Day 81 – Washington DC – Annapolis – 41 miles

Day 81 – Sept 1 – Washington DC – Annapolis – 41 miles

It’s over. We are done. No more riding. Yes, we made it to the salt water for our “coast to coast” trip across America. Phew. That was something.

And this last day was a hard one. It is almost as if the gods of the journey wanted to play tricks on us. We had to start this day a National Airport after returning a rental van we needed on our O day in DC. Trying to get out of the airport was a tough one. As Gregg said “it is like being in Disneyland at the Autorama and not being able to get off the track”. It was super bicycle unfriendly, like most of our day turned out to be. We had to resort to hiking our bikes up a steep embankment to reach the the bike path along the GW Parkway and the Potomac. Gregg did most of the pushing and thereby started this day drenched in sweat. Yep, DC gave us one of its swamp humid days never to forget, 93 degrees with 80% humidity. Nice!

Since we had no bike maps we had to rely on our smartphone GPS. That was a challenge in itself since I couldn’t really see the the phone or hear her telling me directions. We made it over the river and found the Anacostia Riverwalk trail, which actually was partially a trail and partially a road ride riding through construction sites and industrial zones. We made it to Anacostia, at one point I remember hearing that Anacostia was the murder capital of DC. We made it through, stopping to get some water in a convenient store where I had to pass my money through a bullet proof plexiglass window.

Gregg was suffering under this humidity. We had had heat on this tour but we were lucky that we had very little humidity. I remembered this stuff from my youth, I hated it. Winter no problem, its the summers in DC that are to be avoided. While bicycling you can keep cool by not stopping. Pedaling along we create our own wind. But since we didn’t know where we were going and were following Google maps bike routes, we had to stop often to look at the maps. At one point my phone completely gave out – a heat warning appeared and said the phone cannot be used until the temperature goes down. Gregg had to booted up his Samsung to lead the way. Yes, it was sooooo hot.

The Google maps route was very weird. Once we got out of DC we got on route 704 which had shoulders sometimes, and other times no shoulder and signs with pictures of bikes that said “Share the Road” and “Bicycles May use entire lane”. But the drivers either did not see the signs or really didn’t care. It was pretty hectic. At one point, when crossing under the Beltway all shoulders, bike lanes, or anything safe for us to ride on, disappeared. We were sitting in the middle of a 3/4 lane highway where cars were entering and existing at high speed. Again, it was as if the prankster god of the journey wanted to to prove that we could actually negotiate these last challenges without getting killed.

Once we got within 10 miles of Annapolis we had a treat. A country highway with a wide shoulder through rolling hills called the Defense Highway – 450. It was great, smooth and treelined which provide much needed shade. We got to the outskirts of Annapolis to find ourselves on one last bike path. We got it all on our last day. Arriving in the old section of Annapolis we got a little lost on the one way streets but eventually made it down to the city harbor area. There Gregg’s good friend Don and his wife Diane were there to greet us. Done. We hoped off our bikes and hugged everyone, took out the orange plastic cup that I had poured Pacific water on the tires of the bikes, filled it with Chesapeake Bay “salt water” and poured the water over our tires. We had made it. No more bicycling. We were proud of our bikes, and little proud of ourselves to had actually done it.

We were so tired. We had a fantastic seafood dinner with Don and Diane, beers and conversation in a tavern from 1750! We had 3 more mile to ride to Don’s house, but….we couldn’t, we didn’t have to. Don drove home to pick up his flatbed trailer we loaded up without feeling the tiniest bit guilty for not riding anymore. We had completed our journey.

That’s that.