Tidewater Marina, Baltimore MD

(Sunday July 10 – Dist: 76.1 mi; Avg Speed: 10.3 mph; TTT: 7:20 hrs)

Another pleasant day of traveling on Chesapeake Bay. We have been blessed with calm seas and warm, sunny days. This was our view off our starboard side for the duration of our stay at Tidewater. These are US Naval Ships that are civilian operated but chartered by the US Navy. The ship, Cape Wrath returned from Iraq less than one week ago. These ships are called Ro-Ro boats, Roll-on and Roll-off ships. They are huge, especially when you are sitting right beside then.

On Monday we decided to take our bikes down to the Inner Harbor. BIG MISTAKE. The ride was no problem and the Inner Harbor area is really quite well done. We rode to the Visitors Center and decided to walk through some of the shops and to get some lunch. While Linda was ‘enjoying’ herself at Dirty Dick’s Last Resort, one of our bicycles was stolen. Go figure. A policeman had stopped us from riding on the inner harbor walkways and so, after asking him if it was OK to lock the bikes up in the nearby bicycle rack, we did so then wandered off around the harbor. We were back in less than 2 hours and one of the bikes was gone. We had locked them together around the bicycle rack which was adjacent to a restaurant patio. The cable was cut and the bike gone. The police and harbor guides were sympathetic but of little help. We had to demand that the police (the same guy who said it would be OK) fill out a police report. They did not even want to do that. We had a more favourable response from the cabby's at a taxi stand. At least, they promised to keep their eyes open and to contact the police if they saw the bike. Dam.

That incident really soured our view of Baltimore although most people that we talked to after the fact were not surprised. On the positive side, the maintenance on the engines was completed without any surprises. On this trip we have put on approximately 600 hours on the engines and have travelled about 5,500 miles so far.

If bad luck comes in threes, we should be OK now for a while.  GPS, Radar and bike.

Here are a few photos that were taken before the blackness set in.