June 29, 2012
Day 14: Wabash, IN to Monroeville, IN
(By Jeff)
Through sheer force of will, we managed to leave the plush Charley Creek Inn by about 7:00, walking out into another hot morning. I don't really understand geography or meteorology or climate change, and I'm puzzled that it keeps getting hotter the farther north we go.
(In my notes that I took during this morning's ride, I wrote “HOT” and underlined it twice. I don't think there's much more to say about this – the heat really was terrible.)
We couldn't take our bikes into our room in the historic Inn (did I mention they just spent $15 million renovating it? Because the hotel staff mentioned it to US multiple times), so we had to meet up with the hotel manager to unlock the room where our bikes were stored overnight. In one of those “It's a small world after all” moments, we learned that during Joy's teenage years this same manager had run the Hotel Pattee, another seemingly out of place upscale hotel, in Perry, Iowa - Joy's hometown.
It was easy following Joy's route of Wabash and back onto the Northern Tier route, and soon we were in tiny Lagro, where, just as when I rode through in 2008, not much was going on. I did learn how to pronounce the town's name correctly this time. Also, Joy would like me to note that the waitress at the restaurant was very nice, and allowed her to use their restroom event though we didn't buy anything there. Duly noted.
After Lagro, we had about 30 really, really great miles through shady, traffic-free Salamonie State Forest, and then on empty country roads. We hadn't eaten a real breakfast, so we stopped at Pilchers Chapel United Methodist Church and had a short picnic – dipping butter cookies into our jar of Nutella is our latest craze. Calorie-intensive, and probably not THAT unhealthy.
After that, more country roads, a brief roadside conversation with a nice guy who raised Clydesdale horses, and then the first town since Lagro: Zanesville, which consisted of a few houses and a general store. We had a real lunch there, and spent a lot of time hiding out from the heat. We were slowing down after the morning's fast start, and we stopped at the next little community, Yoder. There were two things in the town: The grain elevator and the post office. We were desperate for coolness, so we went into the air conditioned post office, under the pretext of buying two stamps. After a while we moved to the bench out front, where a few locals stopped and expressed surprise that we were outside, much less riding bicycles. The lady in the post office took pity on us and brought us a couple Icees, which was very nice of her indeed.
We made our way slowly toward Hoagland, another small town on the route. At some point I looked back and noticed that the sky had suddenly grown very dark, and the tailwind we had enjoyed during the afternoon had increased dramatically. My adrenaline took over, and I sped up to 18 mph. I glanced back often to make sure Joy was keeping up with me, as the temperature began dropping. As we rode into Hoagland, Joy caught up with me, and pointed towards a brick church. We got into the small corner of the entrance to the church, surround on two sides by brick walls, just as the storm hit.
We were across the street from a gas station, whose power went off just as we got out of the storm. After about ten minutes, sirens started sounding, so I ran to the gas station to see if the people there knew anything. They told me that there was a tornado warning, so I ran across to get Joy, but found the pastor of the church had arrived to open the church. We got the bikes in, then looked up to see 10 or 15 people from the town following us in. We all sat in the church for about 20 minutes, until the storm seemed to have passed.
We had another hour of riding to get to Monroeville, our destination for the day. As we got closer to Monroeville, the damage got worse – downed limbs and entire trees, power lines on the road. Once we were stopped in a driveway looking at a fallen tree and a man and woman in a pickup truck stopped and asked if we were planning to say in the Monroeville community center, which has hosted touring cyclists for years. Turns out he was one of the townspeople who managed the center, and told us he would meet us there in a half hour and let us in. Monroeville has a deservedly great reputation among touring cyclists, for just this kind of thing.
We arrived in the town to find power lines and limbs down everywhere. The beloved Whippy Dip, which I had looked forward to all day, was closed, and their sign was leaning at a sad angle. We checked in at the community center, where we met Marie, another cyclist who had arrived before the storm. Joy, Marie and I decided to make ourselves useful by picking up some limbs and trash, then Joy and I walked to a gas station to buy ingredients for dinner. An old man was sitting by the ice cream case, encouraging the harried woman behind the counter to “just give it away... it's going to melt anyway!” He ate several ice cream bars while we were in the place, periodically mentioning that “this probably ain't good for my sugar”. We each got a couple of free ice creams ourselves, then walked back to the power-less community center, and went to bed on the floor of the very dark, very quiet room.
Despite the heat, and then the storm, and the unavailability of ice cream at the Whippy Dip, this was an enjoyable day of riding, with the quiet roads and encounters with friendly people that make bike touring worthwhile for me.
Today's ride: 68 miles (109 km)
Total: 576 miles (927 km)
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