Day 40
4H ride today...Hills, Humidity, Headwinds, and a Hundred

As I've said the last couple of days and if you've been watching the weather channel for our route, you know we've been dodging some heavy rain since our day off in Indy. You can tell they've had lots of rain in the area as all the low places are either muddy or full of standing water.  Anytime I pulled off the road today I got mud all over everything.  We've been lucky as we've not gotten wet with the rain all around...having said that, I think a couple riders may have gotten caught in a shower or two, but where I was it was dry all day. Hopefully, our luck will hold...we are forecast to be in thunderstorm areas for the next few days...all in a day's work on the road.  The temperature was good today, but the humidity was up and on the uncomfortable side.  In Alabama we'd call today arid...but it was a bit sticky for most.  The Florida girls thought they'd gone to heaven...HUMIDITY!  

Can you believe it, we entered our 8th state today...Ohio.  Welcome to the east I guess.  We crossed the state line about 4 miles into our ride today and the riders had to stop and record the event.  We only have 4 more states to go...seems like we have been on the road for a week...not almost 6.  Did we start in California?  Ohio is one of my favorite states as we are mostly in the rural countryside surrounded by large areas of farmland.  Much of the route was perfectly flat, but we had some areas that broke the monotony with a hill or two.  We rode most of the day on the marked Cardinal Bike Trail, a stretch of lonely country roads many of which didn't have any lines.  These are the roads that they pour crushed gravel down and then put on a coat of oil to make it into blacktop.  It makes for a great road to cycle especially in the cool winter and spring.  In the summer, however, the heat makes the oil soft and sticky which sticks to wheels...fun to ride, but messy sometimes.  I think everyone enjoyed the low traveled roads but I think they now realize that there's more corn around here than in Illinois.

One of my favorite things is the homes all along our route.  We passed some beautiful old structures that must have some interesting stories to tell...wish they could talk.  Even most of the small farm houses were well manicured and the grass was mowed all the way to the road.  We also passed hundreds of red barns on route...or was it on the published route?

It was a great day of rural riding, but we dodged a potential disaster this morning.  Our vans were about 10 miles out when we started to get in and out of some pretty dense fog so I parked along the side of the road to warn the riders and to remind them to single up to the right side.  I had spoken to most of them as a large pack approached me.  I signaled for them to slow so they could hear me, but as they approached there was a touch of wheels and two crashed right in front of me.  I took one to the hospital for a couple stitches and a check up, the other rode the rest of the day but may have a slight groin pull.  Yes we were lucky, we only had a couple untrue front wheels, a couple cracked helmets, and a little road rash...they both are OK and will continue to ride, but it was a quick reminder to us all how fast things can happen...we're certainly glad everyone was OK.

It turned out to be a long day today...the last rider didn't get in until 6:00.  I think everyone was taking it a little easy in anticipation of tomorrow's climbing.  Tomorrow our ride will bounce up and down quite a bit...nice to get some climbing after the last few days of mostly flat riding.