2015-06-12 - OH - Day 16 - Lake Erie State Park to Geneva

I woke up around 6 AM at the Lake Erie State Park campgrounds to the sounds of Brian, Andy, and Catherine ("BAC") heading out. I got ready to go by around 7 AM and saw Mike and Joe also getting ready. I quickly attached my trunk bag to my bike and followed after them. I decided to cycle with Mike as much as possible as it was his birthday. Midway to the first rest stop, it suddenly started to rain. Mike panicked and stopped suddenly. I veered left to avoid his rear wheel while Joe was taking his phone out of his pocket to protect it and not even looking. Joe's bike ran into Mike's and Joe swerved right onto the gravel with me thinking holy crap he is going to crash. Somehow he performed a magical dance half in midair and half on the gravel and managed to stop his bike without falling. His phone however did fall. He looked at it and found a crack. Mike felt like crap. Joe was so relieved to discover that the crack was only in the tempered screen protector, not the phone itself. Other than that incident, the riding was smooth and eventually even the weird rain stopped. The three of us moved fast, taking turns to do approximately 5-mile pulls, and shot to the first rest stop with an average moving speed of 18.7 mph. We stopped for photos at the New York-Pennsylvania border along the way and had a nice break and breakfast at the Freeport Diner rest stop where we ate with a lot of the others from our team.

Today's second leg was simple on paper but tricky to navigate. Joe and I did not go onto the  prescribed bike path because Mike who was ahead of us did and reported back that it was crappy and had spit him out in the middle of town where he got lost. Regrouping into a larger group with Joe as our guide, we cycled into the second rest stop beside a store called Peppino, which wouldn't open for another four hours.  I learned that Olivia had stayed the previous night with her aunt, who also cycled half of today's route. Peppino kicked us out of their lot so we moved to the church next door.

Mike and I took off while Joe went to use the great outdoor restroom, but we soon ran into depressing headwinds under a burning sun. Mike pulled more than me and we took a short break in the shade. Will caught up with us and we cycled together across the border into Ohio, our third state this same day! Woo!

We stopped at a great root beer and ice cream shop, the White Turkey Drive-In (http://www.whiteturkey.com/), where we decided to wait out the worst of a rainstorm which came on suddenly and moved quick. I had been trying to pay for Mike's food all day. Lucas bought him lunch earlier and Olivia bought him root beer. I finally had my chance to pay for his Super Ed Burger. Success! It was quite amusing to see so many cold, wet cyclists join us when we were mostly dry. We had about fifteen people gathered, half of the team, when we found out that our campsite had flooded. Emily who drove the lead van and Cassie, the assistant director back in Blacksburg, Virginia, were scrambling to find us an alternative place to sleep while the family who owned the White Turkey Drive-In Diner offered us the use of their basement and barns. Alas, that prospect was too good to be true. We were told to cycle to a higher campground at our original destination at Geneva-On-The-Lake.

I ate too much and stopped too long and so could not keep up with the large group that cycled off. I rode a bit alone, eventually reaching Astabula where BAC had been hanging out for hours at a 4.9/5.0 rated cafe. Apparently the owner offered to buy them dinner and they also found someone in town to let them stay overnight. I on the other hand joined up with Kaylee and Phoebe to cycle the last miles into camp. Phoebe described it quite well: "I'm done. Done!"

Camp brought a lot of good news and a lot of bad news.
Good news: We got to stay in an area under a roof.
Bad news: I did not have a stand-alone tent and needed soft ground for the tent stakes.
Good news: There were big tables to sleep on.
Bad news: I might get wet when it rained, and the wind from the lake was freezing my exposed ear.
Good news: I had a nice Arc'teryx hooded puffy that was nice and warm.
Bad News: No showers and running low on clean clothes.
Good news: Outlets to charge stuff, free treats from Kaylyn's family, birthday cake for Mike, beautiful sunset and an amazing day to look forward to tomorrow. OK, it's not too bad, especially if I want to do things much much harder in the future.

I was hooked on my book, the second in the Wayward Pines trilogy, and could not stop reading until I finished at 11 PM. Wayward Pines, the last human town on the planet in the book, is being overrun by monsters after having rebelled against their god figure and found out the truth about the state of the planet. It becomes a story of survival for a group of people small enough for everyone to know one another and feel like a family, much like our own.