Baltimore MD to Washington DC. The scenery was nice, but the ride today was probably worse than yesterdays. For starters, our destination in Washington DC decided to pull out, and so we were once again scrambling for places to stay, and we ended up splitting the group into three different stayovers, so Matt C, Justin, Zernyu, Conor, Tim, David and I rode together into DC. The first part of the trip was fine and I passed the 40-mile top speed mark, getting up to 44.8 mph, but when we got to the second half, things started to go really wrong. We were supposed to take a path from Maryland all the way into DC, straight past the Lincoln Memorial, but just one turn into the path, we found out that the roads were not in good condition, and were extremely slippery, so Tim wiped out hard, Matt went into him, I went down and slid into Tim and a tree, and Conor went down behind us. Luckily, everyone and their bikes were ok, I only had a few scrapes, and Tim got the worst of it, getting some scrapes and eventually pulling rocks out of his arm hours later once we got to our stayover. So, we continued down the trail(slowly), and Zernynu and Tim went down again a few miles later, but no one was hurt too badly again. Eventually, the trail turned into a dirt path, we finally figured out how to get t o the end of it, but got lost on the roads in Rock Creek Park north of DC, and got stuck in pouring rain, but with the huge help of a few really nice cyclists that took pity on us(Thanks John!!), finally made it into Matt's friend Ben's place (actually right outside DC in Arlington, VA)at around 7 PM. Ben was an awesome host, making us all the brats and burgers we could handle, and we went to bed exhausted around 9 PM. Ben also has a hilarious bulldog named Frank, who entertained us all evening by humping Conor and trying to eat everything in sight, including Conor's sandals, Matt's sleeping pad, and any human ears he could find.
The next day was a rest day, we had a hospital visit at 11 at Walter Reed Medical Center and then the rest of the day was ours to do what we wanted. The tour was very cool, the facility was HUGE and everyone was very nice and informative about answering all of our questions about the Breast Cancer Clinic at Walter Reed. After the tour, the Mulvaney's talked to us and gave us our first group portraits project, which was really cool and awesome to hear how Mrs. Mulvaney has battled cancer successfully for so many years. After the talk, we had lunch at the hospital and then headed to the National Mall for the rest of the day. Matt C, Conor, David and I met up with another of Matt's friends and we went to see the American History Museum, the Washington Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial and ended with dinner in Chinatown.
States traveled through:7(NY,NJ,PA, DE, MD, DC, VA)
Distance today: 80 mi
Total Distance traveled: 352 mi