GOBA 2023 Day 2

 My ride today was approximately 30 miles.

We saw covered bridges.  

One bridge was very short.   It was built by the local vocational school to gives students experience in engineering and building bridges.

  The GOBA routes were for 30 or 50 miles.  Since the ride on Tuesday is mandatory of 50 miles, I thought I should not push my endurance to the limit by doing to 50- mile trip today. 

It was still a beautiful ride. 

Last week I clumsily bruised my hip, and on this trip I found that starting my bike from a stop causes pain as I shift my weight onto the right pedal.   So I'm trying to pace myself.

I found out at the 25-mile mark , where I was expecting lunch, that lunch was not available on the short route. 

This have me pause to reflect on my overall satisfaction with the trip.   

The night before I was very uncomfortable camping. It was unseasonably cold.  I wore my rain jacket over my pj's to bed.   My tent site (and I chose it) was a little sloped and had uneven spots.  All I did all night was toss and turn.  Every time I rolled over, my Therma-rest mattress went one way and my silk mummy-style sleeping bag went the other. I tried to put everything back together and roll the other way, and I ended up trying to roll uphill.  At my age and level of joint stiffness, that was quite a chore.  My foot , inside the sleeping bag, got up against the sidewalk of the tent and the heavy dew soaked through the tent wall into my sleeping bag.  I awoke, cold and miserable, with wet feet, at 52 degrees. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and had similar issues, plus some leg cramping.   I must be a little dehydrated from being out in the wind all day.    So I got up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak.

Why don't they have lunch for riders on the shorter routes?  What kind of reference to all bodies on bikes is that?

Anyway, I ended up eating  lunch at a Taco Bell, leaving the planned route for a quarter mile, before finishing the last five miles.  I was hot and tired when I arrived back at the campground.  I sat in the shade and drank some water. Before gathering my things to use the shower truck.  The mobile shower truck can be seen just behind the rainbow-colored mobile apartment unit in the photo below.

This type of shower unit was developed after hurricane Katrina, according to the vendor who was monitoring the queues of the 1000 people lined up for the 24 shower stalls over a couple of hours.  

A friend from my local club arrived this afternoon, so I had dinner with her.  We went to the Mexican restaurant that I had passed on the way to the Strawberry festival last night.  She was pleased with her vegan dinner, and I had seafood tacos.  They weren't like any other shrimp tacos I ever had, but they hit the spot.

Then we revisited the strawberry festival, and finally walked across to the park where the opening ceremony took place. 

The director of the ride apologized for the disorganization that many riders had experienced.  He explained that this is the first time in the northeast corner of the state for many years.  In contrast to previous years where GOBA was welcomed in the towns visited as an economic boon to the community, in Northeast Ohio, the reaction was like "What's GOBA?" 

After his speech and some recognitions, there was musical entertainment.  My friend and I did not stay, but rode back to camp.