Traverse City Adventure: Motorcycle Mike takes us around Paw Paw Mountain

DAY 7 • 18 AUGUST 2017 • TRAVERSE CITY ADVENTURE

HANCOCK, MARYLAND - We awoke in the bunkhouse, washed sleep from our eyes, loaded up the bikes and pedaled back to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath trail.  Actually, at this point we had jumped onto the Western Maryland Rail Trail which is paved, 22 miles long and parallels the C&O.  Not as interesting as the towpath trail but not as much mud either.

It was a dry day, hot and clear, so the shade over the trail was welcome.  We made Bill’s Place at Little Orleans before 11 - 17.5 miles - and waited for Miss Betty to make some special arrangements.  (Bill’s Place - a honky tonk bar, store, gathering place and popular stop along the C&O - is all there is to Little Orleans.) You see, a few miles further ahead, the Paw Paw Mountain tunnel is closed due to rock slides.  We didn’t feel much like pushing our bikes up and down the hiking trail over Paw Paw Mountain so Miss Betty helped us track down Michael to shuttle us around the tunnel and take us to Cumberland at the end of the C&O.

Michael arrived a half hour later in a 20-year-old Ford F250 pick-up, plenty heavy duty and plenty big enough to load our bikes and bags in the back.  

What a nice guy.  Long-red hair under a New York Yankees hat, big jolly belly and lots of gab, Michael kept us entertained all the way to Cumberland, about a half-hour ride.  We talked motorcycles and squirrel hunting in the mountains.  He told us about the day a bear chased him - one of nine bears - and explained that wasp spray is the same as bear spray only a lot less expensive.  

Earlier in the day some folks told us about rattlesnakes in the area and Becky said she wasn’t so keen on setting up camp anywhere in that area.  Lions and tigers and bears, Oh My!

And Michael told us about his junior high school sweetheart who was still his loving wife 37 years later.  As we cruised along the interstate at about 80, Michael waving to people in about every third car, he told us about his motorcycle escapades with his friends including the day he noticed his friend’s artificial leg had come unstrapped, unbeknownst to its owner.  “I let my buddies know and in just a minute I pulled alongside him, grabbed his leg and for the next several miles we played a game of keep away, handing the leg back and forth.”

He laughed heartily.

How much dies his wife love him?  One day a freight truck pulled up beside his mountain lane.  “I thought the guy stopped to ask me directions.  Then he asked me if I was Michael.  I said Yes.  Then he asked if the address he had was mine.  I said yes.  And then he said I have something here to deliver to you.

“Then my wife came outside with this smirk on her lips.  I opened the crate and there inside was a brand new Victory motorcycle that I had been looking at.”

What a woman!

He said the speedometer went up to 200.  “One day I was out on the freeway here and little traffic so I decided to open her up.  I still had two gears to go and she was rolling smooth.  The only thing I noticed was that the curves were coming at me faster than I remembered in the past.  When I glanced down at the speedometer it said I ws doing 158 and it still had plenty in it.  I know it would do every bit of 200. It has a windshield otherwise I know it would have blown me off. That’s the last time I tested it like that.”

We rolled into Cumberland just about the time Michael was finishing the bear-chasing story.  He dropped us off right beside the trail and it felt like no time at all had passed.  A good story teller can make time pass like that and Michael was one of them.

He gave us his phone number and told us to call any time we were in the area and stop by.  We would love to meet his wife.  He said his friends joke with him and say she won’t let him off the porch.  “But that’s not true.  She just won’t let me off the property.”

Tucked in the mountains, hilly, and studded with more tall church spires than just about any other little city I’ve ever been in, Cumberland looked well-kept with a vibrant downtown.

That’s where we finished the C&O trail and started the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage trail to Pittsburgh. So far we’ve pedaled 240.5 miles since we left School Lane in Lewes on Aug. 12.

More to come in the next blog.  Thanks again for reading.