Claire Gebben

Today was the first day of our long-awaited, much ballyhooed bicycle ride from DC to Pittsburgh. Wow. For starters, as Angela and I wrestled our gear into compact, waterproof panniers, IT WAS SNOWING. Not big flakes, not a lot of them, but every so often a grain-sized, frozen white form of precipitation drifted into my field of vision. I tried not to think about it.

After all I’d been through to get here, there was no way I was turning back. The bike rental people had dropped off the bikes on time, at 10:30, at the Carderock Recreation Area Pavilion. Next, according to plan, I’d returned the rental car at the airport and caught a taxi back to the pavilion.

At first, understandably, the taxi driver had trouble with my request to go to Carderock. Normally, people ask to go to residences, or buildings. I wanted to go to a park.

“But what is address?”

“Carderock Recreation Area. I don’t think it has an address.”

We worked it out. When I typed in Carderock in his GPS, the Recreation Area materialized. I didn’t ask the driver his country of origin, but if I were to guess, I’d say he came from the Middle Eastern region, of Arab derivation. (There’s a reason I’m going into this.) Following GPS, we scuttled along on George Washington Memorial Parkway, then crossed the river and got off at Clara Barton Parkway. At the exit ramp for Carderock, the driver accidentally went right instead of left. Immediately before us loomed something very military-looking, a facility protected by a guard house and a high security gate.

The taxi driver threw it into reverse.

“I think you can just make a U-turn up there,” I said, nervously checking behind us on the one-way ramp.

“Oh no, I not doing that. My friend, he stopped at a gate like that, he questioned for an hour, they almost didn’t let him free.”

I looked it up just now, we’d almost blundered into the US Naval Surface Warfare Center. Sheesh. That would have sucked.

Anyhow, with all the logistics, Angela and I didn’t start pedaling until 3 p.m., and slogged away in Maryland along a gorgeous, overflowing Potomac for the next five hours and 20+ miles. Along the way, we spotted enormous Great Blue Herons and many deer, a muskrat, a fox, and evidence of beaver (a half-gnawed tree).

But we’re in a hotel in Leesburg, VA tonight. It was just too darn cold, and besides, I can’t feel my legs. The striking part about that was, no bridge existed to cross the Potomac. We took a ferry, at aptly named Whites Ferry. But here’s the best part: no more biking tonight. Our obliging Comfort Suites hotel sent a shuttle to pick us up. Aaah.