> Touring >> Canal Trip

The C&O Canal Trip in October of 1998

When a kid in the neighborhood spotted me cruising the Palasadian streets of Washington DC, he went to his Mom for wisdom- "I didn't think grown-ups could skateboard." Why not, I wondered. To straighten out this kid, I announced my plans to skate 185 miles down the towpath of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. The declaration seemed only to confirm his suspicion of me- barreling down a dirt towpath on a skateboard suggested squeaky wheels on a road of reason.

My idea for the trip first kindled when I came across off-road skateboard wheels on the Internet. The Xtreme Wheelz homepage showed two dudes defiantly looking down a mountain with Tonka truck-like wheels mounted to big boards. The product info seemed more convincing than the photo, and so I called Xtreme Wheelz in California for details. Soon after our conversation, I began building a board in anticipation for the arrival of my all-terrain XT Wheelz. In designing my touring board, I had some specific requirements: sturdy, "dance space" width, original design, and heavy weather-proofing. I finished cutting, sanding, and gluing the four-foot oak deck, and when the wheels arrived, I slapped them on a pair of Randal Trucks, named the creation Dusky Manito (named after an Algonquian god), and immediately headed for the train station.

Hoping to use a little help from gravity, I boarded a train at Union Station, and 3 hours later arrived in Cumberland, MD, where the C&O ends, or in my case, begins. The towpath winds down through the Allegheny Highlands, Great Valley, Blue Ridge, Mid-Atlantic Piedmont region, and into the tidal Potomac River at Georgetown, 184.5 miles away. On the train, I pondered the conditions of the towpath, and what it would feel like to ride Dusky Manito . I had not yet tested the board, and so left a considerable element of the unknown to spice my adventure. When I stepped out on Dusky Manito at the Cumberland train station with pack on my back, I realized I needed some help with my elevated position, so bought a flagpole at the local hardware store; it doubled as my staff, and not only helped motion and balance, but beat off dogs, braked, and 'walked" my skateboard'.

The next morning, I glided down Cumberland's streets gathering speed under the weight of my backpack. A group of construction workers at the head of the towpath watched as I hit a big snag at the outset of my journey. When I jumped on the board, my wheels sank in the towpath's gravel, and my inaugural push-off got me nowhere. I picked up my board and began to walk down the path, muttering and wondering aloud, and not looking back. I had not expected a trail like a Japanese garden path, and dreaded the possibility of a very long hike. Eventually however, the loose rocks gave way to a passable towpath, and I spent the rest of the day going through mood-swings with the changing conditions of the towpath. I swore through stretches of jarring rocks, and whistled over hardpack clay. At the end of Day 1, exhausted and frustrated with only 22.5 miles, I reached a campsite at sunset and pulled out my map to recalculate my ETA in Georgetown. At this pace, I would opt for cutting the trip short. I pitched my tent, crawled into my bag, and lay there for 14 hours. I sat awake at times throughout the night, perfectly content with just reclining in the darkness.

Despite a rain during the night, I felt exceptionally optimistic and rejuvenated the next morning. The upper third of the canal cuts through a series of mountain ridges and remains remote from civilization, with the exception of shotgun blasts and railroad freight cars. It was not until midday that I started to encounter people around the Paw Paw Canal, an engineering pain-in-the-ass of its time. For almost a mile, the unlighted canal and towpath goes through a mountain. With one hand holding the handrail, and the other flagpoling me forward, I ignored the National Park Service's recommendation that you enter the tunnel with flashlight. Instead, I chose to skateboard by Braille. At some point during the dark undulating path, Karma gave way, and I suffered the second wipeout of the trip. When Dusky hit soft dirt and stopped, I kept going. The forty pound backpack only helped pulverize me into the ground, and made wipeouts in general especially unpleasant. The impact caused stars to shine brightly, and some I guess were lucky as my skateboard kicked out from under me in a straight line. A veer to the right into the black water of the canal, and Dusky Manito would have been an artifact in C&O Canal history.

Later in the day, I met a peculiar man on a lonely stretch of towpath who immediately jumped off his bike and flipped over my board, inspected the trucks and asked me if I knew the difference between the suspensions of Fords and Chevys. We then, or I should say he, skipped over to a topic of 'societal forces that led men into war.' The Civil War had been on both of our minds because of the various battles in the area, and the enduring presence of Confederate flags waving from trucks and houses. He passed me again at the end of the day when I was setting up camp and wanted to engage in a social science review of the destitute town of Paw Paw, West Virginia. Too tired to even cook or make a fire, I did not contribute much to the conversation. When he left, I collapsed in my tent, and spent another long night paralyzed in my sleeping bag.

Day 3, and by mid-morning, I reached Bill's, a small country store/diner/bar/billiards hall. I sat on the verandah drinking beer and watching the camaflouged hunters come and go in big trucks. I apologized to a hunter beside me for drinking beer at 10:30 in the morning. He laughed and said, "It don't matter. Up here you do as you like, that's what I do." I reluctantly left the well-armed outpost, and skated down the towpath to the town of Hancock. At this point, I finished the upper third of the trip, and began to feel more comfortable with the road ahead. My body had tuned to the physical exertion, and with momentum building, I felt a groove developing.

The next day, I covered the first 12 miles in 1.5 hours. Leading out of Hancock, a 12 mile section of old railroad track adjacent to the towpath underwent a Rails-to-Trails conversion. On the newly paved blacktop, I stretched out the speed and distance of my glides, and tried to cut out additional drag by changing my heavy treaded wheels for regular street ones. This latest bid for speed backfired however, as I forgot about my vulnerability to any debris on the path. Within minutes, something on the path tripped me up, and I tumbled hard onto the pavement. I changed back to the all-terrain wheels without any noticeable effect, and powered on through the day, putting 29 miles under my belt. I set up camp, lit some wood, and fixed a gourmet camp dinner of Turkey Tetrazzini. Around eight o'clock, two bikers rolled up to the campfire out of the dark, and three more arrived soon after. Of the five bikers, only two had lights while the others claimed to follow a white glow coming from the towpath. Paul, who appeared to be around sixty, made a bar on the picnic table and didn't stop serving till midnight, while another merry prankster got out a trail guitar and entertained us around the campfire. This skateboarder seemed to be a natural fit with the group.

On day 5, I woke to more sunny weather again and the promise of more progress. A towpath detour rerouted me through a series of hilly country roads. Like the day before, I got asphalt, but now with the thrills of downhill riding. Braking became an ever important skill, as was keeping tabs on my elevation - one mile uphill, followed by one-half mile downhill could be perilous. The two contending arguments that I weighed throughout the detour were: A) I hiked up this hill, and I'm gonna ride the fucker down, vs. B) Walk downhill and live painlessly. The combined weight of me, my board and pack totaled about 225 pounds, and trying to stop by skidding and stomping my left sole on the road was neither a stabilizing feat nor very effective on steep grades. During one stretch of road that sloped down onto the James Rumsey Bridge, I reached a speed where braking would have been more disastrous than waiting for the road to level. With a honking car behind me, the transition onto the bridge was luckily smooth, and I eventually slowed to a stop halfway across the Potomac River.

With the final third of the trip in front of me, my left calf and right thigh had started to take on Popeye-like dimensions. People on the path became more numerous and commonly commented with one-liners, such as "That's one way to do it." or, "Haven't seen that before." I heard two stupid and identical salutations, "That's cheating, isn't it?" I wish I had the time to stop, and give them a chance to 'cheat' on the back of Dusky Manito, but I didn't, and besides, this was my sport and I made the rules.

Traveling out of the mountains and into the Piedmont region, the towpath's conditions worsened. It makes sense that this downstream area, prone to flooding, would be hastily patched with loose stone- but whatever the case, it is not a surface for happy skating. Fortunate for me, poor planning led me to skip testing Dusky Manito on the stretch of towpath only five minutes from my house, where I would have probably bagged the whole trip idea after a few minutes. I'm not sure if there is a lesson there, but ignorance seemed to work in my favor.

On day 8, I arrived in Georgetown ahead of schedule, and careened down the brick-paved towpath between people dressed in business suits. The locks still looked the same, but the people in these parts were distinctly different from the previous 180 miles.
A backpacking skateboarder did not put the slightest kink into their purposeful strides. With my wife waiting for me at Lock 1, we popped a bottle of champagne in celebration. After two victory sips, a Park Police pulled up on a motorcycle, took the bottle, and emptied the contents. Despite telling him of my feat, he said he could have arrested us, which I guess was intended to make us feel thankful. It was a long way from Georgetown to Bill's Store where "one can do as one likes", and traveling it by skateboard made it feel like a continent away.

Doug Dupin, Migration Boards