We were up early – at least by mountain standard time – and out the door by 0836 EST. The door, was attached to my brother-in-law’s (Sal) and sister’s (Colleen) condo in Rehoboth Beach, DE. They not only graciously let us use it for 4 days, to get ourselves sorted out and bikes put together, but also took us to eat, cooked amazing food for us, sat on the beach with us, and basically fattened us up for the ride.
We had a truck, rented when we arrived at BWI, so we could get our mountain of gear and bikes from the airport to the condo. It was embarrassing for a guy that likes to travel light, but we had to bring our bikes and they make for pretty big luggage. Although, the bike bags (Orucase) were billed as “stealth” and probably able to get on as regular luggage, when I rolled them up to the airline counter the first thing out of the guys mouth was: how are you paying for the bikes. Oh well. They were pretty slick in terms of packing and rolling them so I can’t complain too much.
We were a bit odd as we turned in the rental truck, pulled our bikes out of the bed, and rode out of the parking lot rather than taking the bus. We were on our way, almost immediately jumping onto the the BWI trail which paralleled and sometimes crossed some busy roads which we were grateful to not be riding.
The BWI trail pleasantly rolled northward through various types of neighborhoods. Admittedly, we didn’t take too many pictures in some of the neighborhoods feeling it more important to keep moving: moving targets are harder to hit.
Mostly, it was interesting and not terrifying. The neighborhoods and city were truly eastern and far different from our usual experience. Gloria said she expected a big ugly city so she was happily surprised even when the trail took us right through the downtown harbor – which was quite pleasant, pretty, and had some great trails off the main roads. Baltimore is big, but unlike sprawling, barren, ugly cities like Phoenix, you can’t see much of Baltimore because of the trees.
Following the route called the East Coast Greenway (which someday will take riders from Maine to Florida on trails) kept us mostly on trails or roads with good shoulders, but that meant a pretty convoluted route. If you took a picture of a bowl of spaghetti, and tried to follow one strand of it through the bowl, you would have a sense of our route.
That convoluted trail took us past the third oldest zoo in the US, beautiful parks, up rivers, past multiple arboretums, and on wooden trails that “floated” above the forest sometimes for miles! Baltimore is an incredible bicycle city, although I’m pretty sure that Gloria and I riding through Baltimore about doubled the number of bicyclist in Baltimore today.
There were a couple of miles – out of 37 – that were in the midst of traffic. We didn’t quite make it across the city before rush hour and some of the roads we had to take to connect trails were a little wild. I didn’t get any pictures because I had to focus fully on not being run over. Or, as Gloria put it, those type of road miles better be the last miles on roads like that or I might be soloing.
Overall, I reasonable start to our Northeast Adventure. Tomorrow, I’m hoping to get Gloria a little more rural riding so she doesn’t mutiny. Hopefully, she hasn’t looked at a map to see that we are riding through a part of the country where a large chunk of the entire US population lives….
Grumpy Grandpa's Great Bicycling Adventures 