I must start this post by saying I really need to start paying attention to where we are going. You apparently can't buy a damn paper map anywhere anymore - something that was getting difficult in 2014 - but seems nearly impossible now. As such I have no map of where we are now and am just trusting the route finding of the guys. I do have a map for the Virginias, but it's a shitty Rand McNally map and not a WarrenMap, which is a problem. Rand McNally maps are very inferior and suck for bike touring. Phone maps are also woefully inadequate.
Today fun things happened, but I forgot where, and I can't look back at the towns because I don't have a stupid map, so... ok.
We made it to Kentucky today, I guess. We're still East of Cleveland, but we're so far south we've left Ohio for Northern Kentucky. The terrain around here is beautiful, and reminds me most of biking through Pennsylvania back in 2007. It's super humid - maybe even more than Iowa tends to be. We're also south enough now that we're getting good Kentucky-style southern accents, which is fun.
The ride today was 75 miles, about 40 with Joe's Dad. We've been leaving consistently around 8 or 8:30, and arrived about 4:30 or 5. We had 4:57 on bike. The riding had some rolling hills but lots of it was flat so the group that felt like being fast today (Joe, Tom and I) were able to cruise between 18 and 20 mph for much of it. We also were able to spend most of the day on smaller county roads with minimal traffic. I LOVE BIKING ON SMALL COUNTY ROADS!
A highlight was our stop about 50 miles out at Portsmouth, OH, right on the border. They have a HUGE set of murals, maybe 1/4 mile long or more, all along their town levy by the Ohio river telling the history of their town. They also had a great brewery with half-off pizza.
Another highlight was our morning breakfast at the lake house, and of course our 2.5 days of rest there where we napped, read, napped more, napped even more, played music and board games, juggled, ate tons of great food, and went swimming and tubing on the lake. It was a great rest series of days. The guys needed it much more than me since, but I still had lots of fun.
By the numbers, I've gone 592 miles since I joined RAGBRAI, and 299 miles since I joined the RideForDIPG tour.
Tonight we're staying at a Methodist church where they treated us to a light dinner and may treat us to breakfast. They do a lot of youth and disability community outreach at this church and when we arrived it was full of young teens hanging out. They hung out with us for awhile and we had a lot of fun together. This is a very small town (maybe a thousand?) so it was a big event for them.
Tomorrow we ride some number of miles to a place that I can't remember. In some ways it's nice not being the navigator, but I do miss knowing what's going on. Tonight I spotted the park that I would be sleeping in if I was alone or small-group touring, and I do miss the serenity that would have come with sleeping by the river under an open sky.
However, that's replaced with this church's game room stocked with pool, table tennis, and air hockey, and we rocked out the party tonight. All bike tours have a different flavor. This one is certainly different from what I've been doing recently, but it still tastes pretty good and the company is great.
Remind me tomorrow to write about what it's like in Kentucky. Preview: not that different from anywhere else, although more confederate flags. People are super nice to us though, and so far the "single story" I've gotten about Kentucky sucking hasn't proven to be true at all.
ILYI
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