Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Call of the Bicycle Has Me...

My Adventure Cyclist magazine came this week. On the front is this absolutely beautiful picture of three bicyclists riding touring bikes on a wooden walkway next to a canal exiting a tunnel, stone steps leading upward to their right. I saw it and I thought, "I'm going there." Much like last year when I felt the same way about the Elroy-Sparta Trail, and RAGBRAI (a non-resolution decided upon around December). An excitement I'm not quite feeling about the MS150 ride this year.

The picture on the cover of the magazine is of the Paw Paw Tunnel (alt wiki), part of the C&O Canal, that runs from Cumberland, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., a total of 184 miles. There's a secondary part, the Great Allegheny Passage, that goes another 150 miles through the mountains between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, but I think I can forgo that much riding during a family trip. We had already been discussing our family vacation for this summer or fall and I was leaning strongly in favor of a driving trip to D.C. I'm now convinced it was fate guiding me - that I am destined to haul my bike along on the back of our compact car and spend two days pedaling across Maryland, West Virginia (where I can see the heritage of my coworker, Christy Twofist), Virginia and Washington, D.C. (pdf map). The fear of a Deliverance moment at Licking Creek Aqueduct in the Dickeys Mountains will not deter me - I'll tell the hillbillys I know their sister.

Some pictures from Flickr.


(photo by gmcdowell, flickr)

3 comments:

She says said...

See ya' when you get here!

Mac Noland said...

Ah a driving drip to D.C. My parents did that with myself and two brothers. We rode in the back of a four door car and fought the entire way ;).

Scooter said...

It's because you said in a previous comment that you sometimes don't bathe for a day - that'll make anyone fight if they're cooped up in a four door together.