Day5: Komoko to Huntington IN

Tuesday June 18, 2019

It was an interesting day, but I, again, did a 100 km day when I didn't want to. I thought that Gmaps showed several intermediate stops I could use later in the day, but, when it came down to the last 20 miles of my day, I had no services at all. That meant I rode father than I should and got tired enough to lose things that I would not have lost if I had stopped earlier. I lost my comb tonight and my only pair of normal - without bicycle seat padding - underwear late this afternoon. I can go to Walmart tomorrow and get replacements for both of those things but they won't be good enough to really replace them.

I did have one very good thing happen today. I went to Schwinn Cycle and Exercise in Kokomo. It was, from the reviews, the second best bike shop in town and it was close to being on my route to the shop that sounded best, so I routed there first. It is a shop that sells 'comfort' bikes, including Townies which are crank-forward, but no recumbents. I didn't really expect much but the guy that owns it is a real bicyclist - he rode the Assault on Mt Mitchell twice ;-} and a very good mechanic. For $30, I got a cheap, but adequate, new BB installed, which didn't fix the problem but proved that it wasn't the in the BB. Then I got a lot of help trying to minimize noise caused by the seat post. We didn't find a perfect solution, which I think would require a new seat post, but I'm much better acquainted with the problem now and don't think it will cause serious issues.

After the bike shop visit, I headed up the Industrial Trail - it was two blocks from the shop - and then the Iron Plate Trail to Peru IN. These, like the Monon Trial I rode yesterday, are rail trails, but they were actually more enjoyable because the pavement joints weren't as bad and there was more to see. The total length of today's trails is similar - 20+ miles - but I managed to actually get into a sort of reverie on the last part of the second trail today which helped minimize my boredom.

I rode through Peru on IN 24 BUS, stopping for a late lunch on the east edge of town and rode that section of BUS 22 till it ended at IN 24 quite a way east of Peru. It would have been easier riding to get on IN 24 sooner since the BUS 24, while much quieter was also much more bumpy. Even my big tires could not make it comfortable and with narrower tires I would have been beat up.

IN 24 was a mostly four lane divided expressway with great shoulders. Its problem, for bicyclist, it that it is surfaced with EXTREMELY noisy cross grooved concrete pavement. Car and truck tires SCREAMed as they passed me. It was so loud that it was damaging my hearing and giving me a bad headache. I finally stopped and got out an ear plug for my left ear. Both the hearing damage - I hope - and the headache went away after I put in that ear plug.

There was not even a service station between were I got on IN 24 and Huntington where I'm staying tonight. I stopped twice to snack from my supplies today, once on the Iron Plate Trail and again on US 24 because both had 20 mile stretches with no services. When I got to Huntington, I saw that Huntington's city heritage festival starts tomorrow. I got charged an extra $15+ for my room because of that and told when I checked in that I could only stay one night. I ate at Subway before I stopped for the night. I had a 12" sub and ate it all. Damn that was good!

Tomorrow I hope to take a short day to Fort Wayne. Rain/storms are forecast for tomorow afternoon and the next morning. Then another nice day is forecast before more rainy days. Right now it looks like it will get less rainy as I go north on my way to Detroit.

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