Day 3 - Here We Go!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Bowling Green, OH to Ashland, OH
~ 96.66 Miles

Our expected route for the day:

Day 2 - Evening Report

Another great day.

To start off, on behalf of all of us riders, I want to thank Dave Dreyer for doing an amazing job of taking care of us along the way. Dave is driving the van and trailer for us. It can't be the most exciting responsibility in the world to drive up ahead of us 15-30 miles and wait for us to ride past, only to do it all over again and again and again until we reach our destination each day. So, thanks Dave, you're doing a great job keeping us stocked up on water, food, stretch breaks, some great pictures and what ever else we need along the way.


This morning we rolled out around 8:00 AM. Once we got ourselves out of Jackson, MI, we were good to go. Getting out of Jackson, however, was a bit of a chore. Our best, most convenient way out would have been via a divided highway. Since we aren't technically supposed to ride on divided highways (and it really isn't a great idea as far as safety goes), we made our way through some mysterious backwoods roads that occasionally gave us no choice but to get chased by dogs that thought they were much larger and more intimidating than they actually were and ride on gravel, which isn't very cool, but we took it slow and made it back around to our route.

The terrain today was nice. Most of the time (excluding the gravel) we were on some nice roads with fairly wide shoulders and hills with very forgiving grades (probably nothing more than a 1%). There was a head wind out of the East most of the day, but we plugged through it when we needed to.

I won't divulge the details, but ask Mark about a very specific riding technique he should be pretty keen on by the time our little adventure is through. If his memory needs any jogging, it has to do with a vital step involved in the whole stopping process when you have clip in pedals. Sorry Mark, but how could I possibly resist. Maybe I'll go back and edit this out of today's post for a small bribe, but don't count on it. Like I said earlier today, pride isn't a terrible thing to lose. I think this still stands, despite how terrible it may be for me to blog about it. Just remember that I've fallen over 1x so far on this trip too.

We arrived at our hotel around 4:30 PM, checked in and did some chilaxin' until dinner. Tonight for dinner we partook in a place I like to frequent quite regularly, Chipotle. It was gooooood, though we felt like we needed more calories, so most of the group went to Bob Evans for a bit more to eat.

Here are some of the stats for today:
Ride Time: 6:34:05
Distance Today: 106.85 Miles
Total Trip Distance So Far: 226.60
Average Speed: 16.2 MPH
Max Speed: 31.2 MPH
Road Kill Tally: Submit your guesses to Cliff. He'll reveal the final count after the trip.


Here are some pix from today:

Look, now I have a unique patch (of sorts) on BOTH arms.















Bob & Caleb getting ready to get back to it.















Look, they are actually riding.












We promise, we're riding our bikes on this trip, it just happens to be easier to take our pictures when we're not bulting past at the speed of light.















Goodbye Michigan...
...hello Ohio.















John decided it might be good to put sunscreen on.















Lunch time with Bob & Caleb's family.















Mark is now happy.















Mmmmmmmm.















Still riding.












You guessed it, more riding.