I shoulda seen it coming.
Listen, the first thing I saw when I walked out of my hotel in Cumberland this morning was a big dump truck with snow encrusted on its roof.
Snow! In May!
Plus, it was 38 degrees.
But. But. But.
But on Day 4 of our Great American Rail Trail Expedition to the Mississippi River, the difficult-to-negotiate C&O Canal Trail was well and truly behind us.
And we stood on the threshold of the Great Allegheny Passage. Its hard packed gravel path promised a much smoother journey ahead.
Plus, the flapper lady in the big mural at the Gateway to the GAP was definitely flirting with me. Which I took to be a good sign.
On this day we had a 52-mile passage to Confluence. And all the lifelong day in which to get there.
Plus, after three days of rain and gray and cold and miserable weather, the sun had finally broken through.
That had to be a good sign, right?
Wrong.
Before we were five miles into the trek we learned one very important lesson about the GAP in this most bizarre month of May (and before you ask, I’m not gonna say a word about, you know, CC).
If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes.
It’ll get worse.
It went from clear and sunny.
To gray and windy.
To sleety.
Back to sunny again.
And don’t even get me started on that biting, nose-tweaking wind knifing out of the west (Oh, did I mention we were headed west?).
But still we persisted.
Anyway, for the first five miles or so it wasn’t bad.
We went past the bone cave. Check.
And through the Brush Tunnel. Check.
And around Horseshoe Bend. Check, check and checkmate!
But that’s when I began to notice that I had lost all feeling in my fingers.
No kidding. When I touched my iPhone screen to check my navigation app I literally couldn’t feel the screen!
I said to myself, “Myself I said, that’s not good.”
By mile 9 I was starting to wonder if my exalted position as Ride Leader legally entitled me to confiscate Joe’s e-bike.
Then the sleet began in earnest and we had to take refuge.
At which point a very helpful (and overly cheerful if you ask me) young man informed us that snow had been falling for a couple of days and it’s on the ground just ahead.
Long story short, at about the 14-mile mark we came to the top of the ominously named Mt. Savage. Where we encountered a very steep and winding road leading down to the town of the same name.
So just this one time we took the road less traveled.
Mt. Savage is a hardscrabble former mining town that has seen better days. But fortunately, we were able to find, um, suitable shelter from the storm while we waited for our SAG vehicles to come to the rescue.
Listen, I know you think I’m exaggerating all of this. You’re thinking that old (old, old, old) Ron Cunningham simply can’t hack it any more and he’s looking for excuses to pack it in.
So I took this photo as we were fleeing Mt. Savage.
I rest my case.
Oh, and just so you’ll know, the day wasn’t a total loss.
Having decided that discretion really is the better part of valor, we then resolved to drive north several miles, to Shanksville, Pa.
There to contemplate matters of honor, sacrifice and man’s inhumanity to man.
I won’t even attempt to tell you what I experienced at the Flight 93 Memorial.
Seriously, words fail me.
But.
Tomorrow’s gonna be, tomorrow’s gonna be, tomorrow’s gonna be another day…yea yea yea. (Tribute to Billy Bragg).
FreeGNV 