plans; falling through and coming together

Light at the end of Pinkerton Tunnel
aka The Kissing Tunnel

   Somewhere along the Pacific Coast route, we began talking about what our next tour would be.  Would it be this long?  Would we fly again?  Would we be able to make it happen again?  The idea was to relocate and find work that we could settle into a little bit, sometimes that can make extended trips difficult.  Sometimes, it's not a problem at all.  After the PCH we did some festival catering work for the summer and fall, traveling around the mid-atlantic and up into Michigan.  All the while planning on returning to NC and settling in Asheville, where we were to have abundant opportunities to work and play.  I guess we were a few years behind the wave, housing was a mess, nothing available or affordable, so we looked around some more.  We ended up choosing Durham, and I'm glad we did.  So just before we moved everything out of "storage" and into the new place we tried for another small trip.  The Great Allegheny Passage and C & O Canal Towpath make up around 340 miles of traffic-less riding along several different rivers.  We would go to Baltimore for a few days, then head to Pittsburgh and ride down to DC.  Seemed simple, but a week before our departure Carrie had a crash.  We were riding around Durham one day trying to get a lay of the land, a feel for the place, learn some streets.  Washington is one to remember.  Carrie was riding along, i think she must have been looking off to the side when she hit a divot in the road, then another, next thing I saw was Carrie and her bike flipping over and landing in the middle of the street.  I rushed over, threw her bike to the curb, and helped her back to the sidewalk.  A hole in her shirt revealed a nasty bit of road rash, probably her first point of contact with the ground.   A couple small scrapes here and there, no head injuries.  I kept asking her questions about the crash and where we were.  She didn't know what made here crash, which makes sense as it threw here from the bike.  She did have a handle on where we were though, walking us directly back to the truck.  See, helmets are a good thing!  She had a week to heal before we were supposed to head back out for another tour, we were hopeful.  We held out for as long as going up to Baltimore for the start.  At least we could hang around the city and drink beer for a couple days.  Everything went down as it should have while in Baltimore, but Carrie still wasn't healed enough for a week on a trail.  So we stayed a couple extra days in Baltimore and then came back to NC, postponing the trip for a later date...
   Fast forward one year, Carrie's brother is getting married in western MD and Loaf will be closing for a week following the same weekend as the wedding.  I had just taken a job at Lucky's Deli when all of this unfolded.  I remember being nervous asking my new boss for 11 days off, I had no reason, he said it wouldn't be a problem, without an ounce of guilt put on me.  It was real now, we had the time off, we could now put together a plan.  
   We would drive 6 hours from Durham, NC to Deep Creek, MD for the wedding.  From there it was a 2 hour drive up to Pittsburgh to start the Great Allegheny Passage.