After a good nights sleep (albeit with yet another night sweat) and decent leg recovery, I woke up this morning just expecting rain again. But incredibly, today it never happened! Though it was cloudy and in the low 70’s all day, and we did see a few dark clouds on the horizon, we stayed dry all day.
You know that you’ve been riding for over a month straight when an 88 mile ride seems easy, but that just shows how your frame of reference changes from day-to-day on P2P. We kicked off the day with an 8:45 roll out and headed east away from the Toledo area with a route that had us hugging the south shore of Lake Erie, even though we never saw the lake itself. I was impressed that we had a scenic ride through this region thus far given the industrial roots of the area. The south shore of Lake Erie, given its access to raw materials, an efficient rail network and access to the water “highways” of the Great Lakes made it a great location for the industrial revolution in the late 1800’s.
Today, the scenery didn’t change a whole lot – cornfields and soybeans. I am guessing that by the end of the month that the soybeans will soon be harvested – the tops of these plants have largely turned a yellowish brown signaling that the time is nigh. We had a pretty flat ride profile today with the hardest climbs being the overpasses we crossed and a higher average speed than most days. With SAG stops at mile 17 and 39 to hydrate and refuel if needed, our lunch stop was at mile 61 in the charming town of Norwalk, OH. But today’s lunch was a much quicker dine-n-dash than usual – our weather app was saying 100% chance of rain in 34 minutes – and the sky looked like it. So we geared back up and set out to cover as much of the remaining 27 miles as we could before the rain came – but it never did. But I will say this – the people around Norwalk seem to be very patriotic, I couldn’t count the number of American Flags flying around this town as we pedaled our way to Oberlin.
Rolling into the Hotel at Oberlin at around 3 PM today the 88 miles we covered with detours didn’t seem hard at all. With the cloud cover, moderate and sometimes favorable winds, comfortable temperatures and no rain, it was actually a pleasing ride. To make matters more pleasing, my close friend and classmate Kevin (“Holmes”) Lauterjung was waiting at the hotel with some goodies and a helping hand. We later caught up at the Main Street Laundromat as I did my laundry and then had dinner at The Feve down the street. And wouldn’t you know it? After he dropped me off at the hotel and we said our goodbyes, I was almost on the elevator when I realized that I had left my clean laundry in his truck! We had a good laugh and know that Val and Sally will both be saying “that sounds exactly like something you would do”. That’s OK, they’re probably right.
Tomorrow is a fairly short 80 mile ride to Newbury, OH and we’ll be riding through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and through some of Ohio’s Amish communities. But we will start climbing again as we have our last full day in the State of Ohio and make our way towards Pennsylvania. We’re getting closer and as we get near the 3,000 mile mark of our journey, I am officially declaring “EFI” for myself. EFI is a term among P2P’ers meaning “Every Fr**king Inch”. Only 10 days of riding remain!
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