Wooster, through Amish Country

 We rode 99 miles today.   I seriously considered doing laps around the hotel parking lot to round my mileage up to 100. But my room was ready, and I had been cold all day long so I hung it up at 99.1.

Hard to believe that you could ride hard for 6+ hours in the middle of June on a dry day and be cold.  But the temps stubbornly remained in the 50s. Tomorrow even colder, but this time I’m going to wear a jacket.

For a second day, I rode with John and Olaf and Jens. Really enjoy those guys, the pace, the attitude, the stopping for chocolate milk in the middle of a ride.  We have an expression when one of us is impatient to get done and takes the lead, escalating the pace. It’s called smelling the barn. I was smelling the barn today and just flew through the last 25 miles.  I was cold!

The first third of the ride was not too exciting, more farm roads.   After the first sag, it started getting swoopy. Lots of curving roads, a bit of up-and-down, riding through little towns with quaint, but well kept downtowns.  Farms set on hillsides, with giant barns, and gorgeous trees, and pastures.

The last quarter featured a lot of very steep climbs. Rollers, but where the ascent was long enough and steep enough that the momentum you carried didn’t really help much.   

Some tough hills to finish

Still, rollers are my jam and I felt strong today   Possibly because of all the calories I stuffed in last night?

On the second or third of those climbs came my favorite moment of the ride. After a screaming fast descent we were facing a very steep climb that maxed out at around 14% grade.  Just before I started up, I noticed three little Amish kids and their mom standing with their old-timey bikes and watching us.

I gave a little wave, or at least as much as I could without letting go of the handlebars… I was going really fast. The kids waved back vigorously and then stood and watched as we grinded our way up the climb. I don’t know what those kids were thinking, watching all these brightly spandexed riders with their expensive carbon bikes fighting up a steep hill for no particularly good reason. But I think it must’ve been something like “these English are crazy”

Before we got to Wooster we rode through Funk  


As well as a place called Mohicanville.   I don’t know if it pre-or post dates James Fenmore Cooper.  That reminds me, I haven’t watched Last of the Mohicans for at least a year. Time to queue it up again. And! I think I’ll be listening to the soundtrack tomorrow.

The Best Western (PLUS!!!) in Wooster would like me to know that they actually cleaned my room.  At first glance, I thought I’d been checked into a crime scene.



I thought a lot about this poem today  (excerpt from The Summer Day)


I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver












Comments

  1. Peter HJune 10, 2024 at 5:36 PM

    Another great account from the road! Ride on…

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 11, 2024 at 7:28 AM

    Looks like you rode past my undergraduate stomping grounds of Ohio Wesleyan (Delaware, Ohio). And love The Summer Day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 13, 2024 at 7:54 AM

    Great riding! You can do it - keep going! Mary Oliver was thinking - but keep going... “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’” (John 11:25-26, NIV).

    ReplyDelete

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