of that property manager), I trod forward to the next campsite, at the long-sought mile marker 122, called Dravo’s Graveyard. Charming name, right? 

As soon as I arrive, I dump my backpack and leave it next to my bike, darting towards the river. Seeing a group of women at the shore, I ask whether they’d be offended if I stripped to my boxers for a swim. With their permission, I wade in. It’s about three feet deep, with the slimiest, grossest rocks at the bottom, but I don’t care, because the refreshing cold is too soothing for my burnt shoulders and aching muscles. I swim upstream so I can drift back down. Then I wash my clothes and put on my last fresh shirt. I’m so relaxed that I’m not even bothered when I see the lean-to shelters are already taken. “Screw it! I’ll just sleep on the picnic table again”. I feel so rejuvenated by the water that I don’t even mind.

Unlike last night, the columns of the awning don’t align with the table, so I can’t string up the bug net. I suppose I’ll just use it like an outer layer for my sleeping bag, and drape my rain cover tarp over my sleeping bag, in case tonight’s rain comes in sideways. 

Strolling around, I go explore the cemetery which this campsite is named after. I don’t know who the Dravo family is, or if the cemetery accommodates just their family or others; there are about twenty headstones I count with the last name Dravo.

It’s a gorgeous and vast sunset, but I’m not well-enough positioned to be able to see it behind the trees. I share this disappointment with a large mustachioed man, sitting on a nearby bench. He agrees, and we chat about the area and the trail. He’s from a town closeby, explains that this family has lived here for three generations. His grandfather worked in the coke ovens, he says, and, remembering Connellsville’s slogan (“coke to spoke”), I ask him what he means by coke. He lets me know how, after coal is mined, they bake it in extremely hot furnaces to remove a particulate called “coke” that can be used in several refinement processes, like steel. Pittsburgh, which is known for its steel production, ironically no longer produces the metal, and instead produces coke, which it ships internationally. 

The mustached stranger asks about my voyage, and I confess that, being 20 miles from my final destination, I’m not quite ready for this part to be done. Through talks with other travellers I’ve heard a rumor of a trail that continues to Cleveland, but I didn’t know anything about it -- my companion says he’s not familiar with an Ohio connection, but recommends, if I want to take a victory lap, that I go along the Montour trail, which encircles the larger Pittsburgh region for an additional 50 miles, from its detour from the GAP. He comments that it was the first-ever rails trail in the area, reclaiming the railroad that used to deliver coal to rich peoples’ houses. It sounds great, so I get him to tell me directions.

After I mention crossing the Monongahela River, he questions, “You wanna hear how it got its name?” 

I know the name is of Indigenous origins, and suspect he might say something racist, but assuming better, I invite him to surprise me. “How?” He goes into the story of a wager between Lincoln and some general, about if Lincoln could toss a coin across the river. When the coin plummeted in the water, supposedly a Native American laughed at the president and said “Money go to hell-a”, which became Monongahela. He follows that with how, for the Youghiogheny, a Native American would tease soldiers by “yucking” at them until a soldier exclaimed “I’ll shoot you if you yuck again-eh”. These are terrible stories. I guess he’s just prodding to get a rise out of a young urbanite he’s found strutting into his territory. I don’t provide much reply and leave him alone to make my dinner.

I’m preparing my soup when a round young girl emerges from one of the lean-tos, chasing a raccoon right up to my picnic table, trying to take its picture and saying “Isn’t it cute?” “No! It’s filthy and it’s going to try to steal my food” I’m tempted to say back. She chases the thing up a tree, overhanging my groceries. As I pull my food bag away, another raccoon appears and snatches my other food bag. Together the racoons take turns stealing my food, as I’m distracted and shooing away the opposite one. Quickly fed up with their ballsy dance, I take only what I need for dinner, plus a celebratory drink for the century I put in, before tying up the rest up a tree.

But nothing wants to cooperate. I can’t find my spork, so I fold the lid of the can into a makeshift spoon. As I eat, bugs swarm around me and fly into my mouth. I try smoking them out with my candle, but the wick breaks, and even when I attempt to stick in a match in the wick’s place, it won’t remain lit. There’s already firewood stocked in the firepit, but only giant logs, and nothing smaller to start the flames on; I look for kindling, but the ground’s too wet. So I try mixing my flask of rum with some powdered juice I’d brought along, except it wasn’t juice, but a vitamin C supplement powder.

I give up. The bug net is too claustrophobic, so I go without it; the tarp protecting my sleeping bag is too hot, so I don’t use that either. I can’t lie comfortably with my sun-raw shoulders. And dead as I am from 100 miles’ of biking, I wake up intermittently through the night to the sounds of trains, or the cooing of a mourning dove that settles for the night in the corner of the pavilion. Despite having earplugs that I could insert, I have to keep my ears vigilant in case I hear rustling that sounds like raccoons scratching at my foodstuff.

It’s been the best day of biking, and the worst night of camping. But on the brightside, I’m suddenly less pessimistic about being 20 miles from Pittsburgh.

Day 6 (5/28): GAP mile 122 - near death experience - Montour 45-25

Despite my best efforts to sleep in, I wake up at 8. I want to wait out the rain in this shelter, even if that makes today a zero day and I have to move into the lean-tos tonight. Looking over to the food bags, which I’d hung up last night to keep from the raccoons, I see they’re soaked. I take them down to check the damage: Most of the food was in its own packages, thankfully, so it’s unaffected. The only casualty is two slightly-damp packets of oatmeal, so I cook them for breakfast.

Over breakfast I chat with a punk-looking couple who’d been in the lean-tos. They’re from Pittsburgh and fill me in, with details, about “abandos” (abandoned buildings) for “urban exploring” when I get to the city. In return I offer recommendations of the best campsites I’ve seen on the trail where I’ve come from. The pair, who sport matching face tattoos and piercings, admit they probably can’t go very far because of their scrappy little dog in tow, which doesn’t let them bike much. So it was theirs; that dog I’d heard stirring and barking last night, disrupting my sleep, and doing nothing to stop the raccoons -- in fact, it seemed the yippy dog was in collusion with the trash pandas, targeting me, for all the wrongs of my past and present lives. It stops raining, so I pack my things after a “Happy trails” to the couple. 

At McKeesport I follow the sign for the Montour trail, which departs off the GAP. I’m deposited onto an industrial road, having to chase down signs that read “To the Montour Trail” and lead me into ghost-towns and down seedy-looking neighborhoods. There’s not one person out -- just fresh trash strewn across the street, broken bikes scattered on the lawns. And it’s populated with boxy, featureless, cookie-cutter houses, and a third of them are burnt or boarded up.

“I hope I’m not lost in here” I think outloud. I’m searching for the next signal that I’m on the way to the Montour trail. But the route I’ve followed so far has been so circuitous that at one point, I’m guided over a bridge just to be pointed back over it. Sidewalks routinely and abruptly end, spitting me out on busy roads, where I have to bike among cars that zoom inches from my handlebar. The placards promising the Montour trail  guide me through even less-appealing industrial areas, containing dive bars named very no-nonsense and hetero names like “Jack’s Bar” or “Sportsman’s Sports Bar”. The only other businesses are bail bonds and dollar stores with broken window panes. I pass refineries and coal processing plants where it reeks like someone puked up poop and it decomposed. I’m forced to ride on the shoulder of some road, until I realize this road is converging into an interstate highway, where 16-wheelers are whizzing past me. I have to walk my bike on the curb. 

There’s another sign, telling me “this way”. “Great”, I think, “this will just be one more short stretch, and I’ll get off the highway and I’ll find myself on the trail” . Where the shoulder ends, I try to hop my bike over the guardrail, onto the grass on the other side. But the pedal gets stuck, and my bike collapses on the opposite side, back onto the turnpike. In an instant, I glance around for cars, dart over the barrier, and pumping full of adrenaline manage to hoist the bike, panniers and all, over my head and over to the other side. Seconds after I’ve cleared the rail, a giant truck plows through the spot where my bike had landed. 

The grass cuts off and is replaced with another lane of highway. So I’m trapped. My nerves were shot from my daring exploit to retrieve my bike, and the realization that I really may have gotten hit. My hands are shaking and my heart is beating a million times a minute. I break down. Crying in the green strip between two speeding boulevards. Banging on my bike seat and screaming at myself “YOU STUPID DUMB FUCK IDIOT! YOU ALMOST GOT YOURSELF KILLED! YOU DUMB FUCKING IDIOT!” with every shred of confidence that I’d had or gained from this trip melted. I’m not as free as I felt; I’m helpless to so much beyond my control, including my own stupidity. I’m not Tramp Royal. I can’t even find the Montour trail. I’m not even a capable adult; I’m a child with a beard and eyes bigger than my stomach. And in the eyes of that kid who’d been so impressed by the expanse of the trail, who’d dreamed of completing it, I’m a failure. 

I could’ve died on the side of a highway in a state where I don’t know anyone for 300 miles. I almost got myself killed. I was almost some statistic, the reason a trucker lost their job, the reason the trucking company’s liability insurance went up. Even Chris McCandless’ death was more prolific. (I would, however, have this shitty half-written travel journal to commemorate my last days, assuming the reader found my mangled corpse and bike inspiring to literature.) I haven’t even made it to my destination. After 317 miles down, it’s a bitter taste that I may have died fewer than 20 miles short. All because I had been greedy, and wanted a victory lap.

I let myself contemplate my death and uselessness a little while longer. And when the self-flagellation is over, I get level-headed and strategize ways to get out of this. I’m too scared to go back the way I came. Plus I’m still shaking and weak from using all my energy to throw the bike and leap over the blockade. There’s no way I’m lifting it back up.

I see that the turnpike is advertising an exit to Pittsburgh, and the best I can manage is to hold out my thumb and see if I can catch a ride there. Drivers must be looking at me like I’m crazy, trying to hitch-hike (in a pandemic) with a bike, but they can’t see the pleading desperation in my eyes. I’m especially looking for trucks, which would make the transport of my bike much easier. Waiting for someone to stop, I tell myself that, if I nobody offers assistance until the end of the day, I can use the last drops of my external phone battery to call an old classmate of mine (who I despise) living in Pittsburgh and beg him to come pick me up. This should be reserved as the worst-case scenario.

No one stops for me, but in time, my hands become stiller and my heart rate slows down. I become more level-headed. I decide I’ll backtrack, back to the GAP, and make my way to the city, forgetting the Montour trail. I just have to be smart about it. 

I wait for a lull in the traffic to lift my bike over the railing. I walk with the bike on my outside, deciding that if it falls into the road again, I won’t take the chance to go after it again. For fear of the cars, I shrink to occupy the smallest amount of space I can, even though it means my shin is getting beaten by the bike pedal and my shoulder is rubbing against the concrete wall. 

Those dingy, dying streets are a huge relief to come back to, after the frenzied terror of the interstate. And there I find a sign I’d missed earlier, directing my turn off to the trail. I decide that I will take the Montour trail, now that I’ve found it -- much rather make progress than give up. But this brings me frustration as I’m still dumped on another one of these roads with 80-mile-an-hour semis. At least this time there’s the chance to walk my bike in the grass yards of some businesses on the side of the boulevard.

Some more curly detours later,  I finally arrive at the trailhead: mile marker 45 (going backwards). I’m in the clear. Back to biking on a beautiful paved trail, among nature. A mile in, I’m shoved back onto a detour, and then another detour, through more residential spaghetti streets. This is miserable, and infuriating. I could’ve biked my own neighborhood for as much good as this does me. I’m also still mad at myself, my stupidity for being dedicated to this stupid fraction of a trail. Curse the Montour trail. Curse all the stupid towns it passes through. Curse the stupid mustached racist who recommended it to me. They should be swallowed up together by a giant hole in the ground and burn in Hell.

After Library Junction at mile marker 35, the trail improves, no more detours. But I’m still steaming with rage.  I take it out on my pedals and let my rage propel me faster and faster. At one point I’m going steep uphill at 10 miles an hour. Slowly, the creases of my eyebrows fade as I can’t help but appreciate the nature around me and let it ease my mood. 

I stop at a bike shop called the Tandem Connection where I get some sunscreen, and a taco platter with ice cream (to-go) for a well-earned dinner. A bit further down the trail I spy an empty lean-to and set up my camp. I’m so relieved to be out of traffic, and have a sturdy structure to spend the night in, I don’t worry about the coming thunderstorm.

Day 7 (5/29): Montour mile 25 - Pittsburgh

            Upon waking I’m immediately thankful that myself and my gear are completely dry. I head out quickly, spotting a black rat snake stretching across the trail on my departure. When I’m satisfied by the distance I’ve made from where I slept, I pull out some breakfast. Worried, though, about being able to settle into the hotel before 4pm (big thunderstorm), I eat while in motion, walking alongside my bike as I chew. Mounting and pedaling again, I notice my left knee exudes a wrenching pain, but I grit my teeth and keep moving. 

            At last I reach the end of the Montour path (or mile 0, since I did it in reverse). My idea had been to find a hotel in the nearby town of Coraopolis, to shelter from the storm, and then take the Heritage trail from there to Pittsburgh, and get back on the GAP by next morning. But there’s no connecting pathway from the trail to Coraopolis -- just an abrupt end at a sports field, without even a trailhead. I elect to follow a little dirt lane, which I presume is the continuation of the trail, and which, after a number of steep inclines and declines (I’m walking the bike; my knee aches), ends at a railroad. “Shit! That can’t be right.” I belt in frustration.

There’s a black SUV driving along the rails. That, the isolation, and the menacing sky above me together portray a clear scene: someone is dumping a body. (What else could it be?) I hide in the bushes so they don’t know I’m a witness to their crime. And I watch as the person steps out from the car. Opens the trunk. And removes, not a corpse -- a fishing rod. I’m a fool, and unlike the foolishness of my near-death experience, this time I’m relieved. Being that there’s no evidence this man is a murderer, I approach to ask for directions. He points, saying he thinks that might be where I want to go.

            I walk my bike on the side of the tracks, turning onto the pointed-to road, and find myself in a crumbling marina/boat graveyard. That’s not right either. Searching for someone else to get directions from, and finding no one, I decide to chase after a UPS truck, on a hunch that it’ll lead me to town. Once I’m in a more residential area, I get directions, only to find myself at the same field where I’d come from. There, I ask someone else, a young woman, if she knows anywhere I can find a hotel. She’s new to down, doesn’t know. She says this street I’m on is as close to a “downtown” as there was, and, in case I can’t find shelter at all, she lives on this street, and I’m welcome there. I should’ve taken her up on that offer.

            Instead, I take my inquiry to a police officer, in the sports field parking lot, who informs me of a Fairfield Inn on Neville Island. Biking on the shoulder of the road, according to the cop’s directions, lands me at the Inn where I’m accosted by two men, spitting chewing tobacco, plopped in front of the lobby door. They tell me the motel doesn’t open until late summer. For what feels like the thousandth time, I ask if there’s a hotel/motel/hostel/b&b/ anywhere I can ride out the storm, and the only offer I get is: “I wouldn’t let my kids stay there -- I wouldn’t even let my enemies stay there -- but if you need someplace with a bed and a shower, there’s a motel up the block.”

            “That’s all I’m looking for.” I adhere to his instructions. When I arrive in the parking lot, I don’t see a single soul. I poke my head into the door marked “Lobby”, and find an empty, water-stained room.

 “This ain’t a hotel no more.” I’m startled by the voice behind me. I turn to see a man covered in sawdust and carrying trash. “They turnin’ it into a dog motel. A hotel for dogs.” So the place doesn’t even live up to its threadbare promise of “beds and a shower”.

I move on again, hoping to find a hotel on the way to Pittsburgh. As I go on my way, I learn that what was advertised as the Heritage trail is in fact just a wide shoulder along the interstate, with some scenery of stinking refinery factories. But in the distance I can see the glass castle skyscraper of the PPG tower, and trust that I’m near my destination. 

Where the bike lane terminates, I’m forced to join the traffic on 51. It seems very dangerous -- not only with yesterday fresh in my mind, but because I notice several “ghost bikes”, bikes painted white that mark the place where a cyclist has died. I opt instead to use the dilapidated sidewalks (easier skirting pedestrians than cars), passing through some rough suburbs. At one point a free-flying plastic bag catches on my foot, and I can’t shake it off. It occurs to me in that moment that, with a sweat-stained bandana covering my face, a weeks’ worth of unshowered, multi-state forest grime on me, and now wearing a plastic bag on my shoe, I am at my peak filthiness. I am Tramp Royal. 

Having not found a single hotel so far, I plunge onward into the city. Maybe I’m too distracted by the search for shelter, but I lose sight of any signs directing the way to the trail. Thanks to more incorrect advice from locals, I take an accidental three-hour tour of the city, and the Three Rivers trail, which I believed would lead to the GAP trail. Eventually I buy a map from a bike store, which guides me to the Steel Valley trail, which leads to the GAP.

Off the trail, I book a room at a Holiday Inn. I luxuriate in a bath, do laundry, finish the rum in my flask, and peacefully pass out for 10 hours in a soft, clean bed.

Day 8 (5/30): Pittsburgh - GAP 150-178 

            I try to sleep in for as long as possible. I want to take full advantage of the hotel. When I physically can’t sleep anymore, I shower again and leave. The hotel gives me a complimentary breakfast in a to-go bag, which hangs from my handlebars.

            I pass mile 150, and weave through a birdwatching party on the trail, holding binoculars and telephoto cameras, taking pictures of the only bald eagle in Pittsburgh. I eat my breakfast at McKeesport (spitefully flipping the bird at the turnoff for the Montour trail, because fuck that place). I pass around another large caravan, these bikers with camping gear stuffed in a bike trailer.

            I refill my bottles at Dravo’s Graveyard, and meet a man who’s hiking the GAP. We trade tips and stories. He reports that it stormed bad up here, so I’m glad I splurged on the hotel room. 

            Biking back along the trail was like going down memory lane. “Here’s where I had to walk my bike”. “Here’s where I refilled my water.” “Here’s where I met that old man.” The way back is much easier, since now I’m armed with the knowledge of what lies ahead. I continue to pass and be passed by the biker caravan. When I match the pace of the group's leader, we laugh at our game of tag. He tells me who all these people are: his wife, his brothers, their friends, all joined in to bike the whole GAP to DC. They expect to stay the first night in Connellsville. I wish him luck, and give him my number, offering them my yard in case they can’t find anywhere to stay when they hit DC. (I did not consult my parents on this.) 

            At Whitsett, I stop for another water refill, and to lunch on some trail mix. Whitsett has the only water pump for another 30 miles, so a small congregation of bikers have gathered (while keeping social distance) to fill up and relax under the shady pavilion. While munching, an old man, bearing an American flag cowboy hat that says “Trump 2020”, makes quasi-intelligible small talk with me, which feels more like an interrogation. “Whatcha think of this whole virus business? You believe it all?”

            I tell him, “Of course I believe it.” I tell him I’ve quarantined this whole time, and the only reason for my trip is because it’s the only way to keep a safe distance from people and still have an adventure. I say, if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have lugged all my food up here with me from DC. That’s as much as we discuss that subject. 

 He asks how far I’m going to bike today, and is visibly pleased by my answer: “Until I get tired.” He seems impressed with my trip and my easygoing approach to accept wherever and whatever the trail offers. 

Admittedly, I have some reservations about this guy because of the nature of his hat, and with every question that I tentatively answer, I’m waiting for him to say something offensive. (I do warm up to him though, when he diverges from political discourse.) For my part, I’m hoping to embody, to him, a positive representation of the liberal urbanite generation -- the “young person of these days”, whom he insists are not all like me. Without asking him to explain what “like me” means, I assure him that there’s quite a bit more of us than he thinks; he just has to give us a chance.

Early in the day, when I passed the 50 mile mark, I had contemplated doing another century day. But my left knee hurts like hell, even after taking multiple breaks and walking my bike. I call it quits when I reach Connellsville, but, with nothing to do, I decide to bike around the town (all six blocks). I also try fishing in the town park, in vain.

            Feeling thankful to the town of Connellsville, which has been so kind to and accommodating of campers such as myself, I want to support a local business. I pick up some carry-out pizza, much appreciated. In my hammock, reading, in my lean-to I claimed, I notice the same punk couple I remember meeting at Dravo’s Graveyard. They report that they camped at Connellsville the night before, but had an awful experience since a bunch of “hobos” were shooting heroin in the  lean-to next to them, and making a ruckus looking for some stray cat. With last night fresh in their minds, they’re off to camp anywhere but here.

            I have no such night. I get a good night’s sleep.

Day 9 (5/31): GAP mile 88-22

            A fog rolls in at dawn, so I awake at 6 am from shivering. I slip into the collapsible down jacket (which, up until this point, I regretted bringing) and sprint to the outhouse in bare feet. There’s no toilet paper (with everyone desperately hoarding it during the pandemic) so I run back to my pack and grab my half-roll. When I return to the outhouse, someone’s gone in, and it’s the only one. I can’t be delayed anymore. Popping a squat behind the latrine, I let it rip.

            Poor Connellsville. I realize I feel so bad for this town. They provide a camp haven, with all these services, and how do I return the favor? By defiling their toilet and defecating on their land like the feral creature I’ve become. I even consider picking it up in a baggie and throwing it away -- they even have courtesy dog bags -- but unfortunately it’s not solid enough, and I wouldn’t have been able to grip it. Humiliated, I pack up and leave. I want to be gone before anyone notices my misdeed. But I leave behind a note for the caravan, saying goodbye and wishing them happy trails.

            Nothing of note occurs during my morning ride except when I almost crush a six-inch crayfish, which is baffling because the trail is 300 yards uphill from the river. I finish lunch some time later, and play two more Jack London audiobooks (The Faith of Men and The Game) before hearing my own “call of the wild”, so to speak. I have to go immediately, and of course there's no bathrooms around here. Worse though, this section of the trail runs through a valley of houses, and neighborhoods are generally poor places to make waste. The best spot I can find is a shallow, dried-up creek, within sight of the path, but behind a small bush. I made sure to be efficient, and got done with the business just before a large family on bikes appeared coming up the trail. 

            Feeling like an untamed beast of a man, I wolf down (pun intended) two fiber bars to replenish the mass I deposited in the creekbed. It’s grimly ironic that, after hopping on my bike, I find a port-a-potty one minute down the path.

            When I made my century a few days ago, I referred to it in my head as my first century, on the assumption that I’d make another on the way back, since the weight in my panniers has mostly been eaten by now and I’m familiar with the trail ahead of me. But this expectation is dashed with the aching hinge of my left knee. Three consecutive days now -- I’m growing concerned that this isn’t an issue I can just sleep off. I intend to buy a knee brace at the pharmacy in Confluence, but when I phone in, it seems they’re closed. So what I do instead is rig my own, fashioned merely out of tightly-wound socks around the joint. It does help. I bike onward.

            I think I can lodge at the campsite in Rockwood, Husky Haven, but when I arrive, I encounter a warning sign that it’s closed. I pedal on, considering camping alongside the trail.

            A bit beyond this mile marker, which grants me my daily 50 miles, I find the same covered picnic table where I breakfasted a few days ago. Right next to my previous inscription, I carve into the wood “Tramp Royal 5-31-20 Pitt>DC”. 

Being here, I know I’m not far from the Savage tunnel and continental divide. The sunlight will last for quite a few more hours; if I can make it there before dark, I can camp on the summit again tonight. With 555 feet of elevation over the next 11 miles ahead of me, I set off to win my prize. 

            The only problem is that I get there too early. I definitely look suspicious, loitering atop the mountain (where I’m not supposed to camp) with all my gear. It’s 6, and there’s three hours till sunset. To kill the time, I stop at a creek where a sign graciously advertises “Trout fishing permitted by owner” and take the opportunity to pull out my rod and reel.

            Sitting there, with my bait seeming very unlucky, I’m struck with either genius or stupidity: I remove a sliver off of the aluminum package of the tuna I’d eaten for lunch, and affix it to the hook, hoping the shininess and tuna smell might attract a fish. That doesn’t work. Meanwhile, the folks next to me catch a beautiful rainbow trout, but it slips from the woman’s grasp and flops its way back to the water. At the last moment, I grab ahold of it, and pass it back to her. That’s the extent of my fish-catching ability.

            Dusk approaches, so I slowly lug up the divide, passing through the tunnel just when the last spot of the sun is fading behind the mountaintop and the shadow gently consumes the valley towns below. I set up my hammock under the awning and eat my soup when the last bike family has departed down the hill. 

            Right as I’m dozing off I hear a growling engine and am blinded by headlights. Oh shit!! The fuzz! The last of the day trippers must’ve ratted on me to the park police, about a vagrant sleeping where he shouldn’t be. I hide my face in my sleeping bag, as if that’ll protect me.

            A motorcade of dirt bikes and ATVs pass me by. Somewhere behind me I hear the unmistakable sound of a can being opened. Putting the two events together, I realize it’s probably some redneck thrill-seekers who’ve come to drink beer and hang out on the peak while the residue of the sun dilutes from the sky.

Relieved, I nod off to a fitful sleep, shivering in the vicious wind, even as I’m covered in at least two layers of clothes from head to toe.

Day 10 (6/1): GAP mile 22 - C&O mile 184-141

            At about 3 in the morning, in a half-assed attempt to shield myself from the raging wind, I bring my sleeping pad into the hammock. Still shivering with cold, I awake from my phone alarm just two hours later, aiming to clear out before any early joggers notice me camping. 

            Figuring that eating would help me defrost, I elect to break the tradition of getting in miles before breakfast, and I make some oatmeal while admiring a spectacular, colorful sunrise from my panoramic-view picnic table. When I set off down the mountain, I still haven’t fully thawed yet -- I put a pair of clean socks on my hands as gloves. I step once on the pedal and coast downwards for over an hour off that single crank.

            I warm up a little more by singing another improvisational tune, this time imagining myself as the folk hero of the “Sunrise Singing Bike Man”, who bikes down the mountain at dawn on June 1st to sing and gift children with rocks from the trail or a kazoo or whatever’s in my panniers.

            I’d hoped to warm up with a coffee from the café in Cumberland, but it’s closed when I arrive, so I progress onward to the C&O towpath. By now I’ve grown so accustomed to the fine gravel of the GAP that I’m pretty jostled by these coarse stones on the C&O, and my speed is significantly slowed. I come to terms with not making a second century journey -- a notion that’s confirmed when I get a flat tire and have to pull off into the next campsite to fix it. While I operate, I play my pocket radio; the only station it can connect to is for classical music. I chuckle at the image of this sweat-stained, unshowered, grease-handed, feral barbarian meddling with his bike in the middle of a field, listening to some “Opus Sennotta #5.” 

            I ride my patched-up tire for a few miles before breaking at a spot near the Potomac for lunch. I eat a large portion of tuna with mayonnaise on a tortilla as I fish some more, with no more luck. It occurs to me I haven’t spotted a snake all day and I wonder if this might be the first time during the whole trip where I didn’t see one all day. But I’m wrong: After going through the Paw Paw tunnel (this time not wearing my light) I find three snakes in the canal. A copperhead and two brown water snakes. 

I also happen to make a couple of reunions today. When I stop for a snack at one of the locks, there’s the “lifer” I passed back in Ohiopyle. Later, I run into another guy I’d seen earlier, who had been walking to the AT, and who passes along regards to me from the caravan (whom he had met the day prior, and who must have mentioned me). 

He tells me how he had gone to pick up food and got a ride back to the trail, but the driver had dropped him off 10 miles back from where he’d started. We exchange stories and I admit that I won’t be joining him on the AT because I’ll need to recuperate from this excursion before trying something as demanding as the Appalachian Trail. The man is settling into camp, but I’m still heading on, so I give him an extra plastic water bottle (since he’d lost his) and carry on.

The same tire goes flat again, forcing me to walk it to the nearest campsite, where I once again try to fix the tube. That’s where I find out that the two spare innertubes are Presta and not Schrader, meaning my hand-pump isn’t suitable for that kind of tube. I’ll have to replace those when I get to the next bike shop in Hancock. 

Right outside the campground, some 20 feet from the canal, I find a foot-long puddle that’s swarming with tiny tadpoles. Here’s an environmental conundrum to which I have no answer: If the danger posed to the animal is not caused by humans, is it my responsibility to help the animal in danger? Or should I not interfere with Darwinian theory, and accept that only the fittest survive? At an earlier time, on the trail, I had picked up a turtle and moved her away from the path of potential injury. But this is different -- the threat of the puddle evaporating before the tadpoles develop lungs -- very different than being run over. And what if my actions cause more harm than the harm I perceive before them? But I like frogs. They have a special place in my heart. So I take my water bottles and I buy my tadpole buddies some time, hopefully, by gently pouring more water into the puddle. 

I refill my bottles at the campspot, wade into the Potomac to cool myself off, and feast on some mac and cheese, listening to my new least favorite song “Kinfolks” on my radio. I feel like I’m my own hammock, strung up between two opposing pillars. On one side is the longing for the luxuries of home: soft bed, warm shower, real meals, not worrying about where I might sleep when the next rain comes. And on the other side, once I hit mile marker zero, I want to turn around and come back: I could go on like this forever.

Day 11 (6/2): C&O mile 141-82

            There’s a light drizzle when I wake up. I’m thankful that I put on my rain tarp before going to bed. Not in any rush to bike in the rain, I linger about decamping. I realize now that this is the site where I stayed with the Boy Scouts years ago -- I even was the first one in my troop to start bringing hammocks, and, more likely than not, I hung up my hammock and slept in this exact same spot all that time ago. 

            When I get past Bill’s Place, I join a trail marked WMRT (for Western Maryland Rails Trail), and realize this is the path that runs parallel to the towpath, the one I couldn’t find my way to on the first leg of the journey. I pass a few handwritten signs that warn of a trail closure ahead, but I decide not to take heed because I enjoy riding on the asphalt so much. And after some mental deliberation on whether to turn back or go forth, I decide I can carry my bike over and around whatever obstacle lays ahead. A man, biking from the opposite direction, reports that the signs reference some trees that collapsed over the trail, but that they’d been removed the day before.

            When I make it to Hancock, I mask up and stop at the bike shop to replace my Presta tubes for Schrader. While I’m stopped, I pick up a few snacks and some fishing supplies, but most importantly I get an anti-chafe crème for my ass.

            My late breakfast consists of the snacks I selected from the bike store, a diverse range including an ice cream sandwich and a can of V8 (which tasted like a watered-down gazpacho). I’m so desperate to get the taste out of my mouth that I drink the other packet of the Vitamin C supplement I’d accidently brought. I feel like all these nutrients are confusing to my body. 

            I bike till the end of the WMRT and take advantage of the trail’s seclusion to apply my anti-chafing lotion. I’m glad nobody had to witness this ape-man moaning loudly as he rubs his ass cheeks under his pants. 

            I rejoin the path and find my way interrupted by a stuttering elderly man, sitting on a bench, who notices my pack and asks about my travels. He recounts how he used to bike this trail back when it first became a national park in the 70s, and that he biked the Bicentennial Trail across America back in 1976.

At mile 100 I get another flat. I add another path to my now thrice-patched tube, and finally remove the source of all the punctures, a small piece of metal which I neglected to properly remove the first time. I’m surprised I made it all the way to Pittsburgh with that piece of metal in there, and it never even got deflated until I was on the way back. 

            Going on, I feel like I’m travelling through time to all the past landmarks from the beginning of my trip: that cave I ate lunch in; the dam where I met Pain and Suffering; the concrete structure running over the river, where I precariously walked my bike; the trailer park of weekend glampers; all of it. 

I stop to pump my water at a group campsite, but the water level is too low for my pump to reach, so I continue on. I set up camp at the next campsite, a short distance off the trail, so I have the chance to enjoy some privacy. I boil Ramen and am just about to tuck myself in for the night when I remember I left my radio when I stopped at the other camp for water.

Under the last hint of light in the sky, I bullet back to retrieve the radio, no longer burdened with the weight of all my gear. When I’ve retrieved it, I want to celebrate what I assume to be my last night in the wild, and my solitude on this twilight trail, so I bike back naked, except for my shoes and helmet. I howl like the beast of freedom I am.

Before I can civilize myself, one last lonely fisherman crosses the path, rod in hand. I bet he went home with a funny story to share with his friends.

Day 12 (6/3): C&O mile 82-31

With the sun rising, I’ve broken my personal record for longest camping trip. I wake up at 8 and delay my departure, relishing (in just my boxers) the novel privacy of having a campsite that’s set apart from the rest of the trail. So I’m somewhat shocked when a truck rolls in, and I’m bare in my skivvies. A woman steps out of the car to service the latrine, and I put on some clothes while she does so. As I leave I pass a park ranger reinstalling the handles on the water pumps. Between these two people it seems the park will be officially reopening. 

For breakfast I have the last of my Nutella with peanut butter on the last tortilla shell. I also squirt some jelly in my mouth straight from the packet.

Ten miles past Harper’s Ferry, I reup my water from the river, standing in the water to cool off while I pump. I walked in still wearing my socks and shoes, but I don’t mind. It’s too hot. While I refill the second of my four bottles, I am joined by a young mother and her son. While her son wades in next to me, the woman removes her foot from out of a medical boot and airs her toes. A trailer fell on her foot, she says, and doctors were surprised that she even had a foot left. They grafted skin from a sheep, a shark, a cow, a pig, and other animals to reconstruct it. Her boy splashes and I laugh, “Sounds like you have a small Noah’s ark on your foot.”

 Today is the hottest day of the whole trip. It’s like I’m pedaling through a solid wall of heat. Whether because of the temperature, or the fact that I’m still not ready to end my journey, I want to save some miles for tomorrow. I call it a day at 4 o’clock, at mile 31. I while away the remaining hours reading Call of the Wild in my hammock. Dinner is a feast of the rest of my food (minus some items for breakfast/snacks in the morning): two packs of Ramen, two packs of mac and cheese, and a package of beacon bits I pour into both. Mother Nature, wishing me a pleasant evening on my last night, bequeaths me the visage of a multi-hued sunset that straddles the sky, and a beautiful low-lingering full moon over the Potomac. I perch on a log to gaze at the sunset and eat the Ramen. 

As dusk gathers I compile firewood and, observing a young couple in the same campsite, I invite them to join me. I haven’t had a fire since the first night (unless you count my failed attempt at Dravo’s Graveyard) so it feels right that my final night will go out in a bonfire blaze. In addition to the large logs, I also set alight my wickless candle and the entire sports section of the news, which I brought along for this purpose. 

Sitting before the flames, I listen to one more Jack London audiobook, Burning Daylight, until the couple comes over, offering marshmallows. We have a great chat: I learn that they met while at Eastern Mennonite University, and they moved to DC to work at different non-profits and escape their conservative hometowns. They are taking a long weekend to visit Harper’s Ferry (where they got engaged a few years ago) to celebrate his birthday tomorrow. 

I regale them with stories from my trips, and in return they inform me about the protests happening in DC. Having been so isolated during many of the events, I’ve been ignorant as to much of the goings-on. (The protests began shortly after I left WiFi in Pittsburgh, and the only sources of news I got was through Fox News radio, reporting only that Trump went across the street to the church there, mentioning nothing about tear-gassing peaceful demonstrators when he did so.)

We discuss our backgrounds, and I ask them what it’s like to be urban Mennonites, and what aspects of their religious upbringings do they carry with them in their current lives in DC. They answer that they still attempt to live simply, even in a city -- they give the example that, although they both have driver’s licenses and can afford to buy a car, they prefer to bike to work, and make similar choices against frivolous material possessions. 

When speaking of my own experiences on this trip, I comment on how eye-opening it had been for me to bike through the part of the country that put Trump in office. It intrigues them that I use the word “sheltered” to describe my own childhood, growing up in a culturally-diverse population of metropolitan, like-minded liberals who rarely interact with conservatives. Instead, they associate that word with the conservatives of their rural hometowns, those sheltered from those outside their small community.

It gets late, and my fire dies out, so they wish me a goodnight and go to bed.

Day 13 (6/4): C&O mile 31 - my doorstep

            I want to sleep in as late as I can. I eat my breakfast at the campsite. I’m in no rush today.

            On the trail, the sun’s rays are oppressive. This early, I’m already drenched head-to-toe, and drowning in my own sweat by the time I reach that beginning section of the trail, most familiar to me thanks to my short weekend and day trips.

            Burning Daylight concludes and I click on my last book for the trip, White Fang. I know I’m almost home once I start seeing people in baseball caps with the Nationals’ curly W on it. I call my mom when I’m a few miles away, and she’s there to meet me in Georgetown at mile marker 0. She treats me to a chocolate milkshake and I share with her a handful of my tales from the expedition, before I bike home.

Up the steep hill before my house, I walk my bike, and an old man yells out to me, “You’re young! You shouldn’t be walking your bike. You can do that when you’re old like me.” When I respond that I’ve just biked over 700 miles he recants: “Nevermind. Walk your bike. You’ve earned it.”

Arrived at my house, I drink three glasses of ice water and shower immediately.

Epilogue. 

            I stayed in contact with several of the people I met on the trail.

The leader of the bike caravan told me that he didn’t make it to DC and ended the trip early after Hancock. He also reported that the guy walking to the AT made it passed Hancock. 

The girl I met on my first night texted me saying she is now riding the entirety of the trail herself now that she is in between jobs. 

Back home in DC I was able to make up for my absence in the DC protests by participating, on my bike, in a big demonstration the following day. 

I had packed my food perfectly and didn’t return with any leftovers. I gave my bike a whole overhaul, fixing it with new tubes, tires, and brake pads. 

Not only did the trip take a toll on my bike, it took a toll on my body. I lost 14 pounds from when I weighed myself when I left. I grew calluses on my hands that have yet to go away. 

For about a week after the trip, I needed a daily butt-lotioning regimen and avoided sitting as much as possible. 

I’ve been trying to get back on the trail ever since I arrived. I ended up applying for a job with an outfitter in Ohiopyle as a bike guide on the GAP trail. I am now in the works of finding a series of bike trails that would connect Pittsburgh to Cleveland.