Wow, I made it to another state! Tonight I am in Pennsylvania.  This means there is only West Virginia and Maryland left.  Once I pedal about 400 more miles I am done going from coast-to-coast.

Today,  my son and I pedaled about 80 miles.  It was a hard but relatively uneventful day.  To give you a sense of where we are, today’s ride took us through the north east corner of Ohio.  We went through Kent, Ohio, which is where Kent State is located.

The day was hard for three reasons.  First, we spent a lot of time on gravel or very rutted roads.  The roads were not in as poor a shape as Michigan’s, but they were in bad shape  My left hand and wrist were bounced and jarred a lot.  During one part of the afternoon I could not use my left hand to brake or shift because it hurt so much.  Luckily, shifters and brakes are on both sides of the handlebars so I didn’t have to stop riding.

The second reason the day was hard was due to the day ending with a very long and steep climb.  After biking all day the last thing I wanted to see was a giant hill.  Google Maps counts down how long to your destination.  The count down timer is not very good.  It just assumes you are pedaling at 12 mph.   I was stuck at 18 minutes to go before reaching the motel for what seemed like forever since I was not pedaling up the giant hill at anywhere near 12 mph.

Third, we got rained on.  After we ate lunch a large black cloud filled just part of the sky.  I was not very worried because I could see blue sky around all parts of the cloud.  The cloud soaked us and then moved on.  Unfortunately, the cloud was moving slowly and in the same direction we were pedaling.  We quickly caught up to the cloud and got soaked a second time.  We decided to outrun the cloud so that we didn’t get soaked a third time but getting really wet twice was not a lot of fun.

The problems of pedaling all disappeared from my mind after a warm shower and a great meal at “Sal’s” in Beaver Creek.  I look forward to tomorrow and its new adventures.