And I Think That We'll Have Fun If It Stops Raining

August 27, 2005

Morristown to Hebron

Well, the Bates Motel turned out to be okay after all. I turned on the remote-less TV and up came the very beginning of "Ray", the Ray Charles bio-pic, A terrific movie that kept my mind off the creepy surroundings.

Plants and steel furniture filled my room with ambiance at the Bates Motel in Morristown.

The morning broke with a gray overcast. It had rained overnight and it certainly looked like more was in the offing. So I took off to the east, which is a rather depressing way to resume a trip west. I pulled into a McDonalds and laid waste to an obscene amount of food. As I ate the skies opened.

At my last pit stop yesterday in St. Clairsville, I decided to purchase some budget rain gear. I take a 30 gallon green trash bag with drawstring. The store forced me to buy 10 so I left a few bags as a tip for Norman back at the motel.

I donned my new gear, and rolled into the gloom heading south for Belmont and Bethesda. In Boston and DC, these city names are synonymous with posh suburbia, but in eastern Ohio they are small rural towns with a disturbing volume of high speed truck traffic.

I headed west on route 147 which I know to be a pleasant country road, but in the mist and gray it was just a means to an end. I occasionally caught a break from the wet but the skies remained dreary.

I had about six hours of this lovely weather.

I turned on route 265 at Bailey's Mills and enjoyed a flat to rolling ride through farm country. In this part of Ohio, farms tend to grow livestock and feed. Nellie, my bike, was behaving admirably this day so I spent a good amount of time cranking away in my big gears.

I reconnected with US 40 just east of Cambridge, and started west for Zanesville. US 40 cuts a straight path across the state, topography be damned. So it was back to the ups and downs, bipolar bicycling.

A memorial to Hopalong Cassidy in Cambridge.

I really hated to stop since I was wet and any store with AC would give me a chill. Hypothermia is not your friend on a bike tour. The garbage bag was really more important for retaining body heat than for keeping dry. I also wore a bicycling cap under my helmet that I picked up at Bike Virginia 14 years ago. This also helped to retain heat and keep the rain out of my eyes. (I seem to have lost my goggles somewhere along the way.) Rain stings my eyes for some reason and on one descent today I had to stop because my eyes teared up and I couldn't see, not a good thing when you're tooling along at 30 mph in the rain and cars and trucks are speeding past on your all-too-immediate left.

Just east of Zanesville I seemed to lose power. I checked the rear wheel, but it was okay. It was the onset of the dreaded bonk. Bonking is to bicyclists what hitting the wall is to marathon runners. It means your muscles are out of fuel. You feel sluggish and lose power until you end up beside the road in a deep blue funk unable to go any farther.

I saw a McDonalds and passed it by; I couldn't bear the thought of eating in an air conditioned place. This was probably a bad idea since the next few miles were a 33 rpm LP played at 16 rpm.

I soon spotted a Blimpies sub shop which, it turned out, was not air conditioned. Inside it was a blissful 80 degrees. I ate my six inch roast beef sub slowly and in no time I was back on the road with fresh legs, lesson learned.

I thought the road would flatten out after Zanesville but it was more of the same. US 40 has bike lanes on it for some segments of the trip. This is pretty unusual in that for much of the time it is a four lane highway. I still used the right car lane as much as I could since the bike lane was often cluttered with debris.

The clerk at Blimpies told me that there would be hotels near Heath OH which she said was about 30 miles away. Having already ridden 60 I thought it might be a stretch to make Heath in one piece but I forged on. I could have checked into a motel in Zanesville but then what the heck would I do for the rest of the day? Might as well make miles while the skies weep.

East of Zanesville the hills kept coming and I learned that I should have had the footlong sub. I was now riding under somewhat ominous skies and to make my day even more fun I had a noticeable headwind.

Surrender homo sapiens! I think my neighbors would really appreciate this concrete gorilla in my front yard.

There's not much more to say except that Heath kept gradually getting closer. I kept looking down at my state highway map and getting depressed. The scale is way too big for bicycling; progress comes in millimeters.

I crept along passing my first field of soybeans. Soon I'll be in flat farm country, if I survive the ride there.

Out of water and food I rolled into a crossroad called Jacksontown and raided a convenience store. (I've got an appetite and I'm not afraid to use it.) The two counterpersons gave me directions to two places of lodging, a new hotel and another traditional motel. The hotel won, being about three miles closer.

About a mile out of Jacksontown, I became aware that something had changed; the landscape and the road were suddenly flat and the sun was coming out.

It was tempting to go on but 5 pm was here. Time for a beer and a bed.

Tomorrow I head north to avoid Columbus. I'll ride to Delaware Ohio and decide where to go from there.

The forecast is for sun with late afternoon storms. It's August in Ohio.

Today's ride: 88 miles (142 km)
Total: 511 miles (822 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	1
Comment on this entry	Comment	0