Bishop Bike Adventure Day 47 August 16, 2010

We awakened to an over-billed continental breakfast and therefore found ourselves at Big Boy wolfing down a good breakfast. This is just one example of the types of logistics that compete with riding time. We’ve found since being on the road that time is a very valuable commodity, which was not something that we remotely anticipated when planning the trip.

We have been contemplating a day off, but looking out at the beautiful day this morning convinced us to ride despite being tired. The temperature has moderated into the 80’s, the humidity subsided, and the wind was out of the west. The breeze was strong enough to straighten out the flag in this picture. Throw in good roads with little traffic, and we couldn’t have asked for much better riding conditions. These conditions frankly made for an easy 94 miles. Had we had more daylight or an earlier start, this would have been our first century (100-mile ride) on our coast-to-coast trip. But since we rolled into Milan and discovered a good selection of motels, we decided to call it a day.

As we left Napoleon this morning, we rode by a massive Campbell Soup factory, which caused us to speculate how interesting a plant tour might have been. This is one of the trade-offs with our adventure--we are skimming the surface of all of our destinations rather than going a bit deeper with them. There are so many interesting attractions along the way. And when we have potential connections with people, we are always mindful that a 30-minute conversation means a few less miles can be logged. We suppose it is a good thing that we have a targeted timeframe or we could be doing this for a living (and we haven’t figured out that revenue model yet!). We therefore consider that many of those with whom we do connect have been heaven sent.

We are struck by how flat northwest Ohio is and how much farmland (soybeans and corn) still dominates the landscape (although we are seeing more industrial plants). We’ve posted a close-up picture of some soybean plants for those who, like us a few weeks ago, may never have seen one. Ohio seems to have more trees and some large rivers that Indiana did not. There are also more small towns with good services to support our ride--and may we add, very friendly and helpful people in them. The roads have also been excellent. Even this patched road provided a nice smooth ride! One road today was so unique--it appeared as a lane, or even glorified bike path, but was indeed a legal two-way road. You might call it a two-way road on single lane pavement. Perhaps there should be a law, but when you’re in the middle of farming communities, who really cares?

Part of our ride today was on an 8.5 mile bike path connecting two towns. The path paralleled a rail line and provided a nice diversion from the more typical roads that we‘ve been riding. It was somewhat secluded, but had the advantage of protecting us from both traffic and the sun. Here is a picture of the path leaving Fremont, which on surface we found to be a very nice town.

Finally, we like Ohio because there is seemingly a Subway sandwich shop on every street corner!