Wow, bike touring is magical, and I'm certainly with a magical group. So much has happened since yesterday morning. Currently I'm sitting in next to a pool on a rest day in Cincinnati, trying to figure out how to concisely write all the things that we did yesterday. A HUGE party was thrown in our honor, with a great band, free beer, free food, and town tours But first...
First, the numbers: Yesterday we road 82.45 miles to Cincinnati, OH and Newport, KY (same town on different sides of the Ohio River). We did 6 hours on bike, and rode from about 8am to 5:30 pm.
Normally I'd never ride into a town like Cincinnati on a bike tour because I'd have no place to stay, and the riding tends to suck when you get near big cities. However, this is a charity ride for The Cure Starts Now (RideForDIPG.com) and there is huge The Cure Starts Now chapter in Cincinnati that we were visiting.
The plan was to ride with Rob, Tom, Morgan, Aaron, and Joe on two fairly busy roads (no other options, screw you big cities), passing through towns like Versailles (pronounced Ver-Sails locally), and then meet Morgan about 15 miles out to ride in with him. If you remember, Morgan has an achilles injury so he's not loaded, but rather driving along and doing smaller rides. After some riding on some fairly busy and at times terrible roads (Highway 50 sucks) we waited for Morgan for an hour in a nice park, and then rode in with him, meeting a local cyclist about 10 miles out who rode us in to town on better roads. Cincinnati is still a tough town to bike in though, because I've seen very very little biking infrastructure.
We arrived at a pub to a huge party being thrown in on honor to raise money for The Cure Starts Now. It was a bit awkward for me since I've only been on the ride for 2 days vs their 60+ days, but I enjoyed the free drinks and food anyway and partied hard with the band (Two Steve's, super fun!) Rob taught me Merry and Pippins dance from the Fellowship of the Rings movie. Kick-ass! I'm bringing it back to the Eug!
After hours of that we were all whisked away in a huge van to a big house in the suburbs, where the party continued with more drinks and a great backyard pool. How the hell did I get here?
Today we awoke to a great breakfast, then visited the hospital and spoke with some of the head DIPG researchers (I got to get nerdy and talk microbiology), then went out to a great lunch and now we are back at the house.
Tomorrow we ride 50 miles to Joe's family's lake-ish cabin in the woods where we'll take two more rest days. I sure joined at the right time!
These guys are a lot of fun. Rob and Tom from Tasmania are hilarious, and we're already talking about riding across Australia in 2019, possibly to raise more money for DIPG research. Joe, Aaron, and Morgan are great company as well, and I'm really lucky that they've all been so welcoming to me. This is such a great time! The Cure Starts Now people have all been awesome as well, and it's likely we'll be in touch with some of them into the long future.
Also, we just got three free tickets to a Red's game, so it's baseball tonight! Adventure!!!
ILYQ
Riding out from Cincinatti on the bike trail. It's Rob, Aaron, and Tom
Joe and his Dad
The towers were each labelled with a big "P," which we figure stands for "Penis."
This is what we do to gas stations when we take breaks. Sure is different from solo touring.
Aaron gives us a coy look one of our deserted country roads.
Show-off's belong in the back.
This is as safe as it looks. Look at this great road!
Rob forgot where his handlebars are.
They are in the distance. This is my bike, Freedom NarBandersnatch. A directly clone of Freedom NarGoat, my main touring bike. My bike's earn the first name "Freedom" when they go on their first tour, and the prefix "Nar" once they've had the Ukulele on the front rack like a Narwal horn. Freedom NarBandersnatch live in Iowa is primarily used for RAGBRAI.
Distance riders!
Great sky, and Joe's back.
Rob jugglng out front of the cabin.
Lake side
