Oct 17-21

I stayed Friday and Saturday night at Mom and Dad’s. On Sunday Dad dropped me off on the C&O Canal at Williamsport. I had just unloaded from his truck and put my panniers on my bike when I realized I had forgotten my food. So we loaded back up and Dad drove me to the Dollar General. I got a dozen eggs cheese 2 cans of Chilli tortillas and some jalapeño brats. That should be enough to last until Tuesday when I meet up with Dan and Emily. (My brother and sister in law). Also I know there is a few places to resupply along the canal if I had to. Forgetting my food was a bit of a disappointment though. In Mom and Dad’s freezer I had steaks that I had seasoned and vacuumed sealed just for my camping trips. When Sunnyway had New York strips on sale I would buy the whole thing and have the guys in the meat room cut it 1 inch thick. At home I would season them and seal them individually before freezing them. I told Dad he could eat them. I never labeled any of them and some of the seasoning I used had a lot of heat. I hope for Dads sake none of them were seasoned with ghost pepper steak rub. If they were sorry, Dad. Milk helps but again sorry I drank it all when I was eating the cookies Aunt Lou made me.

My Aunt had made me snickerdoodle cookies again! They are truly some of the best cookies I have ever had. They were supposed to be for my ride to Swains Lock, which is about 85 miles from Williamsport. But once I started eating them I could not stop and ended up eating most the bag full. I did manage to save 3 for my desert my first night out.

A bit of a cold front moved through on Saturday. It has been perfect biking weather since then, I prefer the cooler temperatures. Its pretty windy but it’s a cross wind.

It’s nice being back on the canal. I wasn’t meeting Dan and Emily until Tuesday afternoon so it was a leisurely ride. I took a lot of pictures of my favorite places. Like Monacacy aqueduct.

The C&O canal has many aqueducts. I think Monacacy is one of the biggest though. An aqueduct is a man made channel that carries water over a valley or some form of gap.

I’m not sure how many there is exactly. 2 years ago the Park Service rebuilt the one in Williamsport and it is actually full of water. I imagine they are a lot to maintain due to all the flooding and the amount of debris that seems to pile up around them.

I got to the lock house shortly after Dan Emily and a friend of ours, Steph arrived.

I guess we weren’t the only ones who thought it was a cool place to stay the night. The heron seemed rather annoyed that it had to share.

I had a great time and it was great seeing everybody!

I left the lock house around 8 am. I am headed back to Mom and Dad’s to spend a few days. I want to visit with them as well as my friends at Pizza Hut. Also I need to do some bike repair. I won’t get technical. But on my rear hub the flange broke around two spoke on the drive side. On my ride down from Cumberland I noticed my rim was a bit bent so I stopped to straighten it. That’s when I noticed my hub had broke. I was able to get it fairly straight and ride the rest of the way home. I put on an old set of wheels when I left for Swains Lock.

I bought the hub in 2019 in preparation for this trip. It sat on my parts shelf until April of this year when I finally got around to building the wheel. It only had 3683 miles on it when it broke. I emailed the company a few pictures and explained what happened. I didn’t have much hope the company would do anything, it had been a couple years since I had purchased it and I had no proof of purchase any way. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email back that said we need your address we will mail you one asap! And they did. It arrived 2 days later. Velo Orange out of Baltimore MD is an awesome company! So rebuilding my rear wheel is on my list of things to do.

Here are some more pictures from the canal. The campsites have an old pump for water