Journey to the end of the world

Last weekend, Adam, Whitey and I decided to take a bike trip. Ride for a day, camp out, and then ride back. We looked at some maps and plotted our route North-West on the C&O Canal.

After a late night dancing at the Blackcat, we got to bed around 4 a.m. Tired and sore, we woke up, packed our bikes down, and stuffed food into our backpacks and took off to Ballston where we took the metro to Rosslyn. From there we rode across the Key Bridge into Georgetown and started up the C&O Canal trail.

The trail was nicely paved with pea gravel and for the most part there were no hills. It was a pleasant and scenic ride that was almost entirely under the shade of big trees.

Around Great Falls area we all started feeling a little fatigued so we stopped a bit and ate granolla bars and carrots. Feeling a little bit better but we biked on passing through the large crowds swarmed around the Great Falls.

we set our goal for 25 miles and once we hit it, we started looking for a secluded place off the trail where we could camp and not be seen by any bikers or worse...trail patrol.

We found a place a ways off the trail through thick thorn bushes and down a small cliff. After struggling to push our bikes through we came to a grassy little beach right on the River.

We had made it a rule that we could not look at our watches or anything that would tell us the time for the whole trip. So we figured we had about 3 - 4 more hours of daylight so we built a lean-to using the sticks from the large pile of drift wood nearby. we found fire wood and prepared a fire pit and laid the tarps out under our lean-to.



With about 3 hours of daylight let, we swam in the Potomac. It wasn't very deep at all so we waded out into the middle and floated/frolicked around on a log. we carried out.

Once night hit we lit the fire and ate our dinners. As we got ready to go to sleep, the mosquitoes flooded the camp site. We spent all night swatting them away and trying to keep from getting bit while also keeping our ears covered from their weedwacker like hum.

I think its accurate to say that non of us slept more than about 30 minutes. Exhausted and defeated we got up as the sun was rising and jumped into the river to wake up. We ate a little breakfast, loaded down our bikes then rode at an incredible rate for home.
We returned at about 10:30 a.m.... meaning that either we left extremely early or rode very fast.

Total riding distance - 57.05 miles
Number of hours slept - .5
Number of mosquito bites: 300