UFO Sighted Hagerstown, Maryland Day 2 - Tuesday - June 4, 2002  Back   |   Next

I parked to have a a morning snack. The canal is on the left and the Potomac is just beyond the tree line on the right. A bad spoke on my rear wheel makes me decide to ride north to Hagerstown, Maryland, where they have the only bike shop in the area. I coast down hills at 25 mph, with farms, red barns, grain silos, green fields and greener forests flowing by, and all I can hear is the wind rushing past my ears. The wind cools my over heated body and dries my sweat-streaked face. Until I come to another hill where my legs pump fast then slow. There is no beating these hills. Sometimes when I am off guard dark thoughts creep into my mind. Another hill. Damn. This sucks. But I usually catch myself before the bitterness festers like a poisonous bug bite. I know that I'll love life when I reach the summit and coast down again and I can enjoy the countryside flow past me. Edward's Ferry has been in operation since 1791 In Hagerstown, Matt, the bike mechanic from Hub City didn't have the right equipment to fix my wheel so they jury-rigged it so I could make it to Gettysburg. We talk for a little bit and joke that it'll be cool if we see each other again later in the summer, since he is headed west too. A sign announces apples and melons for sale at a produce stand along the road. I stop and an old farmer with weather beaten face and blue overalls comes out from the shade of the stand. He looks at me like I'm a UFO and sells me two fresh red apples with an equal economy of language: "Twenty-five cents each."    I bivouac in Mount Pleasant, Maryland, which is five miles down the road from Burkittsville, home of the Blair Witch.