Milestones

I love that biking lets you get lost in your mind, thinking about everything and anything.  My thoughts are unrestrained and wandering.  I ideate, I sing, I process what I see, and I notice.  I love to notice.  Everything we pass has a story, a reason.  We will most likely never find out exactly, but we can guess and think about it.  I love the positivity this brings in, as there is hardly disgruntlement and lack of motivation.  Most of the time.

There is so much beauty in what's around us, and watching the land change is an amazing thing.  Zoey and I had an interesting conversation yesterday.  Objectively, she said, cornfields swaying in the wind have a tremendous amount of natural beauty.  But at the same time, she hates them for what they are- GMO monocultures eroding the soil and polluting our water.  If you separate their meaning from their aesthetics it is easy to find beauty in the sights.  I see this, but for me it is very hard to make that separation.

On Friday we biked 65 miles from Punderson State Park to Oberlin, over many hills.  Some of them were sizeable, even compared to what we saw in PA.  It was also very hot, and we were biking very slowly.  We spent much of the day going through extremely wealthy Cleveland suburbs like Chagrin Falls (which reminded me very much of Wellesley, MA where I go to school).  For lunch we asked a woman gardening if we could rest in the shade of her tree.  She obliged, and even brought us cold towels and water.  We were both extremely tired and lethargic, and napped for over an hour under her tree.  They were wonderful naps, but getting up afterward and climbing to the top of the hill she was on was challenging.  But then, once we got west of Cleveland, it flattened out.  Finally!

We came into Oberlin on the bike path, with Zoey leading the way and giving me a tour of all the places to eat dinner in downtown.  I jokingly said we could eat at all of them.  We ended up eating at two places, because one dinner was not enough.

We stayed with Zoeys friend Amanda and her housemates.  They were very much into farming and composting, and even had a worm bin in their kitchen!   They were really nice and fun to hang out with.  It was good timing that we came to Oberlin on a Friday night and were going to be there on Saturday for a rest day, because Saturday was a festival in Oberlin called Juneteenth.  Juneteenth marks the anniversary of emancipation, which was June 19th 1865.  The day included a parade, kickball games, local organizations tabling, and history tours of Oberlin.  I convinced Zoey to go with me on the tour, and it was fascinating!  We learned about Oberlin's participation in the Underground Railroad, and  how they entire town rallied to support and protect emancipated slaves who were threatened by slave catchers to return to slavery.  I love reading about the history of people and places, whether its through reading plaques or through talking to people.  It is cool to stumble upon towns that may look dead from the outside but have extremely vibrant histories.  For example, yesterday Zoey and I went through Milan, OH, which is the birthplace of Thomas Edison.  They have a little museum and town square, and invention themed shops.

In Oberlin we shopped at the farmers market and bought vegetables to cook dinner for the house.  It felt so good to actually cook again and have pots and tools at your disposal.  We ate a delicious meal on the porch of pasta, stir-fried vegetables and italian spiced beans.  Zoey's friend Ben ate with us and took us to the Oberlin bike co-op afterward to work on Zoey's bike.  We ended up replacing the stem with a shorter one(the joint that connects the handlebars to the frame) to make it so she didn't have to reach as far.  That went smoothly, but when I was putting her handlebar bag mount back on the bike I snapped one of the mounts.  For the next hour we had to put together a kluge solution to make a new one.  We ended up using a bent spoke that went around the handlebars.  It won't provide much structural support, but it will prevent the other mount from having too much torque applied.  We left the bike co-op around 11:30pm, just in time to get 5 hours of sleep for our century ride tomorrow.

We did it yesterday- our first and hopefully only 100 mile day.  It was probably the hardest thing I have ever done.  Around 80 miles was when I just wanted it to be over.  We were up when it was dark, and had done 20 miles before 9:00 am.  We rode through the pouring rain, the hot sun, headwinds and sandstorms.  We did about 20 miles total on bike paths, which were pretty and very fun to ride on.  We also rode a lot on township roads, which are narrow small roads that have almost no cars.  We passed by a lot of farms and ranch houses and endless fields of corn and soy.  We did our last 20 miles on a strip mall street that had car dealerships, fast food chains and other places like that.  I feel like I have seen streets like that a million times before, and it was extremely boring to bike on.  It made it that much harder to push thorough and finish.

We noticed how segregated Toledo was.  We biked through extremely poor parts where the roads were cut up and the streets spewed with glass.  Once we got out of town a bit to the villages on the western edge the streets had green islands in the middle, the houses looked like castles, the streets were smooth and the same bike path that had been rough a few blocks back was perfectly paved.

Part of me was nervous biking through the poorer neighborhoods, but then I realized- what are we really afraid of?  We have been so conditioned to fear poverty and unknown places that we are not able to think clearly and rationally about the actual situations we are in.  We are two women on bicycles, who are just riding through.  We have no reason to be stopped or hassled, and do not look threatening.  We got lots of waves and hi's and smiles.

I am glad we accomplished 100 miles, but it is not something I would do again.  It was stressful and I was so worried about getting there before dark (we did) that I couldn't enjoy all of the journey.  We spent 14 hours on the road and 9 hours pedaling.

Last night we stayed with my friend from college, Mark G. and his family.  He made us vegetarian enchiladas and we had pumpkin pie and chocolate fondue for dessert. But more importantly we had fun getting to know them and warm showers and beds to sleep in.

Today we will get to Michigan and explore Ann Arbor!

Learning about Oberlin's history

Edison's birthplace- look closely at the restaurant name

Mike S., who we stayed with in PA, said: "You will never get lost in the midwest because anywhere you look you can always see a water tower or a grain elevator."

Soy (foreground) and corn (distance)

Cabbage?

Toledo!