Sunday, June 28, 2009

Day 13: Newark, OH to Columbus, OH

Somehow we managed to convince Anne to drive us to the Marne Methodist Church (where we'd quit for safety reasons three nights before) at sunrise. Imagine our surprise when her entire family was up and made us breakfast. They even gave us cookies to take with us! Staying at Anne's was amazing.

We managed to get a sunrise departure with nice weather. We were hopeful that nothing bad would happen today, since we were trying to make it to Columbus early enough to meet up with Jillian's parents, who were in town to see a minor league baseball game.

The ride started well. We had a nice bike trail from Marne to Newark, without any traffic. It was just the cobwebs - every hundred yards one of us would get a new cobweb in our face.

Riding on the bike path also meant it was fairly flat. We kept a really good pace through Newark, which had incredibly weird parking spaces in the middle of the street.

As we were leaving the area we suddenly hit hills. Nothing too long, but really steep. After two days of not riding at all, my knees gave out. Imagine our embarrassment at having to walk a hill in Ohio. But after that minor setback, we were able to keep a pretty good pace all morning. It was a good thing too, because I made a wrong turn on OH-37 and we ended up taking US-40 into Columbus instead of OH-16, as I'd originally planned. It ended up not mattering which way we took, since we were crossing through the city on a Sunday morning.

As we crossed through downtown, which had some really pretty neighborhoods, we were passed by a Volvo with Pennsylvania plates. Jillian's parents were on their way somewhere when they saw us and puled over. Unfortunately the donut shop we were outside of was closed, so after saying hello we were on our way again. We decided to meet at the hotel we'd all be staying at to the west of town.

West of I-70, west of Columbus, US-40 gets to be a traffic mess and the neighborhood gets to be a little rough (We found out the next day that there were a bunch of cars set fire that night where we'd been riding). I got sick of it quickly, so we turned north and rode Fisher Rd, which was much more pleasant. Unfortunately, that meant Jillian's parents didn't see us again on their way back to the hotel. It took us some time to get there too, since there was some unpleasant road construction without a shoulder. When we're in a situation like that and there isn't too much construction we've found the best strategy is to ride as hard as we can and try to keep up with the cars. This worked pretty well until our chain came off. Fortunately we were able to coast the rest of the way to the hotel. Jillian's parents got very confused about why we weren't pedaling and were going so slow.

Then we got to be tourists in Columbus. First stop was the Franklin Park Conservatory. They had some really awesome glass work by Chihuly.

We walked through the butterfly garden.

We wandered around and looked through the different biome rooms, which were fun. Then it was off to the ball game. But first we got to see a little bit more of the city.

At the game, Jillian made me act happy. In reality I was quite happy, just exhausted. Bike touring is exhausting.

One of the most awesome in between inning shows ever... Quickchange! Here they are before he throws confetti on her:

And here they are after:

They changed outfits probably a dozen times at a few different points in the show.

Jillian's father has an unfortunate curse where all the games he goes to go into extra innings. Around inning 12 or 13 we left, with the score still tied. Normally we would have stayed, but we needed to get dinner and go to bed so we could get up early. After driving back to the hotel and looking around a bit, we settled on Applebees.

After dinner Jillian and her mother went searching for a knee brace at Walmart (no luck). Jillian's father and I moved Jillian and my stuff to our room (it had been too early to check in when we'd first arrived), and then I was sound asleep in moments.

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