Recently we received a message from Doug, our new friend from Century Cycles in Peninsula, Ohio. The guys at Century Cycles really helped us out while we were in a bind fixing our bikes so that we could make the final leg of our trip. We couldn’t thank them enough. To top it all off Doug let us stay at his house for the evening when we couldn’t make it to a campground that night! A huge thanks to Doug and all the guys at Century Cycles!
So yesterday we were just riding along, having a fairly pleasant day and we decided to stop briefly and get Alan’s rear tire trued at Century Cycles in Peninsula, Ohio. It turned out it be a very, very good decision. Alan got his brake cables and pads changed and his wheels trued (pretty routine maintenance). On a whim we decided to have them look at my bike. They replaced my brake cables and it turned out that my free-hub body was loose! That means that at some point I would have been climbing a hill, pedaling hard and all of the sudden my pedaling wouldn’t have done anything because my cassette would have come loose and been spinning too! Not good. Fortunately Century Cycles caught it (we’ve been to two bike shops and asked about the clicking on my bike and told that it’s bound to click after so many miles). Anyway, we got it fixed and by that time it was about 6. One of the guys at the shop, Doug, offered us a place to crash for the night and we gratefully accepted. He turns out to do some photography himself and so we got to geek out a bit with him too!
This morning we woke up rested, but found that our alarm clock had snapped sometime yesterday. It seems to work, but we have no more snooze button. That’s probably not a bad thing. But anyway, we check the weather this morning and they are calling for severe storms with hail this morning and again late afternoon. We’re hitting the road now to get to breakfast (a bagel shop!) before the first storm and we’ll ride until the second one hits- then we’ll hunker down since it’s supposed to last all night. Should be interesting!
Yesterday we stayed with an amazing family in Jeromesville, Ohio. We can’t thank them enough for taking us in out of the rain, feeding us, giving us hot showers and letting us do laundry! They even packed us a goody bag with snacks this morning for the road. Thank you John and Dawn!
This morning we woke up and hit the road around 7:45. We were rained on all day- it was relentless! It was chilly too, so when we finally rolled into Oberlin we were exhausted even though we had only done about 50 miles. We got a hotel room at the Oberlin Inn, checked out the town a bit and headed back to the room to get some work done. Unfortunately, it seems our laptop had other plans.
Here’s the deal- we use a MacBook Pro because it’s simply the best portable computer for photography and audio work. That being said, it isn’t a rugged machine. It has survived almost 10 months of being on the back of my bicycle on awful, bumpy roads in the extreme heat and cold. Today, the screen decided it wasn’t interested in working anymore. So here we are, less than two weeks from being home and without a computer. Fortunately, we’re in Oberlin which has a computer lab affiliated with the library. We’re there now, backing up all our files from the past week (last time we backed them up) to our LaCie external harddrives via another monitor. It’s a huge relief to us that the files are still there, but we’re still upset about not being able to share our photos on the blog! We’re going to try to figure something out to get you photos for the next couple weeks, but no promises… to all our techie friends- suggestions are welcome!
Today we rode through fields all day. Fields of corn. Fields of soybeans. Fields of housing developments (we went through the suburbs of Columbus). 
We stopped for lunch at a park in a town called Jerome. We had our usual, but with some new jelly we recently purchased… it’s squeeze jelly (the only kind the store had) which was a new experience for us. 
Peanut butter and Jelly on wheat bread has to be the world’s most perfect cycling food. Instant energy boost.
Feeling renewed we continued to skirt around Columbia and northwards. It was fairly pleasant riding, small rolling hills and nice scenery.
We finally arrived at our campground around 5pm and walked into summer vacation central. This campground has a new pool, a little lake with paddle boats, a “new EXTREME playground” and a motto: Friends- if you didn’t come with any, you’ll leave with some.
When we arrived the front desk suggested that we might enjoy the hayride that leaves at 8pm from just across the lake from our site. This place is literally 9-year-old heaven. Anyway, we’re soaking in the party atmosphere from our picnic table but we’ve been so tired lately, I don’t think any promises of hayrides or paddle boats or pools could keep us awake past 9 tonight!
This morning we awoke to find a little cooler sitting on the picnic table next to our tent. We opened it up and inside was a little note and some bagels and muffins for breakfast from the Corwin Peddler! How sweet is that? It made our morning (which was good because Alan discovered that his tire had gone flat overnight) and we took off with full bellies and in very good spirits.
Once again it looked like it was going to rain all day, but it never actually hit us! We stopped at a park for lunch just off the trail and rode the very pleasant, very flat 55 miles to the town of London flanked by farms the whole way.
In London we got an interview with a gentleman who manufactures car parts and found a bed and breakfast that also operates a hostel of sorts from their garage. For the same price as camping, we figured we’d spend a night inside and get some much needed showers.
We did some work, ate some dinner and we’re ready to pass out! We want to make some good miles tomorrow so we’ll be up early and on our way!
Tonight we are very happy campers. Why? I’ll start at the beginning. We woke up after a fairly fitful night (we had some very noisy camping neighbors) and headed for town hoping to find some coffee and a decent, cheap breakfast. We we directed to a restaurant that provided both and, satiated and caffeinated, went on our merry way. As we were riding out of town we passed an idling car that smelled… a little like french fries. BioDiesel! We stopped and got an interview with the driver of the car. He turned out to be doing it just to save money and not for the lesser environmental impact. It was a great interview and we pushed on north.
In the afternoon we found ourselves on an 80 mile bike path called the Little Miami Bike Trail. It is paved and beautiful and flat, flat, flat! We met tons of nice people along the ride, but had some trouble finding affordable camping along the route. Enter The Corwin Peddler. It’s a little restaurant/tea room/ice cream shop/bike shop right on the path in Corwin. We stopped under advisement of some folks we met along the trail and asked for suggestions for camping locally. They ended up offering to let us camp behind the restaurant which was super amazingly nice of them. We couldn’t pass up the yummy food on their menu after out 70 mile day, so I got a fresh salad and Alan tried the pear, bacon and brie panini. Yum!
But the best part was that after we ate, they surprised us with a little basket of S’mores fixings! Alan quickly built a fire and we feasted. In fact, the sugar-high we got from those S’mores is pretty much the only thing keeping us awake right now. Anyhow, a huge thank you goes out to the Copple family who have taken such good care of us tonight…
…and made us very happy campers indeed.
Last night we made the executive decision not to set our alarm for the morning. We’ve been exhausted lately and we figured we’d give our poor bodies a chance to rest- thinking we’d probably wake up around 7 or 8 at the latest. Whoops. We woke up at 9:30. But we felt great! We headed downstairs for some breakfast, packed up and took off for Ohio. But first we wanted to check out the historic downtown of Maysville:
It was a really beautiful little town (famous for being the home of Rosemary Clooney) and we stopped in the little bookstore and the coffee shop where a group of local musicians had gathered and were playing bluegrass music. It was a very fitting farewell to Kentucky and after listening a while, we left and headed over the bridge to Ohio!
Whoo-hoo! Ohio is the last state we’ll hit on the trip (we still have to ride through PA and NY, but we’ve hit them already on this trip).
Anyway, we didn’t get too far in Ohio- just about 10 miles to Ripley where we noticed a small museum dedicated to the history of Tobacco. We stopped and ended up getting a private tour by the museum owner and curator who grew up on a tobacco farm. The museum was fascinating and had several really cool displays like this one of matchbooks:
We ended up spending almost two hours at the museum and by the time we finally got back on the road it was about 3:00! We rode another 40 miles to the town of Williamsburg, OH where we’re camping at a state park. Ohio so far is just as hilly as Kentucky, but the road surfaces are much nicer, so the riding is better. It threatened rain all day, but somehow it missed us. Tonight however we’re supposed to have record-breaking cold. That’s okay though, because it means we might have another cool riding day ahead… and we really appreciate weather in the 70’s after some of the heat we’ve hit this summer!