This year’s East Coast Greenway ride is over early, thanks to Hurricane Matthew.

We ended at the day’s lunch spot, a Revolutionary War battleground, about 20 miles shy of Wilmington, NC, our original plan. I’m now home after about 200 miles on the bike in what I am calling 3 1/2 days. All to be continued next October.

Thursday was a gray day, and it felt like we were just a smidgen away from mist. The wind was in our favor until almost the end. But rivers are swollen from a recent storm, so there’s no place for all this hurricane rain to go. Wilmington is still coping from that, which is what kept out from a full fourth day. At the battlefield, they’re expecting to be waist-deep in water, which seems to be what happened after Hurricane Floyd in  1999. I’m feeling for everyone along the coast.

As for the route, this was another trail-free day. Flat, too. The roads were generally quiet and motorists respectful of cyclists, but North Carolina doesn’t seem to build wide shoulders. Perhaps it’s to save money. Perhaps we northeners like our shoulders as a place to dump snow in the winter, and they don’t have that concern. The lack of shoulders was felt more getting in and out of towns, as you’d expect. So while you might feel comfortable bringing a teenager on our route, you’d want to feel confident about an elementary school student’s ability to keep a fairly straight line, especially when there is traffic. I don’t know how runners feel about this. But given how rural this area  is, it’s hard for me to see how any off-road route for the East Coast Greenway will be built.