Traveling at Mach 0.012

Wednesday May 21, 2014

Start – Streetsboro
Destination – Norwalk and Chesterville
Day total miles – 68
Journey total miles – 708
(ok, not sure if all these numbers add up, but the day totals are what is on my Garmin Edge 500 and the journey total is on the Garmin 62s). For them to be really accurate one presumes that both run all day with no battery issues and that I turn them on.)

We rolled out of Streetsboro early in the morning. Started out as rolling hills with our journey to Norwalk for the day. As I reviewed the elevation profile on the computer, I thought that should not be too bad. Have some hills when we go through Cuyahoga Valley National Park, but after that it is flat. Ok let me tell you, these made Pittsburgh look easy. The first climb was long and a challenge, but achievable. Then the pavement turned to a milled surface. Must be planning on resurfacing, wish they would have hurried this along. Could have handled just the milled surface. A bit bouncy and makes your teeth chatter, but not too bad. When you add in monster hills, the journey becomes a real challenge. I swear that one was strait up and 10 miles long. Ok, really it was steep and long. Had to push the bike up the hill. No ability to get a running start, and with the milled surface combined with no shoulder and some traffic, not a good riding situation. The backside was no joy either. Going down a steep incline with a milled surface was no fun at all. I couldn’t even close my eyes and wait for it to be over. Toughed it out and made it back to unmilled pavement, but not exactly smooth). Our stop was in the town of Richfield for breakfast. Nothing like the previous days, so the choices were chain restaurants, which of course were on the other side of the road. Decided on Panera. Since it was not a planned and scoped out ahead, it does not count toward my record of perfection (more to come). Fueled up with a good bagel and muffin (and coffee of course). The weather report was for rain showers and some storms. The radar showed a line approaching and it even rained for a brief period. But almost magically, the storm seemed to separate where we were and provide us with a “not raining” pathway.

Our destination was Norwalk and we had a special treat in store. Joe’s cousin, Tom, invited us to spend the night at his place in Chesterville. With that in mind, we had lots of time on our hands to finish the ride for the day. Tom would meet us in Norwalk sometime after 4 to take us to his place.

Along the way, the roads flattened out and the ride became most enjoyable. The signs ahead warned of a detour because of construction. Lets pedal on and see what we can do. Joe has a special way of dealing with these situations and convinced the equipment operators to allow us to pass. Off the bike and pushing it thru the construction area, all of a sudden the wheels lock up and the bike is sliding away from me. What??? Oh, mud. And my feet feel like I added 10 pounds to them. I am sure the construction guys were openly laughing at us… some shortcut.

Now to get all of this sticky mud off of me and the bike. Oh and I forgot about the other repair I made to my bike in Monaca. My front fender is way too close to the tire at the front of the fender. The rack restricts its ability to be moved further away from the tire. This creates a rubbing of the fender on the tire, especially when a little mud or sand gets in there. Pedaling with the fender rubbing and the accumulation of stuff up there got old fast. The fix – a hacksaw blade from an auto parts store. Take off the front tire, saw, saw and saw and now there is about 2 inches less fender. Pulled up the fender about a ½ inch and now have lots of clearance. Back to the mud. Tried puddles to use water to get it off, scraping in the grass… some success but not really. We approach a farm and Joe is off to see about a hose. He disappears for some time. Not sure if he got lost, kidnapped or what. Every once in a while I think I can hear him, but seems like forever. Then I am faced with the dilemma of do I wait or go try to find him. With all of the time invested in waiting, he would surely be out soon. Sort of like waiting for an elevator that is not arriving. Do you wait or take the stairs. What about all of the time invested in waiting. It will surely come as soon as the door to the stairs closes behind you. Waiting for Joe to reappear became the similar challenge. Finally. He reappears following a farmer. The disappear into the milking room of the barn. The farmer is letting us use his hose in the milking room to clean up our bikes and shoes. Great! Bonus, the water is warm. The mud disappears down the drain and the bike is rideable again. Shoes are clean too. Turns out Keith, the farmer and his son Jake were cleaning out a stall area and also keeping a herd of steers in the area during the clean out. So that is what took so long. In the end, we (ok mostly Joe) knew the family farming history and all about other farmers in the area. The non-detour turned out to be a success after all.

As the day proceeded, we encountered more and more headwinds. Ugh! The route took us to US Route 220 that was to take us into Norwalk. Wrong. Between the headwind and the truck traffic passing at speeds approaching that of light, this was not a good option, at least to me. Up ahead was an intersection. Right we turned and into some shelter from the wind. My guess was that we were facing 20mph + headwinds. Hard riding, but good practice for more to come. Yeah, right. Thanks to cell service, I could pick a new route to town. As we headed north towards the next cross road, there was a bike trail crossing. Looks good, so we hopped on. What a great way to finish the ride into Norwalk. Sometime you just have to be lucky in your choices.

Along the way, we met a man walking his dog. Joe inquired about lunch and we were directed to Berrys Restaurant. That is the place where we would surely find out all there is to know about Norwalk. Lunch was really good. New treat – sauerkraut balls. I remember them from my days in Ohio. Golfball sized batter and sauerkraut deep fried and served with horseradish sauce. Pretty tasty. We still had time to kill, so after a stroll around town, ended up at a local bike store to window shop. The owners told us about the trail we were on, it goes on for miles in the direction we were headed (I had it mapped from Norwalk already, but good to know that I was on the right path). A recommendation for coffee (Sherri’s) turned out good and we settled in for another hour’s wait. Good coffee, WIFI, and lots of local activity made the time pass quickly.

Tom arrived on schedule, the bikes were loaded into the back of his truck and we were off to the cabin. What a great place and such a great host. Steaks and potatoes, veggies and some nice wine. A warm shower and bed was ready after a wonderful evening of talking and getting to know about Tom and his family. I can’t thank Tom enough for providing such an enjoyable evening.