Goal Met- 500 Miles!

 I wanted to ride part of the North Coast Inland Trail that I skipped over last week, so yesterday I decided to ride from Bellevue to Fremont.

That meant driving 120 miles to ride 20 miles.  Ed thought it was crazy.    I had ridden the trail from Monroeville to Bellevue previously this summer.  It was crushed gravel and I didn't really want to ride it again.  But I had not ridden from Bellevue to Fremont, or the section from Wakeman to Monroeville. 

I never regret choosing to take a bike ride! I knew this ride would put me over   the 500 mile goal I had set for myself.   

I got started late.  The weather has been pretty cold in the mornings, so I hung around the house until after lunch. I finally got started at 3:30, meaning I would not arrive in Bellevue until 4:30.  I thought I would give myself an hour or so to ride west, then turn around and come back to my car. 

When I arrived in Bellevue, I used Trail Link app to locate the beginning of the trail.  I could not find a parking lot at the marked space, but finally found one at the Tea Kaufman homestead west of town.  

The trail is paved concrete and is "fast",  meaning very smooth and my road bike pedals easy.  Going west it may be very slightly downhill.  I soon arrived in Clyde Ohio.  Clyde seems to be a bicycle-friendly town with the path clearly defined through the main streets of town.  The town is the home of the Whirlpool factory, which I had toured when I was a business administration student in college. 

I pedaled past the parking lot for the Whirlpool factory without incident.  After leaving Clyde, a freight train passed me.  I could not keep up with it, despite the "fast" surface of the trail.  

This section of the trail is straight and broad.  It is a rail-to-trail conversion and it follows along the railroad line, straight as an arrow towards Fremont. 

When MapMyRide announced that I had reached the 10-mile mark, I turned around.  I had reached the outskirts of Fremont.  The ride back was without incident.  The sun was now behind me. 

 I pedaled along with an eastbound train on the return trip.  

When MapMyRide announced I had reached the 16-mile mark, I knew I had met my 500-mile goal.  I still had four miles left to get back to my car.   

When I got there, the sun was low in the sky, with a haze that shimmered through the smoke from the West Coast fires.  

As I drove through town on State Route 20, I noticed that the separate bike trail ran along the south side of the highway all the way up to the edge of the downtown area.  

I called Ed and asked him to put the dinner in the oven.  Pork chops, baked potatoes, salt and pepper and a splash of olive oil, put in the oven at 300 degrees for about an hour and a half.  He surprised me by cooking broccoli to go with it! 

You can support the fundraising for this effort at this link