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Day three

Third day out, Wednesday. After very little sleep, we had what was planned to be the shortest day for the hotel campers, an average day for us, 60 miles. Jason and I were up early, talking to the Milk Crate Guys, two brothers doing the trail on less expensive bikes, milk crates to haul there stuff, and a bunch of ill advised clothes. They had rolled in around midnight and set up their tarp. From them we learned of bike hostel, in the town that the other crew was sleeping in. That crew, was running late, and found us around 9:00 in the morn. They learned really quickly that this section of the trail wasn't going to be as easy as they thought. After PA, the C&O trail is much rougher, rockier and rootier. Mud was also on the agenda. Not much, but a little. The morning went pretty quickly, the terrain had changed, and the trail felt much lonelier. We noticed the sky getting darker. Lunch was in some little pizza place, next to a salvage yard/farmer's market, across the street from a gas station that also processed the deer for the county. After lunch, it was back on the trail, and we got to go through the longest tunnel of the trip, almost a mile long. Jason thought that he could ride through without lights, 50 feet in and he waited for us with our lights. The other side was awesome. As we waited for the last two guys, it started to sprinkle. The tunnel was going to be the last time we were dry while riding our bikes. Out came the rain gear, and for the next 30 miles, we thought that riding in the rain was fun. While on the trail, Jason and I had to come with a descison about that night. We had originally planned on doing 60 miles each of the next two days. But we saw with the change in the weather, the crappiness of the trail, that it would be hard to make it to DC by 1:00pm on Friday at the pace we were doing. We had already made the desicion to leave earlier than the rest of the guys, they were done at the end of Thursday, and we were spending another day on the trail to finish it. So, we either had to stay at the bike hostel, ride another eight miles and camp, or get a hotel room. Mileage wise, we decided to ride 92 miles on Thursday, which left us with 35 miles on Friday, easy to do. The hostel was an roof with open sides, not a good idea when the night was supposed to get down to 30 degrees, we wanted to spend the night camping, but maybe not a good idea with almost a century to do the next day, and I hadn't much sleep on this trip yet. Hotel it was. Dinner at Pizza Hut, no beers, warm ass shower, dry the clothes out as much as possible, and early to bed.