For food, I carried about 3 pounds comprising banana chips, sunflower seeds, beef jerky and stroopwafels. After consulting Reddit, I was persuaded to bring an additional water-carrying vessel and it took the form of a regular water bottle tucked under the frame bag. The frame bag and camelbak were the most notable changes from my original plan, and I was very thankful for both. The frame bag made keeping the phone charged very easy, though I had to slit a tiny hole in the bag for the charging cable. It was also handy because I could easily reach my food stores while riding. I decided not to use the rear rack and panniers because I didn’t need to haul very much. I could fit everything into half of one pannier, so having the rack and one pannier seemed like a lot of dead weight (and an uneven load). If I had planned to spend the night on the trail, the rack would have certainly been necessary.

At first I was hesitant about the camelbak, but I came around after many people cautioned me about the possibility of losing/breaking a water bottle and the fact that the water on the trail is not always potable at every stop. I am also pretty lazy when it comes to hydration, so having the tube next to my mouth made hydration much less of an effort (a key consideration considering the weather that day).

Weather

Speaking of weather, in areas around DC, the weather that day was venutian. Temps at the airport and in the city reached 100F and the humidity was as high as 90%. While it was difficult to get weather forecasts that applied to the towpath itself, it was a safe assumption that hydration and electrolytes would be a major concern, which is why I reached straight for salt tablets instead of drink mix or gu. I wound up drinking about one liter (one quart) per hour, and I think it served me well as I had no heat-related problems during the ride.

The Start

We rose at 3:45 am (on July 14, 2016), and I quickly smeared body glide and sunscreen all over and donned my kit. I downed some day-old coffee that I remembered to bring in a thermos (pro-tip), and absolutely inhaled a breakfast of healthy muffins and hard-boiled eggs, compliments of my awesome wife. We packed up our things and “checked out” (left the key on the desk). I pulled my bike out of our hatchback and set up my phone (can’t forget Strava), kissed my wife and headed into the abyss of the dimly-lit pre-dawn gloaming of Cumberland. We had walked down to the trailhead the evening before, so navigating that first step was a breeze. I found the trail and turned east. The cool morning air felt great. There were some sort of far-off stadium lights lights that lit the trail for about the first mile or so, after which I dove into the stark night of the forest. I saw no one, and the only sound was the gravel crunching under my Sammy Slicks.

I’m not a huge fan of the dark, and having grown up in Michigan, where there are legitimate predators, my adrenaline was seriously coursing. I found myself hurtling through total darkness, illumined only by my little handlebar headlight, on completely unfamiliar terrain 190 miles from home, totally alone (I did see a really weird-looking, possibly homeless guy on the trail in town, and that definitely didn’t help), and collecting what was starting to become a dragnet of spiderwebs (and I really don’t like spiders). So I’m thinking about all this, and it is starting to freak me out a bit, and I hadn’t really been attuned to what my bike was feeling like or anything, and suddenly it occurred to me that my rear wheel was fishtailing and seemed very soft. I could feel the hard jar of metal on gravel whenever I hit a bump. I had a flat, and I was only 5 miles in. :)

So I did what any determined, confident, calm, clever randonneur would do, I wished really hard that what I was feeling was imaginary and would definitely go away once the sun rose. I kept pedaling, and about a quarter of a mile later I came to my senses and fixed the thing. Once stopped, I was even more acutely aware of how alone and in the dark I was, but at least I had come prepared. I quickly changed the flat and patched the tube before replacing it in my saddle pouch. I only brought two extra, and they had to last. I jumped back on the bike and continued on my way.

The sun started having a gloriously illuminating effect on the landscape around 5:30, and I could make out some details about the country in which I was immersed, and which did not vary hardly at all throughout the ride. On my left was the canal, in parts dry and in parts filled. On my right was almost invariably the Potomac river, or dense forest. The trail itself varied between grassy two-track or single track, gravel road suitable for car traffic, and wide gravel trail. Knowing that many, many hours of mentally tedious riding lay before me, I started counting wildlife. Between when I could see and about 10 am, I counted more than 50 deer, 15 rabbits, 10 or so cranes, a groundhog, and a turtle. I also saw, but did not count, dozens of cardinals and bluebirds, and other birds of various descriptions. The trail proved to be a veritable wildlife reserve! I was fortunate to have witnessed a beautiful owl silently glide over my head in front of me and light on a branch, dropping its prey on the grass along the trail. It was so spellbinding that I stopped and fumbled for my phone and it got away before I could snap a shot.