A Needed Day Off

Well, it's been a little while since I've posted. I've been busy biking. I spent 20 straight days on the bike from Akron, PA, to Goshen, IN, in an effort to make up some lost miles, and blogging was not the first thing on my mind at the end of a long day. Generally I was looking forward to a shower or food. Anyway, now I'm in Goshen, I'm rested, and I'm working on trying to get my fill of familiar faces while I can. Anyway, I should talk about the last week and a half to catch you all up on my travels.

I believe I left off in Canastota, NY, while my mom was visiting and driving her U-Haul truck rental with my cycling gear in the back (By the way, you can hear about these few days in some detail from another perspective by visiting http://muchadoaboutnancy.wordpress.com/ where my mother, Nancy, wrote about these few days). Without all of the weight on my bike, I was a little more bold about varying from my GPS directions. I actually ended up just wandering in a general westerly direction. I didn't expect something called Turnpike Road to end up turning to gravel. Gravel may not quite be the right word for this road. It was about wide enough for one vehicle (probably not mom's U-Haul) and the "gravel" was a mix of rocks ranging from pea to golfball size. There were innumerable pot holes, most of which about 6-8" deep that I had to manuver around while riding on the lane of golfballs. The road curved around a couple of times, went up and down a little, and eventually went straight up, still covered in golfball rocks. I shifted into my lowest gear and pedaled hard but carefully, as my back tire was spinning at a much faster rate than I was moving, shooting golfball rocks back down the hill with every pedal stroke. It was quite a feat of balance to stay on my wheels the whole way up, and would have been absolutely impossible for me if the bags had still been attached to the bike. My slick road tires didn't really help much either. When the road eventually went back to pavement, there were some construction workers there that said nothing, but looked at me coming off of that road like I was out of my mind. From there I continued on to the town of Victor, NY, where mom and I got a hotel room for the night.

The next day I got on the road a little later than I generally like to, and it sort of came back to bite me. The wind picked up and fought me the whole way. After stopping for lunch and trying a local dish called beef on weck (a kind of bread), I eventually made it to a suburb of Buffalo to stay with John and Jean for the night. The headwind made it feel like a longer day than it actually was.

The next morning we got up and headed for Niagra Falls. During this stretch, I encountered one of the worst roads I've ever ridden on. Rather than repave it, their was layer after layer of repair that made nearly unbearable to ride on. On the crazy gravel road I could at least avoid the pot holes. Here the entire road surface was disgusting. I rattled my way to the falls and found mom's U-Haul to lock up my bike while we were tourists. Everyone has always told me that the view of the falls is so much better from the Canadian side of the falls. I mean, it's true. The Canadian side was also much more packed with tourists. I don't blame them for going to the Canadian side. It looked cooler, and U.S. customs can be a pain in the ass.

After pulling away from the falls, I made my way towards a couple of campgrounds I had found on the internet. One was KOA, which are generally pretty nice and moderately priced. When I got to the campgrounds, they were all in the $50/night ballpark. Which is ridiculous. I saw several little trashy motels with signs advertizing $35 per night, so I found one of those.

The next morning it was raining. There are few things more demotivating than stepping into the rain from a dry motel room. Most of the day it drizzled off and on until the early evening. The clear sky to the west was an incredible sight. About that time I was getting off the bike. I pulled into Tillsonburg, ON, looking for a campground that I believed was nearby. After a bit of looking at maps and whatnot, I pulled over and asked a group of men where the cheapest place to spend a night could be found, whether it be in a tent or otherwise. They gave me directions to another cheap motel, but also asked some questions about what I was doing on my bike. After mentioning Mennonite Disaster Service and handing them a card with my web address and name on it, they lit up a little bit and said, "Friesen? You're a Mennonite!" Apparently these men had grown up outside of Mexico City in a conservative Mennonite colony and now lived in Canada and used cars. I ended up in the cheap motel they suggested.

The next day it was raining again. Pretty exciting. This was just for part of the morning, then it warmed up and got humid, all the while with a headwind. Towards the end of the day I saw a sign for a campground that hadn't come up on my GPS, so I pulled off to look at my maps. As I looked, another cyclist (not touring) pulled up on a recumbent trike with a windshield and shell around it. He apparently also had mounted a small electric motor to assist as he pedals. It was quite the impressive rig. After a brief chat about cycling and my trip, he suggested this campground and not the one a little further down the road I had intended to ride to, as this one probably had more room. It was right on the coast of Lake Erie, so I ended up walking along a small beach to get my feet wet and cool down a little before showering.

The next morning my watch alarm went off at 6am, which was about the same time it started raining. It sounded like it was coming down pretty hard, so I decided to wait it out. Three hours later I put on my rain gear and packed my stuff up in the rain and was on the road at about 10am, just in time for the rain to subside. It wasn't a long day to get to Leamington, ON. A friend had given me contact information for Martin, who graciously offered me a place to rest for the night. I even got to tag along with his family to catch some bluegrass music in the park that evening.

The next day I made the quick ride from their place to the ferry that would take me back to the U.S. My hosts also rode the first ferry that took us all to Pelee Island, ON, where they have friends. I caught a few of the sights on the island, then got on the ferry that would take me to Sandusky, OH. U.S. customs was actually quite quick on a bicycle. They asked a few general questions and waved me thorugh. The vehicles coming across had a few more hoops to jump through. Upon landing, I booked it west as quickly as I could to cover some miles before they day ended. The ferry ride took until 3pm, so I didn't have very much time to ride that day.

I ended the day in Gibsonburg, OH, at a little campground on the south side of town. I think there was only one other campsite that was occupied for the night, so I made sure to chat with my neighbors a little before turning in for the night. They offered me some sweet corn they had prepared over the fire, still in the husk, and it was delicious. I chatted with the husband for a while while the others were inside the camper to get away from the bugs. After telling him a little about my trip, he shared that when he was 17, he decided he wanted to start walking. A few months later he called his mother and asked her to wire him some money. When she asked where to wire it, he said he was in Tampa, FL (from Ohio, I believe...). He also shared some stories about a particularly adventurous nephew of his that had done some traveling abroad, and upon returning to the states, lived for a few months with a community of people that live in tree houses in the red woods in California to protect them from being cut down. He insisted that I try to find the tree people when I get to California. I assured him that I'd try.

The following morning I got on the road and headed the 95 miles to my friend Lowell's place in Michigan. It was an incredibly easy day. There was very little breeze and it didn't feel too hot out either. It helped that I got a relatively early start. I stopped for a break in Archbold, OH, and got interviewed by the Fulton County Expositor news paper. That break was a little longer than I had hoped for, and by the time I got back on the bike, my legs weren't too excited about biking the last 30 miles. Once I got warmed up, things went by fairly quickly. Once at Lowell's house, we chatted for a while, ate a giant amount of pasta (ok, so I ate a giant amount of pasta), and watched some TV before heading to bed. The next day I woke up a little late, because I thought I was going to have a shorter day getting to Goshen, IN. It was a little shorter in milage than I had been averaging, but there was a pretty stiff headwind and some ominous clounds looming in the west. The storm was moving in from the northwest, and I was really pushing hard to try to beat it to Goshen. I made it past a particularly nasty looking cloud with some cloud-to-ground lightning completely dry and not electrified, but behind it was another. I was pushing hard to get to my destination, but 7 miles from town the skies opened up and giant rain drops started to fall. I wasn't too excited about pushing through the rain, and I saw a barn with the doors wide open. As I passed, I saw movement inside, so I decided to ask if I could seek shelter for a bit while the worst of it blew past. Upon arriving at the barn, I found 4 small Amish children. I asked of I could wheel my bike inside, and they said I could. They didn't really say much else. I tried to ask some innocent, open-ended questions about the weather and how their day was going, but they didn't really want to speak much more than one word responses from the eldest boy among them. They just kind of looked at me as though they were unsure what I was-possibly not even human. Eventually their father, Marlin, came to the barn through the rain. He was a little surprised to see me there, but had no problem with me taking shelter. He was eventually heading out to collect eggs with the children. While watching the huge rain drops fall, Marlin and I chatted about farming, the weather, the economy, Amish/Old-order/Mennonite differences, last names, and whatever else came up. The children continued to look at me, puzzled. They did find my GPS to be fascinating. Marlin told me of a couple of Amish guys that had taking bike a bike trip a few years earlier from their area out to Colorado and back. In this area as well as the Akron, PA, area, I saw lots of Amish people on bicycles.

After the rain eased up, I thanked Marlin for his brief hospitality and headed on my way towards Goshen. My friend Josiah told me I could crash at his place, even though he was not there. He is actually spending the week riding his bicycle across Iowa as a part of RAGBRAI. Apparently he did not tell his brother that I was going to be coming to the house. I showed up and he looked a little puzzled. I unloaded my stuff and headed straight for the shower.

It's been a relaxing two days off the bike here in Goshen. I counted that I had been on the bike 20 days straight, from Akron, PA, to here. A couple of those days were shorter, but it still meant putting on the cycling gear and pedaling. Tomorrow I will head towards Chicago and towards another rainstorm on the radar map. We'll see how far I get, but I should at least cross into the Central Time Zone. At that point, I will be done with the Easter Time Zone for the duration of the trip. That's right, one time zone down, three to go. Also, the state of Indiana makes 25 states down (plus Ontario and Washington DC) and 23 states to go. Unfortunately the 23 states I have left are all huge and I have 2/3 of the miles to go. I will try to update the blog a little more frequently.