April 17, 2016
Day Three: Washington, Indiana to Scottsburg, Indiana
Finally, after a couple of days of flat fields and mostly unvarying scenery, I'd get to ride up and down a few hills, and see some trees.
I'd abandoned my original route when I gave up on reaching Bloomington yesterday, and was figuring things out as I went now.
I don't remember having any trouble navigating out of Washington this morning. Looking at Strava now, I can see that I rode a few blocks through town, and then quickly took Redford Road into the countryside.
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I rode through a narrow section of Hoosier National Forest, north of French Lick and West Baden Springs. That was some very, very nice riding. It was starting to green up for Spring. Six years later, I still have fond memories of those few hours of riding. Perfect temperatures, utterly empty roads.
I exited Hoosier National Forest and stopped in Orleans, population 2,028, where I looked around for a while.
Except for a teenage girl dribbling a basketball as she walked down the street, I didn't see anyone in Orleans.
I don't remember much about the rest of the day's ride, from Orleans to Scottsburg, population 6,702. I didn't take many photos. Having left the National Forest, I was back to mostly farm fields as scenery. Pleasant, but nothing memorable, apparently.
I arrived in Scottsburg, where I checked into the cheap Campbell's Motel.
Something seemed a little off about the person at the front desk who ran my credit card, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was about her that seemed odd.
There were even more things off about the room. At the time, it seemed worthy of a Facebook post, in fact. Fortunately, before deleting my Facebook account years ago, I downloaded everything I posted. This is what I wrote at the time:
Something very disquieting about my room at the cheap motel where I'm staying tonight. Not dirty, and no sign of bedbugs, but virtually everything about the place is slightly off - counter height, doorway width, placement of lights, the strange shape of the room itself, the bizarre carpet decorated with pictures of footballs, the seemingly non-standard shape of the toilet seat, even. It's like the bizarro world Feng Shui at work.
I cleaned up and walked to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner. As I recall, the town seemed kind of grimy and depressing, at least the section I walked through, and I didn't feel like taking any photos.
Back at the motel, I found that I was locked out of my room containing my bike and everything else I had with me! At the front desk, I was informed that they had locked me out because I hadn't paid. I pulled out my receipt to find that the woman earlier had billed my credit card for 56 cents instead of 56 dollars. I wasn't too happy that they had locked me out until the matter could be resolved, told them that, let them run my card again, then grumpily returned to my room where I remained unnerved the rest of the evening by how off-kilter everything was.
Six years later, I thought I'd see if the place was still in business. It is, and here's a recent online review that I found amusing; this person was locked IN their room, not locked out:
Today's ride: 88 miles (142 km)
Total: 286 miles (460 km)
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