I am writing this post from the comfort of my kitchen table at home. I have finished my usual breakfast of egg and oatmeal and I am still sipping my brewed espresso. Yes, I quit GOBA early. It's raining outside and the weather predicts rain all day. I am thinking of my friends who are still doing GOBA and wondering how their day is going.
So here's what happened:
Day 5.
The route was a mandatory riding day, as we moved from Willoughby, Ohio, south to Kent. Kent, as in Kent State University near Akron, Ohio. The prevailing wind in Ohio is from the southwest, and it proved to be a day where that was true. We didn't have high wind, but it was somewhat breezy.
After taking down the tent and packing gear up, we started the day by pushing the bikes up the hill out of the park. You can see the uphill road on the left side of the photo below.
I stopped for a bagel and egg breakfast at a coffee shop in downtown Willoughby. My friends are much faster riders than I am, so I worried with every bite I took that I was getting further and further behind. I knew the route was going to be hilly for the day from looking at the elevation map in RideWithGPS.
I rode the first 10 miles, pushing my bike up the steepest parts of the first two big hills. I rode most of the way up the gradual rises between miles 5 and 10. I had to get off and walk several times. My heart rate had still not returned to my normal resting heart rate of 70 from the day before. When I got up it was still at 94. So walking up the hills was frequently pushing it up to 120 plus. I was really nervous at mile 10 where the hill was much longer and steeper than the first two. Everyone was passing me. "On your left!" "Passing" or just "Good Morning!" to let me know they were coming around. Even the little kids were passing me, as well as the couples on tandems with their kids and riders who were 10 or even 20 years older than me. By the time I got to Mile 10 at Chagrin falls I was hot and bothered. A group of three people from Pittsburg that I had met the day before said they would ride with me.
Two of them were emergency room personnel in their day jobs. One of them in particular (the lady on the fence) pledged to stay with me all the way. I told her not to. The lady in pink had snapped this picture of me riding past one of the buildings in Chagrin Falls and she shared it with me.
I looked at the road snaking up a hill past the bridge. I know that a "can do" attitude is the first prerequisite to doing anything, but in my heart of hearts, I knew that I could not do that hill and then continue uphill afterwards.
I told them to go ahead. I was going to call an Uber. So I circled back to the library in Chagrin Falls and I locked up my bike. I took a few minutes to cool off in the air-conditioned library and used the WiFi to work on previous blog posts. I had no data on my phone in Willoughby, so I was feeling the need to get online. After twenty minutes or so I installed the Uber app on my phone. I ordered an XL ride (an SUV with 6 passenger capability) Everything went smoothly, the SUV driver said no problem carrying my bike. I picked a destination that was before the lunch stop (I did not want to miss lunch again!) I would be missing the snack stop but that was OK because I had had the bagel for breakfast before I started. My planned destination was the golf course on Aurora Road. The driver dropped me off at a restaurant on a road that was a straight shot to rejoin the route.
About a mile down the road, I heard "Brenda??????? Is that you????????" from the rider behind me. It was my friend Jody from our local bike club. She was very surprised to see me in front of her, since she is a very strong rider who typically floats up the hills at home in Mansfield. I explained how I had taken an Uber. She was impressed that I thought of that. She asked about where the lunch stop was. It was about a half mile ahead. She showed me her hand, it was shaking. She was bonking. I offered her a snack from my fanny pack, but she declined. Good thing she refused, because I then realized I had forgotten to put any in it this morning.
She went ahead. When I arrived at the lunch stop I first stood in line at the Port-a-Johns. I should have used the air-conditioned flush toilet in the bathroom at the library. I went through the lunch line where they had pizza, hot dogs and watermelon. They also had ice cream but since I can't have dairy, I skipped that option. I looked for Jody in the picnic area, and found my other friends from the local club as well.
A woman looked at me suspiciously and asked if I rode the whole way. I just smiled at her.
My other friend from the local bike club was not doing well after climbing the hills. She prefers to ride on trails, not roads, and she is not as strong on hills. She usually brakes going downhill. It's important to get as much momentum as possible when riding "rollers" because the momentum can carry you up most of the next hill, if you are lucky. She actually opted to SAG (accept a ride from the Support and Gear team) out.
When you SAG, everyone says it's OK, but you know they are mentally assigning you to another category of rider. It's not supposed to be a competitive ride, but some people act as if it is. People are judging you all the time. I heard later that there were several SAGs at that stop, and that there were multiple people who had SAGged at the breakfast stop.
After lunch, as I was riding out, the Pittsburg group caught up with me. They looked very flushed and tired, like everyone else, they had actually ridden the killer hills. Judy again pledged to stay with me so I didn't have to ride alone.
After lunch there was a stretch of country highway where road maintenance was being performed. There were asphalt and tar on the road. Some of them stuck to my wheel and then pinged off when they hit the forks. To my untrained ear, it sounded like a spoke was breaking or something so I had to stop to check it out. There were a lot of big trucks carrying asphalt and road equipment thundering past. There was also a giant farm tractor with disks folded up behind him to travel on the road. I pulled off into a driveway so he could get by. Judy had never seen one of these before, and she was speculating on what it was used for, so I explained it was to prepare the field for planting. Pickup trucks with rednecks driving them sooted us and blared their horns at us. There is an Ohio law that says when overtaking, you must give an audible alert. I think the lawmakers intended a "Beep" not a "BLARE", as these trucks did. One driver actually passed us blaring the horn, then turned into a barn driveway ahead of us, turned around and came back at us blaring the horn again. A little bit scary, but also annoying. We were single file when there was traffic, so we were obeying the law. They acted as if we had no right to be on the road. There were many hills on this stretch that I had to walk up and Judy walked along with me. She was very encouraging "You got this!" "Keep going!" She kept offering me a wet cloth but I just poured some water over my head. I had three full bottles at the start of this stretch, but by the time we reached the water stop they were all empty. Along this stretch a guy came up and told us he was the designated last rider. He passed us, so we became the last riders. When we reached the water stop it was a few minutes after 5:00 and the Port-a-Johns were being loaded to be taken away. The SAG volunteers did have water to refill a bottle. They told us they were working overtime and I asked if they were getting paid time and a half or doubletime - either way it was zero. We debated about whether to ride the last 8-9 miles into Kent. Judy's friends had gone ahead and were probably already in camp. I don't know why she wanted to ride with me. I felt guilty about holding her up, so I asked the volunteers if they would give us a ride "for free" since they were going that way anyway. The team leader looked at me and said since it was such a hard ride today and so many people had SAGged, he would give us a freebie. The official rule is that if you SAG twice, you are asked to leave the trip. It took a while to load Judy's bike as it was a different geometry and didn't fit the standard bike carrier. Luckily the team leader had a different carrier in the back of his car, which they were able to install and then load her bike. My driver was his wife. She and I chatted while she took me back. She was a runner turned rider turned SAG driver. Judy rode in the team leader's car, and since she was camping in the general area and I was in the Knight's Kingdom, we separated.
After thanking the amateur radio operators for the lift, I picked up my luggage and looked for a spot to put up my tent. I spotted a guy, John, who had camped near me the first night in Jefferson. His tent was closest to the showers and Port-a-Pots. I saw lots of the Knight's Kingdom luxury tents, but not a lot of tents from the tier of service I had subscribed to, which was bring your own tent and put it up yourself. John pointed the way to the front of the park. I took my bike back that way and observed all the tents pitched on the side of the hill. Since my experience back at the fairgrounds, trying to roll uphill in the middle of the night, I opted to return to the spot closest to the showers where John was camped. It was flat but full of tree roots, and there were a lot of carpenter ants running around with a lot of wood chips on the ground. I secured my bike to a telephone pole and proceeded to put up my tent.
Jody and Ruth, from my club, came by and asked if I wanted to walk a mile into town to get dinner with them. I was still sweaty and in my riding shorts. They said they hadn't showered because they walked all the way from their tent, which was a half mile away, to shower, only to find out that the water was being tested and the showers were closed. So they had changed clothes only. They offered to bring me a hamburger if I wasn't up to walking.
I got my tent up and gathered my things to take to the shower. When I got there, a woman waiting there said there was no hot water, but they were working on it. Since my tent was only a few hundred feet away, and I could monitor the queue from my vantage spot, I elected to wait. As soon as the hot water was fixed, I watched the queue get shorter, and then longer. I was torn between taking a shower and missing Jody and Ruth when they returned with my hamburger. I decided to wait.
It was getting late when they returned. I went ahead and ate the hamburger while we chatted for a few minutes. They said goodbye when the kids working for Knight's Kingdom came over and pitched their tents next to me and ran a noisy leaf blower to fill up their air mattresses. Then the kids brought the takeout they had ordered from a Chinese place to the spot between my tent and John's and sat on the ground. They had no utensils to eat with, and the shashimi was missing, so there was general chaos. I had only used my fork so I offered them my spoon and knife. I decided my best course of action was to go and get my shower. My phone was not charging from my battery banks, so I assumed they must be dead. I took them to the charging station where there was a complete mess of splitters plugged in. I plugged my phone directly into an extension cord running into the building. After my shower I went back and switched the phone with one of the battery banks.
When I got back the kids were gone but they had left a container of egg drop soup on the ground. I sat in my chair for a few minutes and played Wordle on my phone. (I had data again!) When one of the kids came by I pointed out the soup container and they took it away. Then I went into my tent and fell asleep.
Day 6.
I rolled over in my tent. I could barely move my shoulder. Several months ago I had visited the doctor because of sleeping "wrong" on my arm and pinching something. I couldn't lift my arm past a certain point then, and it felt exacttly the same on this morning. He had prescribed muscle relaxers, but not only did I not have them with me, they would not be a viable option on a day where I needed to ride my bike. I wondered how I would perform my usual awkward move of rolling over into "downward facing dog" position to walk my hands up and back out of my tent, if I couldn't even move my arm. I rested a few minutes, gingerly moving my arm up to the limit and trying to move it past the sore place. I realized that during the night, I had gotten crossways of my Thermarest air mattress and had been lying half-on and half-off the mattress. My whole body ached, including my hips, from walking way more than I usually do on this trip. It took a full half hour of small movements before I tried to get myself out of the tent.
I got dressed and walked down to the Port-a-John area. A woman waiting in line for the toilet told me she was dropping out and looking for a ride back to Jefferson. We exchanged phone numbers. Then I headed over to the area where John had indicated breakfast would be served. It was across several parking lots, in a pavilion within the metropark.When I arrived, I learned they were out of coffee, but more was coming. I hung around and two of my friends from our local club showed up. Eventually the promised coffee arrived and I meandered over to the food table. They were out of bananas and muffins. That is all I noticed that they had on offer.
I drank my coffee and decided to ride my bike into town and explore what was for breakfast. The ride scheduled for today was optional, and with the aches in my body I decided it was not an option for me. I needed a day of rest. I debated leaving the trip. The weather for Friday and Saturday was supposed to be rainy. Did I really want to tough it out? I mentioned to my friends that I was thinking of dropping out.
As I walked back to my tent and my bike, I ran into Sue, the woman who, along with her husband, had convinced me to SAG in two days before. I told her I was thinking of dorpping out, and she suggested putting a notice on the bulletin board to share a ride back to the starting point, where my car was parked. I told her about the woman who was looking for a ride and said we could share an Uber.
A few minutes later I got a text from the first woman, who had already found a ride. Then I got a text from Sue. She had arrived back to her tent and found a couple that had already called a cab. The cab would be there in half an hour. I needed to make a decision.
So I decided to take the cab ride. Nothing for me to do to arrange it except grab my car keys. My share of the cab ride turned out to cost more than a solo Uber trip, but it really didn't matter at that point. The ride to Jefferson was uneventful. I got in my car, said goodbye to the other two, and drove back to Kent. At some point I was driving along the optional bike route for the day and I passed a few cyclists. Downtown seemed like a lot of heavy traffic. I was able to park my car a few steps from my tent and take it down, pack my suitcases, etc. Once that was done, I thought about riding my bike around Kent but it seemed like another hassle. Did I mention I was tired? I texted my friends that I was leaving.
I learned later that the next day the forecasted rain for Friday did not come. The ride to the fairgrounds in Burton was easier than the last ride I had taken, although it was hot. Because of the forecasted rain, the GOBA organization was able to get the fairgrounds to open up another building for inside camping. They said the last day ride was an easy one, although they did have to ride in the rain.
And so ends the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure of 2023. In my case, I will remember it as The Great Ohio Bicycle Ordeal. It was an ordeal for me mostly because I wasn't conditioned enough, and there were a host of reasons for that, but the bottom line was I was not in the best shape of my life. I'd had the knee replacement in November and my brother-in-law's death in May. I didn't put my bike through a safety check before leaving, and it probably could have used new tires before the trip, although if I ran over some glass it might not have prevented the flat. It was also an ordeal because of lack of information, cold weather the first night, long walks, too much sudden elevation change, showers and toilets being out of order, towel service not being available, and having to find food on my own.
It was also fun at times. Despite living in Ohio most of my adult life, I had never been to Fairport Harbor or Willoughby, which seemed like charming towns. The covered bridges in Ashtabula County were very picturesque and the weather the first couple of days was just about perfect for a bike ride. I met a lot of really nice people, and got to know my existing friends better. 
