Struggling to turn over the pedals as I climb up a hill on my bike with a 33-pound bag on my back – yes, I weighed it – I narrowly make my way through a traffic light before it turns red. It’s February, and I’ve just arrived in Washington, DC where I’m visiting friends for a week. This may be my first time visiting Washington, DC in the winter, but bringing my bike with me is a regular practice which I like to call base biking. In 2023, I was between jobs and wanted to take advantage of this newfound freedom with travel. While my options were limitless, my wallet was not. As I considered where I should travel to, I looked at Amtrak’s service map. With a direct train from Kingston Station to Union Station in Washington, DC and friends and family who lived there, it seemed like a no-brainer. In addition, DC offers a wide variety of biking options: from roads to cycling paths, to a 333-mile gravel trail that can take you all the way to Pittsburgh. If I brought my bike, it seemed like I could get a little bit of everything.
In the midst of planning this trip, my friend Sarah asked if I would come visit her in Pennsylvania. As excited as I was, this addition proved more challenging. The closest train station was 40 miles from her house and involved a stopover at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. While I briefly considered making the 333mile journey along the gravel trail, it seemed impractical to go on a bikepacking trip- due to the additional investment in gear, planning where I would sleep each night, and several days travel in potentially inclement weather. Back to the Amtrak website I went, and my journey with base biking, choosing one location as a base for sleep, storage, and a start/end point for adventures, began.
The plans were quickly falling into place, but so was procrastination. I waited several weeks before purchasing the tickets. Much to my dismay, the prices increased rapidly the closer the time came to my departure date. In addition, I learned that trains in the US require you to reserve a space for your bike and charge $20 per leg of the trip. This meant that it would be $20 from Kingston to DC, $40 from D.C. to Lancaster, and a final $40 from Lancaster to Kingston; totaling $100 for the bike alone. Teetering on unaffordability, I booked the tickets for me and my bike before Amtrak could raise their ticket prices any further.
On May 3, 2023 I boarded the train bound for DC Arriving in the center of the city, I rode to the northwest corner where my brother was living and dropped my pack on his floor with the sweet thud of release. Throughout that week in Washington, I rode to Mount Vernon via bike path, embarked on several bike commutes to visit friends in Virginia and Maryland, and explored the long gravel path along the Potomac River, thankfully getting rescued by a Chipotle along the way after I ran out of food. The following week, I boarded the train for Lancaster via Philadelphia. My riding in Pennsylvania was limited to a ride along the rail trail with Sarah and a 20-mile loop around the Pigeon Hills. Instead, I decided to prioritize hiking and kayaking.
Flash forward to 2025 and my most recent trip to DC. I had learned from my previous trips. I signed up to receive promotional emails from Amtrak, and was alerted to a $35 ticket deal they had over the winter. I committed to limiting my pack to the smallest duffle I have, keeping to the basics. Knowing the weather on the East Coast in late winter through spring is an unpredictable mess, I was unsure if I would be able to bike as much as I intended. However, because I was base biking, I knew that on the sunny days I could take advantage of all DC had to offer and on the icy days, I could look forward to a bed to sleep in, a warm shower, and the flexibility to enjoy DC in different ways. And that is precisely what I did. On conducive days, I dodged through traffic visiting friends by bike, passing icons like the Washington Monument and climbing through Rock Creek Park on quiet, closed roads. When a snowstorm covered roads and paths, I took the opportunity to explore the city by foot and underground tunnel. But this is the beauty of base biking: The plans can be flexible. With no prescribed destination, you can take advantage of opportunities as they are presented and explore unencumbered by the threats of unpredictable weather. •
