Camaraderie & Characters on the GAP and C&O Canal Towpath

The Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) and the C&O Canal Towpath are contiguous trails that stretch from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. The ride through the GAP cuts through the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania and crosses into Maryland soon after reaching the Eastern Continental Divide. The GAP ends in Cumberland, MD which is the C&O Canal Towpath’s western terminus (mile 184.5). At its eastern end, mile 0 of the towpath lies at the edge of Rock Creek in the historic Georgetown section of D.C.

Riding on the GAP alongside the Youghiogheny River in the summer is like passing through an emerald tunnel infused with dappled light. There are sections where the tree cover is so thick that the trail is mostly continuously shaded but splashed irregularly with shafts of light. I felt like I was riding through a Monet painting.

The emerald tunnel of the GAP

Camaraderie

The GAP draws cyclists because of the obvious beauty of the trail. In my eyes, a side benefit of riding the trail is the organic community-building that takes place among riders covering the entire passage to Washington, D.C. Most riders typically cover the same ground in a day’s ride, and so one begins to see familiar faces at the rest stops or at the towns and campsites. At first, you merely exchange glances, primarily from one solo rider to another (often, the classic nonchalant “Hey” that men half-grunt to one another, hewing to the middle ground of being courteous, but not too friendly). Small groups of riders are typically busy amongst themselves, but if you direct a look and a smile at them usually you get a reciprocal nod. The next time you meet, having already been silently but visually introduced to each other the door opens for polite, small-talk conversations. Over the course of the days, and especially if you ride alongside someone, an invisible web of connection forms. Midway through the ride, the socializing has evolved to where you are moving in and out of continuous yet sporadic conversational bubbles with multiple riders or groups of riders, lasting the remainder of the traverse from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C.

Characters

I never rode with Joe from New York City, but he was the very first person I spoke with on the evening I picked up the GAP in West Newton, PA. Joe was in his thirties, short, with a very warm and approachable demeanor. The next evening, I found Joe at a restaurant’s bar, writing in his journal. He joined me on the deck outside as I ate and he finished his beer. Our conversation – from politics to baseball – flowed freely. The following evening he spotted me from his perch in a corner of a Pizza Hut decorated in pandemic themes (i.e., lots of plastic sheeting around the booths). On his table was an open journal and completed postcards stacked in a loose pile. Our conversation flowed as steadily and as easily as the Potomac River along which we were traveling.

My second day on the GAP, riding on the wild and remote section above the Casselman River, I passed a 70-year-old cyclist from Texas that I will call Jerry. He looked younger than his stated age and rode an old steel-frame bicycle weighted down with gear. Jerry had this warm, laid back, Texas-friendly vibe about him. He was clearly in no rush. In terms of riding pace, Jerry was the tortoise to my hare.

On the first day riding the coffee-colored Canal towpath, I came upon a small group of riders that had stopped. A massive, thick trunk was blocking the way, and they were swiftly portaging their loaded bicycles over the fallen tree. This was the second day after the explosion of pain in my rib that I wrote about in my post, Resolving the Bike Trip of the Mind vs. The Bike Trip of the Body. Though I was injured in body, my mind had not yet adjusted, and even though I knew I couldn’t get my bike and gear over the chest-high trunk by myself, I grabbed the frame instinctively, lifted, and tried to heave it over the trunk. The result of my lack of caution produced a knife-sharp stabbing pain in my rib. I winced and struggled. Just about when I was going to drop the bike, out of nowhere, a helping hand reached over the trunk from the other side, grabbed my frame, and helped yank the bike over. I looked up and saw that the hand belonged to Jerry, who, like an angel, was there to lighten my load. I climbed over, caught my breath and thanked him. As I stood there, catching my breath, he rode away.

Later that steamy afternoon, I came upon Jerry lying in the sun on his rain tarp just off the towpath, enjoying a snack. He waved and invited me to join him. We exchanged friendly banter for some time, though the deeper the conversation ran, the more he revealed his strongly held conservative political and economic opinions. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but to my chagrin, he spoke with transparent smugness, telling me (on the topic of economic incentives) that if I really thought about it, I would have to concede that he was right. I struggled to reconcile his laid-back demeanor with his righteous belief in the merit of his opinions.

I met a cyclist I’ll call Dylan the day I met Jerry. I was resting on a bench strategically placed in the middle of nowhere, taking in the forest and literally breathing a sigh of relief that I could ride despite the sore rib. The forest’s silence was broken by the gritty soundtrack of bicycle wheels rolling over the trail’s crushed limestone surface, and a 40-ish rider wearing a spandex kit sporting a closely cropped dark beard came up the trail. Seeing me, he inquired if I needed help. I shook my head, told him I was good, and expressed appreciation for his offer. I spotted Dylan a few miles later, struggling to change a tube after evidently suffering a flat. I returned the trail etiquette favor and stopped and offered to help. He smiled and waved me on, indicating that he had things under control. As I rode away, I had a synaptic flash of cognitive dissonance: He said he had things under control but something about his smile and body language betrayed that he wasn’t as confident as he said he was.

I caught up with Dylan at a rest area at the Meyersdale, PA trailhead. We chatted for a bit and agreed to ride down the mountainside together to Cumberland, MD, where we both had reservations at the same trailside hotel. This casual choice to ride together proved to be a godsend for him.

We crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, and soon we were flying down the long 23-mile drop to Cumberland. About two-thirds of the way down, I heard Dylan shout something unintelligible from behind me. A few minutes later I looked up and he was nowhere to be seen. I waited for some time and then walked my bike up the trail where I found him in a grassy area off the side of the trail, attempting to fix a flat tire. He had the same look on his face as I had seen in the morning, struggling with the simple task of replacing an inner tube. I watched him force the tube into the rim with his tire irons, which punctured his spare tube. I gave him one of my spares, and he promptly repeated his sins and punctured my spare. He was clearly frustrated and embarrassed.

“You go ahead. I’ll walk down the rest of the way to Cumberland,” he said in a tone of surrender.

“Nonsense!” I replied. “There’s still another seven or eight miles to go.”

I pulled out my remaining spare tube and said he could have it, on the condition that I do the work. He assented without reluctance and with a good measure of relief. I changed the tube quickly and we soon had his tire inflated enough to complete the descent.

The next day, Dylan and I set out together. I was still sore and rode cautiously and within my limits. Though I had helped Dylan out of a pinch, I soon learned he felt no obligation to ride with me that day, as it wasn’t long before he was out of sight. He had paid for my dinner the previous night, so I guess he felt we were square.

A view of the Potomac River from the C&O Canal Towpath as it leaves Cumberland.

I spotted Gruff Dude the morning of my penultimate day on the trail in a group of younger riders taking a break by low limestone walls in a larger grassy area on the site of historic Dam 5 of the Canal. They were a scruffy-looking group. Even their bikes were scruffy — unlike the newer, expensive trail bikes ridden by most cyclists, theirs looked like second-hand, low-cost models one would find at K-Mart. The scruffiest of them all was a grim-faced man who looked like he did not suffer fools kindly. His traveling companion was a little, Toto-like dog, which rested (Toto-like) in a wicker basket attached to the handlebars. The visual clash between his stern looks and the froo-froo dog in the basket made quite the contradictory statement. Perhaps that was his point?

I only spoke with Gruff Dude once when I loaned him my pump after I saw him struggling to inflate his replacement inner tube with a ridiculously flimsy, cheap hand-pump. He was appreciative, but never really dropped his stern demeanor.

I am still in touch with Joe – although irregularly. The other characters are now just memories, their faded faces painted over an unblemished backdrop of a verdant forest cut by a steadily moving blue river, streaked with a limestone sheen.