Cycle Tour: W & OD Trail to the C & O Canal Trail
I had been interested in bicycle touring/bike camping/bikepacking for a couple of years, but I didn’t have any previous experience with this kind of riding, and I definitely did not have the right bike for it. In July of 2021, I took the first steps towards making this theoretical interest a reality, and bought the 38 cm Surly Pack Rat that Redbeard Bikes had posted about on their Instagram: “perfect for a petite rider riding around town.” Over time, I began building the bike up a bit more, adding a front rack, then a rear rack. I got panniers and pretended I would be a bike commuter (the commuting was fun, but short-lived). Eventually, I changed out the drivetrain to a 1x, with a much lower gear ratio, and then I was out of excuses to not just do the damn thing already. I signed up for my first bike camping trip, 718 Cyclery’s 2022 Micro-tour #5, and had the time of my life. At the start of this year, I promised myself that I would travel by bike more.
Cue Polly, reaching out to me to see if I would be interested in doing a cycling tour while she had some time off in April. She was organizing a four-day trip (4/11 - 4/14) heading west out of Washington, DC, and was planning to connect with the Washington & Old Dominion (W & OD) Trail, taking that northwest to Leesburg, VA before heading north to the Chesapeake & Ohio (C & O) Canal Trail, which would be ridden out to Shepherdstown, WV. From there, the return route to Washington, DC was a straight-shot on the C & O Trail.
I had no real reason to pass on this opportunity, so I told Polly I would be down (I was veryyy excited, but played it cool). This would be my first time riding four days in a row with this much mileage, and on a loaded bike, no less. Also, gravel. Just like that time I pretended to be a bike commuter, I am now pretending to be a gravel rider: the C & O trail would make up seventy-plus miles of this route and consists entirely of gravel. If my road bike can handle all of the gravel I’ve been riding, I was sure it would be no match for the Pack Rat.
We opted for “credit card touring” on this trip - Polly researched the route and was able to book a hotel for each of the three nights we would be traveling for. Having a shower, the ability to wash our kits, and a nice bed to sleep in definitely made all the difference; we were able to take advantage of the continental breakfasts each morning, and it didn’t hurt that each hotel we stayed in got progressively nicer!
With my first multi-day cycling trip in the books, I wound up racking up over 180 miles in the saddle! A HUGEEEE thank you to Polly for all of the effort she put in planning and navigating the route for us!
DAY ONE: NYC to Washington, DC to Leesburg, VA (49.52 miles)
I took extreme effort to not overpack on this trip. To ensure my success, I packed as little as possible and crammed it all into a single pannier, mostly to prove a point. Since I still don’t know what I’m doing, and since hindsight is 20/20, next time I will split the smaller load into two panniers, just to prevent any potential for me to overcompensate on one side (I don’t think I was very affected by the load being on one side of the bike, but I shouldn’t be doing silly things with the way my back is).
We had booked an 8:10 Amtrak train (and bicycle tickets!) from NYC to Washington, DC, and planned to meet at Moynihan at 7:30AM to see if we could get track information ahead of time and locate the elevators we would need to take to get down to the tracks. I left my apartment in Brooklyn around 6:15AM, took the Brooklyn Bridge into the city, and got to the station with time to spare.
Polly got to Moynihan not too long after me and started chatting up the Amtrak employees to see if we could get the track information early, given our bicycle situation. We lucked out with one employee who kept an eye out for us and checked the computer to tell us the track number before it was announced. We headed down to the platform, found two bicycle cars, and got to work with storing our bikes for the ride. Amtrak requires you to remove the front wheel and hang the bike in their designated bike storage area. It took me a second to figure out what the heck I had to do to store the bike, but eventually I figured it all out. I threw on a lock for safety, since I planned to sit in the next car with Polly and her bike, and then we enjoyed the trip down, standing and stretching by the bike area most of the time.
Before we knew it, we were nearing DC and I went back to the car where my bike was to start getting it ready. There were some issues disembarking from the train (not every door opened, and the train was much higher than the track it pulled into, so stairs were required to exit the car), but once we were off, it was just a matter of getting out of Union Station and starting to pedal!
We could not have ASKED for more perfect weather as we pedaled west out of DC. Despite not knowing exactly where we were going, our exit route looked completely intentional, and wound up taking us past a lot of great sites.
Once we were out of the metro area, we took a short break at a local park with hilarious signs on the bulletin board:
We ate some snacks, used the restroom, and I made sure to stretch because I wanted to try my hardest to avoid any back issues on this trip.
We eventually connected with the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, which was nicely paved and maintained, and was being accessed by so many different kinds of users.
There was a conveniently-located Whole Foods just off the trail, so we decided to stop there for some lunch.
After lunch, we got back onto the W & OD trail before making a pit stop at Green Lizard Cycling in Herndon, VA. Polly was noticing some issues on her bike so we made a visit here to have it checked out, but also to enjoy something delicious from their coffee shop, and use their bathroom (which offered a convenient guide for trying on bibs).
After that, it was just a few more miles to our first hotel in Leesburg, VA. We got delicious pupusas for dinner, watched some TV, and passed out early (which is what I do whether or not I’m riding a bicycle all day).
