Into Ohio
Day 5 - 4/21/2016: 64 miles (272 total), 1592 feet (6309 total)
5:49 pm (1068)
Today was kind of a brutal day in the Great Indian Desert: ironically in the rain. There's no other way to convey the featurelessness of this place but to call it a desert. At one point I stopped to find a tree, and then just didn't bother. There was noone horizon to horizon, might as well pee in the road.
What there was a lot of, pretty much 64 miles of, was rain. The rain was nearly nonstop, but when away from cars it wasn't too bad. I had bought rainpants and booties just for this trip but used neither. The temp was 55-63, so I just put on my coat, wool socks, and winter gloves and was good to go. The socks in my sandels didn't keep my feet try, but they were warm. My legs pretty much just don't care.
As usual, google took me through a variety of interesting places, include about 1.5 miles of very good dirt road.
Dogs were after me again! The worst was a bulldog named Toby (owner ineffectually yelled at him to come back). Toby is a big bulldog. When I came by he took off like a streak, catching up and lunging at me. My Bill Fischer impersonation gave him a minor pause, and that was all she wrote. I was still gaining speed, and Toby's tiny little rear legs ran out of gas.
About 20 miles into the day I ran into this diner kind of in the middle of nowhere, where I had the corned beef extravaganza shown in the pic.
Finally, look at the last pic. I turned into this and blanched at how the road runs straight into the distance. Immediately thereafter, my navigation app announces "In 14.5 miles, keep straight". ??????
Finally, the Great Indian Desert has convinced me of the truth of John Lucas's viewpoint: no more A to B, only spectacular trips are worth it. This doesn't quite apply here, as I actually had three purposes on this trip: make a pilgrimage home on bike, see how I liked traveling by myself, and bridging the gap between Pittsburgh and Chicago that would be the only longitudes that I hadn't covered in the US once I do Route 66 in the fall.
Except I'm not doing Route 66 in the fall. Six weeks of blah midwestern kitsch before you get to New Mexico and it starts getting interesting. Not going to do it. I'll apply my deposit to doing a short trip in Alaska next year.
The first two reasons still apply, however. For the second, I've found that I'm pretty comfortable on my own when things are going well. For instance last night I thoroughly enjoyed Chain O' Lakes. I watched egrets flying overhead, saw a vee of geese, had woodpeckers going off on either side of me at the same time, and even saw an egret fly over. I don't even much care for birds, but it was glorious. However, biking in the rain for hour after hour, only to end up at a Comfort Inn on the side of a freeway w/ no buds around kind of sucks. So, mixed verdict.
The first purpose, though, still holds. I am psyched to arrive back in Ohio, and back in Sandusky, on bike. To cruise downtown, bike to Cameo Pizza, and then bike out to the nature preserve where the folks' ashes were scattered. This is worthwhile, my version of approaching mecca on foot. I don't know if it will be a life-changing experience, but i do know that it's something I need to do.
4/17/2016 | 0 Comments
