life goes on?

Brian’s description over breakfast of his panicked late night discovery of the rubber snake in his tent made me realize that I wear my heart smack dab in the middle of my sleeve. I was unable to contain my glee, and he guessed straight away that it was me. While I may have a future in law, I certainly don’t have a hope for poker.

Today’s ride was another short one as we covered the 61 miles from New Waterford, Ohio to Washington, Pennsylvania. Again, I rode with Caitlin for most of the day (we're becoming quite the riding buddies!) and we stopped ,after the first check point, for a second cup of coffee (it seems like I can’t make it without one these days!).

We crossed from Ohio into Pennsylvania today, and the changes were noticeable. The road quality improved (hello wide shoulders! :o)), but the flat lands were no more as big, rolling hills took their place; our steepest grade today was 15%, and it’s only supposed to get hillier as the week goes on. Fortunately, Rich has provided me, just in the nick of time, with the intellectual ammo I need to justify going down hills fast. As it turns out, going slowly down hills by having on the brakes the entire time can be very dangerous because it can cause the rims to overheat which can cause the tire to blow out. And the faster your wheels are going, the more inertia you have, and the more difficult you are to tip over -- kind of like a gyroscope. As such, I went 39 miles per hour today – yeehaw! Also fortunately, Rich has provided me with some good motivational music for riding up hills (I think he was fearing I'd become more insistent with my requests that he sing me a motivational song, and that he should nip that in the bud by giving me some songs from his computer to put on my iPod).

Many of the towns in this area have International names. We rode through East Palestine, Calcutta and Glasgow, and we saw signs pointing to Lisbon and Paris.

We didn’t want to make the same mistake as the previous day (ending up at a campground in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do all afternoon), so we stopped at a little dive bar several miles out from camp. We sat at the counter sipping cokes (kindly paid for by one of the bar patrons [I am on fire!]) and asked the bar tender what we should do / see in the area. She flatly informed us “there’s nothing to do around here”.

A list of banned patrons hung on the wall, and I commented that there were a lot of women on the list. I asked about what they’d done to make it on the list, and the bar tender started telling stories. Lynn slapped a girl, Deborah threw an ash tray at a man’s head, and the list of similarly appalling behaviour went on. The bar tender shook her head and said that a lot of people around there were trouble.
We didn’t spend too long at the bar and gave up on finding anything eventful to do nearby, so we headed to our stopping point for the day at the Whispering Pines Family Campground. Very happily, they did have a swimming pool, so we spent the afternoon swimming and laying in the sun.

For dinner, a delicious meal of chicken, vegetables, salad and cookies was catered at campground.

Also, another excerpt from Daria’s blog (what would I do without her?) about the nuclear power plant we passed by today…
After we crossed the Pennsylvania border, we headed east along the Ohio River and crossed over the river near the town of Midland. We rode past the two power plants that were generating the steam that I saw from Ohio. Both plants are located on the river and are operated by FirstEnergy Corp. The nuclear power plant is the Beaver Valley Power Station, which has two water reactors. The coal fired plant is the Bruce Mansfield Plant, which is FirstEnergy’s largest coal-fired power plant. They have three 800 megawatt units that burn 21,000-22,000 tons of coal per day when all three units are in operation.


Today we left behind the state of Ohio and the month of July. I am pleased about neither, as they both indicate our trip is drawing to an end. It's been such an amazing experience that I can't really imagine life where I don't wake up and ride a bicycle with my buddies each day. In fact, I can't really imagine my life at all as I'm not sure if my UK visa application will be approved and if I will be employed. I'm starting to panic about the whole business, as the end of our bicycle trip is a mere 6 days away, and I don't actually have the foggiest idea what I'm doing next in life! Perhaps it's time to start thinking about a plan B?? OR perhaps when we hit the east coast, I'll just turn right, head south, and carry on. The southern states, Mexico, Central America, and then South America should keep me occupied for a while... right? :o)