Day 37-- Changes and Adjusting

Marysville to Wooster, Ohio
Miles: 98.0
Time: 6:40
Aver: 14.7 mph
Max: 32.4
Est Calories: 6,505
Ascent: 4,453

As stated in my last post, this day started out with a strong carry over from the prior long day, with our strong finish. Bob start out with a couple of other riders, and I with a couple of others. Somewhere in the 10-20 mile range, I saw some flashing lights up the road a bit. This is always a cautious time for any group of riders, just hoping that it's not for one of them. Unfortunately, this was Bob's accident. I came upon the incident just as the police showed up. The CrossRoads people where right there as well, given that they were stopped, as often the case, across the road at an intersection to point the way. Most other riders was now showing up, and the CrossRoads people indicated that we should move on. It was tough to just press on, we knew that, in truth, we could not provide any immediate help, and perhaps could cause another problem with all of us standing around the roadway, or getting in the way of the true first responders. In addition, one of the riders, a recent addition to the group from Oregon, Sue, was out in the road trying to re-direct traffic to keep anyone from just running over Bob while he was down in the middle of the outside, highspeed lane. Kudos to Sue, who of all people was the smallest person barely visible by herself. She was right behing Bob when he was moving left to take the left hand lane and was hit.

At the direction of the XC people, I moved on with Al and Jim, who are normally stronger than me. I stayed with them most of the day. At one point of the day we came up to a early SAG stop. There was a bridge out that we could walk over, but the support vehicles could not. Margerite stop her vehicle to let us load up on food and drinks because the ride around the detour would not let her get to the scheduled stop before us. As I was eating some things, Jim decided to move on, and Al soon followed. By the time I was ready to go, it took me may miles to catch-up with them.

We also stopped in a small town for lunch. (Frankly, I'm not sure now whether this was this day or the day before??) The point is that in this small town in southern Ohio, we met a couple of bicycle guys in the this place, and one guy was from Elyria, Ohio, which was the next town over from Lorain, where I grew up. I asked, amoung other things, what brought him to this part of the state. He said that his wife was at a conference near by and he took the opportunity to come down and ride the rural areas of southern Ohio.

It reminded me of time that I was on RnR (Rest and Recuperation) in Australia from VietNam, were I called some family that offered to host military people from VietNam on RnR. After a couple of misses I got a family that was going to be home, and invited me to visit for dinner. It turned out that the father of the family had spent some time in Ohio, and new my home town.

It just seemed that you can go anywhere, and still meet someone in, around, or familiar with your home town. And, this chance meeting in a one-restuarant, small village, in rural Ohio just reinforced that such chance happening do occur, at least for me.

Near the end of the day, just after the last SAG, we ran into some hills that separate the three of us. At one point, I was glad to see Margerite, just to validate that I was on the right road. When I asked her to confirm how far the hotel was, she said that it was xxx miles ahead, but that she couldn't bring it to me. What a polite way of saying...Get riding!!

My cousin, and best friend and wife, did show up and took me to an Amish place outside of town. Once again, a recurring theme, great food and lots of it. See ya.........