As you might guess from the title, I have had better days of cycling. It rained last night in Ohio, nothing like we had in Kansas, but unfortunately the weather didn’t see fit to stop raining until 10 AM. That meant that the first three hours of our ride were in the rain and that for the rest of the day the roads were wet. We all cleaned our bikes when we got in. My rain parka and long sleeve wool jersey never came off today. That also goes for the cycling booties and leg warmers. The hotel shower cap that I had over my helmet to keep the rain out in the morning was used to keep the cold wind from whistling through the vents in my helmet in the afternoon. Baby it was cold outside, especially when you stopped. It was pleasant to smell the wood fires burning in the homes we passed. However it led to the question, why am I out here when it would be so nice to be inside? The wind did blow from a westerly direction today, something like NNW and our route was to the NE. Yes it could have been worse, but it was not good.
Central Ohio is the first part of the ride, aside from mountainous parts of the ride between Prescott and Flagstaff AZ where there were abundant trees. We have either been riding through arid desert regions or grassland. Now the presence of trees means that the land was not fit for farming so the trees were not cleared, that in turn means that the land is too wet or too hilly to farm. In Ohio the land is hilly. While a few of today’s roads followed geographical features, valleys or natural passes through the hills, most seem to have the same unidirectional focus of the roads in Kansas and Illinois. They go north-south or east-west no matter what. As a consequence there are some pretty spectacular short steep climbs and descents in Ohio. We may have done all of them today, it certainly felt like that at times. The roads would have been fun to ride if it were a sunny day and you were doing a 50 mile loop, but they were not what I wanted for the final 50 miles of a cold, damp century.
Lastly, there was the route sheet. Usually they are great everything is just as described and the distances are accurate to the nearest tenth of a mile. Today’s route sheet was that way until the final 10 miles then while the roads went in the same direction that the route sheet indicated many seemed to have different names. Then there was the bridge that was out with no indicated alternative route. The leaders have up to now always indicated alternate routing when necessary, but not today. Finally after struggling though a final section were there was little correspondence between the street names on the route sheet and the street signs. We were directed onto a freeway and then one exit later off, but told to turn in the wrong direction to get to our motel. After going the indicted half mile down hill on a road with some pretty bad traffic, I asked if someone if they knew where our motel was. Yes, it was a mile away on the opposite side of the freeway. Needless to say it was not the best end for a hard day’s ride.
On a positive note I was contacted by the MIT cycling team about the possibility of having them accompany me to an ‘official’ finish at 77 Mass Ave. It may not happen for one reason or another but I am flattered by the offer and to know that they are interested in what I am doing.
I promised to calculate how I am doing on this ride. Well on the ride from my home in Berkeley to the start of my ride I didn’t ride 185 of 495 miles, mostly because of rain and some because of my fall. So far on the America By Bicycle ride I have not ridden 367 miles. These were for a variety of reasons that include exhaustion, weather related issues and my broken crank arm that kept me off the bike for almost two days. Up to today the length of my route has been 3147 miles 495 miles to the start and 2652 from the start to Wooster Ohio. I have ridden 85% of the total miles. Based on the grading system I described yesterday, I would get a B or a GPA of 3.5 at MIT.
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