Tour de Rust Belt Begins Sunday

My long-threatened bicycle trip to the east coast is beginning Sunday. I'm riding my Surly Cross-check from Ann Arbor, MI to Washington, DC; then north to Hartford, CT.
I'll be going solo, partly camping and partly crashing with friends in big cities. Here's the route:


The first part is definitely a tour of the rust belt: Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh. The tiny urban planner that lives inside me is pretty stoked to spend some time traversing these places. The cyclist in me has a little more trepidation.

I'm leaving for Detroit on Sunday the 7th and plan to arrive in Connecticut around October 3. Some photos of my iron steed will follow soon, for those of you that geek out on such things. You know who you are.

Some more details on the first part of my route:

The Ann Arbor-Detroit-Toledo leg is all road. I'm using the Adventure Cycling Association's Northern Tier Route from Fremont, OH to Cleveland. From Cleveland to Canton, OH I'm taking the Ohio and Erie Canalway, part of which goes through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. From south of Akron I'm cutting across hilly country to Pittsburgh, PA, then picking up the Cumberland and Pittsburgh Trail, a 160-mile bike path that follows the Youghiogeny River down to Cumberland, MD. At Cumberland I'll pick up the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath, which follows the Potomac all the way to Georgetown.