Cumberland-Meyersdale-Cumberland

9.23&24 64m

Met MA in Cumberland MD, a bit late in the day - we got started around 4.20pm heading uphill. We arrived in Meyersdale four hours later (time), after pedaling for 3+01 (bike time)

MA showed me some parts of his kit. He was rocking a Vargo Titanium Decagon stove, which is an elegant piece of gear.



It was a great ride. I did get bit by a wasp a few times before I killed it. We paused at MP9, and paused at MP16 but didn't climb the switchbacks into Frostburg. We finished the last forty-fivish minutes in the dark, which was kind of fun.

M-A had purchased a new headlight at Performance on the drive to Cumberland and had charged up the battery in his car. Puts the headlight on the bike and: no lights! You'd think this was a bug, but the manufacturer thinks it's a feature - the light has a locked-off function to prevent unintentional discharge in your bike bags. Problem is, it comes out of the box locked off and there's no explicit info on the setting. So you can google it and find out what others have learned, but that seems like a fail.

Pulled into Meyersdale late at night. Rode down the hill into Morguen Toole. Ate dinner before cleaning up to avoid keeping the staff over-late. Excellent meal.



We both stayed in the hostel room, we won the occupancy lottery and had it to ourselves. It's a funny, rambling old building that we pretty much had to ourselves.

The next morning we had breakfast at the world-famous GI Dayroom. We futzed with our stuff and started riding up. the. damn. hill to the trail. There was a dozen people waving and cheering and shouting, which we thought was very nice of the local citizens to undertake on our behalf, but it turns out there was a marathon (and half-marathon) on the trail.

We split at the trailhead; MA rode west to Pittsburgh, and I rode east to return to Cumberland. Headwind on my segment. Tremendous visibility at the Savage Vista. I enjoyed a thermos of coffee from GIDayRoom. The descent was glorious, and I eschewed the Frostburh stop to keep moving into town.