Day 4

 Cairo, WV    to    Fairmont, WV     74 miles

Wake up to sprinkling rain around 7am ... good thing the rainfly is still half on... i cover up the tent and lie back down for a while.  It lets up, but still spits a bit, and I pack up and am on the move again around 8.  Then the falling sky begins to speed up.  I pass through a relatively short (~300 ft.) tunnel, and decide to hide under a shelter just past it.  Good thing.  The rain is soon torrential, and doesn't make its way back down to a drizzle for over three hours.

The shelter is sufficient...

...and has a beautiful view

but I nonetheless slowly become irrationally depressed.  This swings toward the better when I get a call confiming that I have a place to stay in Lancaster, PA once I make it that far.  The end of rain also brings mood enhancement. This close to home still, my mind is working in different ways, I feel bipolar.

I decide to make some more quinoa, the first time actually cooking with my little stove.  It works out well.
Until.....

I get out the spices.....






CAYENNE POWDER EVERYWHERE
This results is sporadic spicing of myself and burning sensations occasionally for the next solid week.  At one point both my inner wrists started burning, I was confused and worried that some terrible illness was about to befall me, until I remembered of the pepper.


Don't get to get going until 11:30 ... again.
Next stop is a gas station/mcdonalds where I poop and drink chocolate milk.
A few miles after I've left, I realize that my hat (new favorite) is now gone.  I had set it on my pannier before going in, and its bright color would have been really hard to miss upon returning to my bike.  Wind was all but naught.  I really don't know whether I forgot it or it was stolen.  In any case, I'm in the mood to refuse to turn back.

Long.  Arduous.  Gravel path turns to mud and grass around mile 46.

 This may look like lush tame grass.... but remember that torrential rain earlier.... its much muddier and softer than it looks.  Put 250 lbs on 1.5 inch wide tires and try to maintain a decent speed.  Impossible to keep up.

Slogging through mud.

 more tunnels!

Path lasts another 48 miles (beyond Cairo), I'm expecting some sort of visitor's center or at least info kiosk at the end of the trail... there is nothing.  The path literally just disinigrates into a muddy construction site with no signage in sight.
by this time, I'm immensely tired, its around 7pm, and most of my things are wet.  A motel sounds mighty appealing.  I call an internet saavy stepfather to search around for the cheapest in the area...  this turns out to be 22 miles away, though in the correct direction.  This turns out to be rather hilly roads (big surprise), and I don't arrive until after dark (bad news).  I'm more thouroughly exhausted than I've ever been. 
I nearly render the paperwork for checking in unusable due to the amount of sweat I transfer to it.

Biggest luxuries: open, dry floorspace to dry things off.  Hairdryer.