{"id":974,"date":"2021-08-24T22:24:23","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T02:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/?page_id=974"},"modified":"2021-08-24T22:24:23","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T02:24:23","slug":"day-43-williamsport-to-washington-d-c","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/day-by-day-trip-log\/day-43-williamsport-to-washington-d-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 43: Williamsport to Washington D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The final day.\u00a0 All I need to do is pedal about 90 miles and I will have crossed the continental USA by bicycle for the second time.\u00a0 Greg, who I met outside of Pittsburgh, is with me and also interested in making it to D.C. by Friday night.\u00a0 We met for breakfast in the Waffle House, which was beside the motel and had some eggs, toast and juice.\u00a0 We set off pedaling about 8:15 AM.<\/p>\n

The first 10 miles were paved and went through scenic Western Maryland countryside.\u00a0 Then at the top of a hill, Greg pulled over and said he had a problem.\u00a0 He had broken a rear spoke.\u00a0 Spokes are a tough item to fix on the side of the road.\u00a0 It was even tougher than usual to fix since neither Greg nor I were carrying any spare spokes.\u00a0 Searching the Internet showed no bike shops close to us, so we carried on and Greg rode on a broken rear wheel all the way to Washington.<\/p>\n

About 20 miles into the ride the instructions told us to get back on the C&O Canal bike path.\u00a0 The bike path started out drier than yesterday but soon started having big problems.\u00a0 We had to cross over a large tree that had fallen across the trail.\u00a0 We had to cross three different places where the trail had been washed away by floods.\u00a0 In two of the washed out places the park service had created temporary detours or bridges.<\/p>\n

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In the third place the park service had given up, closed the trail and expected cyclists to take a long detour that included sections of a highway and a very large climb.\u00a0 In the west when I came to a road closed or detour sign I had to guess if it was possible to get through.\u00a0 In the east it was much easier because there were at least a dozen cyclists coming from the other direction who offered advice.<\/p>\n

The consensus view of the west-bound cyclists was that we didn\u2019t need to take the highway detour.\u00a0 It was possible to push our bikes up a short hill, jog or run along a set of railroad tracks for about 200 feet and then slide down a hill to rejoin the trail on the other side of the washed-out bridge.<\/p>\n

Reading this previous paragraph now, which is hours after the day is over, suggests this should be no big deal.\u00a0 However, it was a lot of effort to get up to the railroad tracks and down the other side, not to mention my concern about being hit by a train while on the tracks, even if it was for only a couple of minutes.\u00a0 We managed it all safely and the only lasting problem was a profusion of mosquito bites from the swarms that attacked us during the mini-adventure.\u00a0 The mosquitoes even got under my clothes and I have a large series of bites on my arms, neck and head.<\/p>\n

For the next 50 miles the trail was at various points muddy, slippery, rocky, very narrow and for a few miles had branches which kept smacking me in the face.<\/p>\n

It all didn\u2019t matter because the mile markers were counting down to zero, which was Washington D.C.\u00a0 I could feel the end.<\/p>\n

Around 4 PM we made it to the Potomac River falls.\u00a0 Just after the falls Google Maps told me that we needed to get off the C&O Canal and take the \u201cBilly Goat Trail.\u201d\u00a0 The name seemed quite suspicious.<\/p>\n

Luckily, near the falls a park service ranger walked by while Greg was in the restroom.\u00a0 I asked her if the Billy Goat Trail was suitable for bikes.\u00a0 She told me that the trail was something people did by scrambling and jumping from rock to rock and that our bikes would not make it.\u00a0 She told us to stay on the canal path, but to make sure we took a small detour that allowed us to stop and see the falls.\u00a0 It was great advice.\u00a0 The falls were spectacular, and I would have missed the best part of the day if I had just kept pedaling.<\/p>\n

I left Greg just after we crossed the Beltway into Greater Washington.\u00a0 His brother met us in a parking lot just off MacArthur Avenue.\u00a0 It was now 6 pm and I had one hour to get myself across town for an interview with a National Public Radio reporter at Union Station before boarding an Amtrak train for home.<\/p>\n

I texted the reporter that I had crossed the Beltway.\u00a0 I pedaled more and stopped and took a picture of the \u201cWelcome to Washington, D.C.\u201d sign.\u00a0 No one was there to see it but the smile on my face stretched from ear to ear.<\/p>\n

Two blocks after taking the welcome sign\u2019s picture, Google Maps told me to get off MacArthur and onto a bike trail.\u00a0 The trail turned out to be a two-foot wide dirt path that led down a steep cliff.\u00a0 I turned around and pedaled back to MacArthur and kept heading towards downtown.\u00a0 This was a small mistake because Google was furiously updating my screen and trying to both explain where I was going wrong and how I could \u201cfix\u201d it.\u00a0 I made it Georgetown at 6:30 PM.\u00a0 Thirty minutes to go before the interview.<\/p>\n

For weeks I had been picturing myself and the bike being photographed at the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the trip.\u00a0 I had half an hour to get to the Memorial and then to Union Station.\u00a0 I texted the reporter that I was in Georgetown.\u00a0 The message went out and then the phone\u2019s battery died.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if the furious updating killed the battery, but it certainly did not help.<\/p>\n

I now had two small dilemmas.\u00a0 First, I didn\u2019t know exactly how to get to the Lincoln Memorial.\u00a0 I had a rough idea, but rough ideas don\u2019t cut it when you are short on time.\u00a0 Second, I now had no way to contact the reporter.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what he looked like or where he would be located at Union Station.<\/p>\n

Solving the first problem was easy.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go to the Memorial.\u00a0 Instead, I pedaled down Pennsylvania Avenue and got a quick shot of me, the bike and the White House.\u00a0 Then I asked several other cyclists pedaling down the street for directions to the train station.\u00a0 I had been to Union Station a number of times in the past, but I had always taken the Metro and been below ground on the subway.<\/p>\n

Around 7 PM I pedaled up to Union Station and asked a tourist to take a photo of me and the building.\u00a0 The second problem, contacting the reporter, resolved itself.\u00a0 The reporter was standing outside the building and was looking for me.\u00a0 I guess there were not that many cyclists covered in mud who were out pedaling that evening.<\/p>\n

We had a wonderful interview sitting in a quiet wing of the station.\u00a0 We talked about economics, the trip and traveling in general.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if what I said makes for a good radio show, but both the reporter and I were pleased by the conversation.<\/p>\n

I had a quick bite to eat and then caught the 10 PM train to Boston.\u00a0 The train is not fast since it took over 10 hours to get to Boston but Amtrak was happy to take my muddy bike unboxed all the way home for just $20.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The final day.\u00a0 All I need to do is pedal about 90 miles and I will have crossed the continental USA by bicycle for the second time.\u00a0 Greg, who I met outside of Pittsburgh, is with me and also interested in making it to D.C. by Friday night.\u00a0 We met for breakfast in the Waffle … Continue reading Day 43: Williamsport to Washington D.C.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5335,"featured_media":0,"parent":766,"menu_order":42,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/974\/revisions\/975"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}