The above elevation chart tells the story. Our first day into Connellsville will be a relatively routine ride. In the following two days we will need to climb about 1,500 feet over 70 miles before we plunge 1,800 feet in 22 miles. From Cumberland to Washington D.C., we’ll be relatively flat dropping 600 feet over 180 miles.
Tom's iPhone Apps
I am a techie guy and have been dabbling in social media for several years. It is only natural that I blog about our journey. It became pretty obvious early on that I was going to do this from my iPhone. During the tour I will be posting some tech updates from the trail where I’ll talk about how well my apps and the iPhone are working out for social networking. As I prepare to leave, I thought I would discuss the iPhone and apps that I will use.
Earlier this week Chuck and I set down to map out our GAP and C&O trip. We’ve tossed emails around and chatted about the possibilities of miles per day and overnight stops. It seemed to be a good time to really look at this tour in a little more detail.
We spent over two hours analyzing maps, checking web sites and reading guidebooks. I think we came up with a pretty practical approach to tackling the ride. We decided to set targeted overnight stops and on many nights we set stretch goals. We know where we want to spend more time and looked for opportunities to get ourselves a little farther ahead to accommodate some leisurely time at these destinations.
The two basic things you need to know before you embark on any trip are where the journey starts and where the journey ends. Right now Chuck and I don’t necessarily know that; at least the detail map coordinates for our GAP and C&O ride.
I’ve spent some time researching trail sites, personal blogs and trip journals for information on trailheads and their status. An interesting thing is that this research led me back to an old dependable web resource, Yahoo Groups. I don’t use them much any more, but they are still going strong in these days of increasing social networking.
