Low Energy Dave…Floating into Niles

 There’s no other way to say this. I am just beat. 300 miles in three days with a lot of rolling hills.

Unlike yesterday, which featured the worst of the rollers in the last quarter, today had all the climbing in the first half.   Including three miles of up right out of the hotel lobby.

When I got to the second SAG at 63 miles, I laid down in the grass and closed my eyes. I fell asleep for 10 minutes.   Did I mention that I’m really tired?

The one saving grace was that most of the last 15 miles into the hotel were along a spectacular rails to trails bike parkway. Smooth pavement, flat flat flat, shaded and traffic free.

Niles Greenway... paradise

The world would be a better place if they were about 20 times as many rail trails as there are now.   (Maybe I should change my ride charity from the Human Fund to the Rails to Trails Conservancy …)

Tomorrow is another 90 miler, but it looks like there’s very little climbing, and we might actually have a gentle tailwind. We will reach the shores of Lake Erie and ride along it for the last 30 miles or so.

 All in all, I’ve been really happy with the quality of the roads and the riding in Ohio. Ohio does a very good job of laying down smooth pavement on even lightly traveled roads. Even the rollers would be a lot of fun to ride if you weren’t trying to do 300 miles of them in three days.

There have been more aggressive drivers, especially on the weekdays. Several today got really animated over having to wait 45 seconds to pass us. But then they are undoubtedly very important people driving those jank pickups. And those 45 seconds could’ve been used to cure cancer or end food insecurity or have a clean energy breakthrough.  So you can understand the impatience.

I continue to really enjoy the good folks on this trip. The staff shared that we get along far better than any trip they can remember.  The Georgia boys are a hoot, especially listening to Stuart get worked up about something. He’s such a cool mellow guy, but then something gets under his skin and he goes from 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds.  

Last night at dinner, he mentioned that he would qualify to go on Medicare upon his return from this trip. And his Georgia friend Bill said “oh great so I can start subsidizing you.”  Stuart just about leapt out of his chair saying…”what the FUCK are you talking about? WHAT THE FUCK are you talking about?”  And Bill, who was clearly winding him up, says “I guess I hit a nerve!”  I was tired enough that the whole exchange caused me to dissolve into hysterical giggles.  I was crying I was laughing so hard.

We created a bit of a problem at the Best Westerns waffle bar  

And by “we” I mean John R.   The staff came out and said  “Ai yi yi!!”   We are terrorizing hotel breakfast staff from one side of the country to the other.  When we aren’t destroying waffle bars, we’re eating so much that there’s nothing left for the other guests. If you’ve seen a swarm of locust descend on a field, you’ll get the idea.

I really like this quote about reading books  (I’m working on The Three Body Problem…)

“Our investment in reading changes the book because the book has changed us. ... If books are merely a means of transferring information, then perhaps, yes, a book is a waste of time. If a summary of its thesis and key points could be presented in a brief article or Substack post, why not just save the hours and read the Substack post? All the more if the information is outdated or questionable for one reason or another. But that mistakes what a book is for. A book is a tool. It’s a machine for thinking. And “all machines,” as Thoreau once said, “have their friction.” The time it takes to engage with ideas—whether factual or fictional, emotional or intellectual, accurate or inaccurate, efficient or inefficient—might strike some as a drag. But the time given to working through those ideas, adopting and adapting, developing or discarding, changes our minds, changes us. It’s not about the wisdom we glean. It’s about what wisdom we grow.”

— Joel Miller