WASHINGTON D.C. — Eric Barnett recently rode his bicycle 554 miles from Galion to Washington D.C.
Why would anyone want to do that?
“It’s just nice way to get out and escape,” Barnett said. “You get out and see a lot of unique sites and you can actually cover a lot of ground. When you’re looking at a map and see point A to point B, and realize you did that in your power, that’s really cool.”
The journey took him eight days to complete. He started at Galion’s Cycling Sports Center and in three days he reached Pittsburgh, where he met his friend, Larry Strong, another Galion resident.
“That stretch, in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, was really hilly,” Barnett said.
In any other circumstance, the hills wouldn’t faze the cyclists — but his bike rig weighed in at 88 pounds.
By comparison, his carbon fiber racing bike weighs only 18 pounds.
“I built a bike for this trip, Troy Chipka (owner of Cycling Sports Center) helped me,” Barnett said. “The frame is heavy steel, you need something stronger for rides like this. And then I had all my camping gear and bags.”
From Pittsburgh, Strong and Barnett connected to the Great Allegheny Passage, a 150-mile path to Cumberland, Maryland. Once in Maryland, they took the C&O Canal Trail to Washington D.C., a 184-mile stretch.
They ate meals in towns along the way, and camped each night. Breakfasts and lunches were snack foods they kept while on the saddle, and water bottles were in plentiful.
“That’s one thing you want to make sure you don’t run out of,” Barnett said of water. “And you also want to make sure you know how to change a tire, routine bike maintenance.”
Barnett said he got hooked on bike touring when he started cycling four years ago. Last year, he rode his bike to Indiana Dune State Park in five days, a nearly 300-mile ride.
“When you’re driving somewhere in a car, you blast right past some stuff — or when you’re flying in a plane. But when you’re riding on a bike, you might be on top of a mountain and see a view that can only be seen when you’re on a bike,” he noted.
When Barnett and Strong rolled in to Washington D.C., they visited all of the major sites: the Washington Monument, the White House and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
“The D.C. area is good for bikes. They have bike lanes, bike rentals, trails. It’s really nice. We rode our bikes up to everything,” he said.
Barnett did not bike back to Galion. Instead, his wife drove to Washington D.C. to pick him and the bike up and take a vacation to South Carolina to visit family.
On Sunday, Aug. 21, Barnett will lead a cycle touring workshop at Cycling Sports Center in Galion at 6 p.m.
“I want to teach people how to do this,” Barnett said. “I’ll talk about my gear, the bike and what to expect along the way.”
