Thursday, June 25, 2009
Day 10: St Clairsville, OH to Newark, OH
Since there isn't much between St Clairsville and Newark, we decided to ride the entire 115 miles or so to Anne's house. Since we both remember Ohio as flat, we were optimistic we'd be able to get it done in no time.
However, not being crazy, we also started at dawn, knowing this ride would take us a long time, especially since our back tire was still rubbing on the frame. No matter how much time I spent truing it, by an hour into the next ride we were out of true and rubbing.
There wasn't much to see early in the ride. Enjoy this picture of a large chair.
After Morristown US-40 merges with the highway, so we turned south on OH-149. For the most part it was a very pleasant ride, the back tire just kept worrying me. Eventually I managed to convince myself that the problem was how heavy we were. First solution was to try putting me in the front and Jillian in the back, in order to bring more weight onto the front tire.
Riding with Jillian as captain was a bit like riding in a kayak. The whole front of the bike kept shifting back and forth. After three or four miles I finally discovered that it was because of where she kept her eyes. She had a tendency to watch where the front of the bike was (the boom), and see if was staying centered on the line at the side of the road. Like driving, you actually go a lot straighter if you look at the road fifty or sixty yards ahead. Once we got that straightened out, things were a lot better.
After ten miles switched we came to Barnesville. Still worried about weight, we took all of our gear apart and put everything we thought we could do without in a box to mail home. Our frisbee, my Tevas, and my notepad all went. Unfortunately, since I'm actually writing this in early August, I don't remember most of the other items. But the important thing is that it came out to eight pounds of stuff. Eight pounds! But I also noticed that our wheel problems continued to worsen despite moving me to the front. We opted to switch back for the remainder of the ride.
We also noticed that Ohio isn't all flat.
The road we were taking didn't have much of a shoulder, but it didn't matter at all. The drivers in Ohio were nicer than anywhere else we'd been. They would always wait until it was safe before passing, they'd give you plenty of room, and they wouldn't honk.
We stopped in Quaker City for lunch at a park pavilion, where we were joined by town workers a few years younger than us. Quaker City was everything I had hoped for in small town Ohio. However, I might just be remembering this town because it had an amazing roadside experience - clean, almost new port-a-potties.
We rode a number of miles in picturesque farmland. It would have been a perfect ride if it had been just a bit cooler.
In order to cool off we stopped for ice cream at the Sugar Shack. They had a fun wall.
They also had exercise and stereo equipment in the separate building where you could eat in air conditioning.
Just before we reached I-70 and subsequently US-40 I spotted a bike trail off to the side of the road. We immediately hopped right on.
Shade, flat riding, fresh pavement - Ohio was amazing. We even had Mailpouch barns to look at.
In Cambridge we passed the Frisbee Motel. Tempting.
As we got out of Cambridge we ran into seemingly endless construction. Ten miles of single lane, no shoulder construction. To make things even better, we couldn't see even a single person working. After a mile of that, we got frustrated and rode through the center lanes.
This stressed me out, since I was all nervous about having highway speed traffic on either side of me. We stopped to calm me down at another S bridge.
Then we had more of the same. Note the grates on the shoulder. Perfect for destroying a wheel.
Finally we actually saw people doing work. The flag lady said we were only half way through and got incredibly offended, like we were the stupidest people in the entire world when we asked if we could ride in the closed lane. It was really offensive. There's no shoulder or shoulder with grates everywhere, traffic is moving at 60mph, and there's an empty lane? We saw maybe, maybe, 50 yards of construction.
Fortunately, Ohio drivers and incredible and no one ran us over. Many of them even drove through the closed lanes to get around us. I love Ohio drivers. I hate OHDOT.
We saw a lot of weird purple boxes on the side of the road, and had been wondering what they were since at least Somerset, PA. Anne's mother told us later they were to measure how infested the woods were with Emerald Ash Borers.
In Zanesville we were climbing a hill when Jillian saw a billboard that said, "Rates need lowering?" She said, "In Pennsylvania, that would say 'Rates need lowered?'" I thought she was referencing the fortune cookie from two nights previous. It turns out she was just referencing the way people in some parts of PA drop the to be verb. Eitherway, I laughed and nearly crashed the bike. Weird things get funny on the bike. They get extra funny going uphill.
We turned north up OH-146. It also started to sprinkle and we played what we call the Shelter Game. Every time one of us spotted something that could become shelter in a storm, we'd memorize the mileage so that we'd always know how far we might need to ride back to find a roof.
By the time we got to Nashport the storm had developed into a full on thunderstorm. We took shelter at a preschool with a couple of motorcyclists.
Knowing that it was less than twenty miles to Granville (where we hoped to stay), we made a break for it when the rain stopped. We rode on to a gas station at the intersection of 146 and 16. There we spoke with Anne, who offered to drive out and pick us up. Foolishly, we refused.
We rode a few miles further before the skies opened up on us. I spotted a spire and we headed to the Marne United Methodist Church. Fortunately they had a covered entryway big enough to drive under. We stashed our trailer there, put on the more clothing, and did a few laps in the parking lot in order to make our mileage say exactly 100 - Jillian had never ridden a century before.
We caved and called Anne, who drove through the most violent rain I've seen in a long time to pick us up. Lightening struck things on all sides of us. But Anne arrived with food! After a twenty minute ride to her house, she fed us even more before we took quick showers and crashed in the guest room upstairs.
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