Day 38

Day By Day Notes From The Road
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This document updated Wednesday, August 6^th, 2004

Napoleon Ohio to Sandusky Ohio - 87 Miles

By Erwin:

Today showed why I will feel pretty darn proud when we arrive in DC. After some pretty easy riding last week, today's weather made it one of the harder days of the ride.

We got up around 4am, when a local police officer warned us of an oncoming storm with 60mi/hr winds. We broke down camp in double time and found shelter in one of the fairground barns. Since we had breakfast duty, we made breakfast early while we waited for the storm. Ironically, the storm passed us by, but we couldn;t start biking yet, because it was still dark, so we hung out taking naps on the wooden benches until about 6:30.

About 10 miles into the ride, the first raindrops caught up with us and for the next 6 hours we rode through the rain. Luckily it wasn't that cold, but covered by wet clothes, our bodies felt cold in the wind we created by riding. I got pretty miserable, but, as before, there is no alternative to sucking it up and keeping going. Luckily, Lucija had an extra dry shirt which she lent me and things went much better after that.

The last 10 miles, however, were pretty tough as the wind turned directly against us and we found ourselves in a real down-pour. When we got to camp, we waited for the other riders to get our bags of the truck so that we did have to leave too many bags out in the continuing rain. Luckily, we found some hot chocolate (and prety awful microwavable omelets) to kill time and keep us warm.

Once we got the bags of the truck, we set up our tent in the rain. Luckily, we're super-expert in tent-setting by now and the tent was still pretty dry once we got ourselves and our bags in. After I helped some other riders with their tent, the hot shower was just divine, but it took a while before my core felt warm again.

Tomorrow, the rain should have blown over, and the ride along lake Erie should be really nice. I'm hoping for dry weather!

By Lucija:

Yeah, today was long and very wet.  Surprisingly we were in our camp by 1.00pm already, since there was no point in making stops today.  As soon as I stopped, I got cold, so it was best to just keep on moving and get through the day.

Photos:

We didn't take many photos today because we didn't want the camera to get drenched like everything else.  Here, we found an old barn where we stopped to get out of the rain for a few minutes.  Erwin looks deceptively dry, but accurately fatigued.