the end of ohio and the beginning of indiana

We’ve woken up a tad late in the Comfort Inn here in North Vernon Indiana so we wont be able to put much into this blog, but that’s ok because a whole lot hasn’t gone on in the 70 or so miles in between here and Cincinnati. However, there are a few interesting tales to tell, so here goes.

We had a bit of a rough start as we left Cincy, it appeared that some of our new equipment needed a bit of breaking in before we could make full use of it. Our new squishy seats had to be adjusted and there were some compatibility issues with our old tubes and the new tires. BUT, after a few minor repairs we made it back onto the highway and to downtown Cincinnati.

That was a treat, let us tell you. We have stayed on Rt 50 for the vast majority of this trip thus far. When we started in ocean city it was a two lane road with a massive shoulder, when we passed into Virginia it opened up a bit but we still had some wiggle room. When we went through west Virginia, it was narrow and windey, in ohio it was flat and boring. However, when we passed through downtown Cincinnati, somehow this quiet gentle road we’d come to love suddenly transformed into a massive 8 lane superhighway full of irritated drivers in the middle of their evening commute. After about an hour of navigating between cars, negotiating on and off ramps, convincing a few state troopers that we are in fact sane, and a plethora of slightly less than polite hand gestures later we had left the city limits and were back on our way to the Ohio/Indiana border.

We ate at a small restaurant just off the road in the first town we found after Cincinnati, which proved to be the most extended dining experience thus far on the trip regardless of the fact that all three of us ordered sandwiches and salads. As a result of this, we were forced to make camp in the earliest available campsite, which was on the outskirts of a state park about 5 miles from the Indiana border.

The following morning we were greeted not by our usual rays of sunshine and birds chirping, but rather by a slightly disgruntled park ranger, who decided to let us off with a warning for sleeping on park grounds. After noticing a bit of poison ivy rashes on our ankles we cut our losses and got out of Ohio. There was again a commemorative dance “Out of Ohio Dance, check it out here:

http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3019372330101327493tyaOSK

The next day we put in some serious road time and made it here, a decent sized town called North Vernon, where the highlight seemed to be the Ponderosa buffet, where we gorged ourselves on mac and cheese and ice cream. Soft serve never tasted so sweet. However, getting here was a bit interesting. About 20 miles outside we were riding under partly cloudy skies with the sun sneaking through from time to time, needless to say, that all changed very quickly. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, the skies ahead suddenly changed from partly cloudy to just cloudy. The sky turned black illuminated only by the occasional bolt of lightning on the horizon. Now most intelligent people would have stopped, set up camp, and called it a night, but that is not the LOCO way. Instead, we took a deep breath and rode directly towards the apocalypse, end of the world like storm. The first element that hit us was wind blowing directly in our faces at a surplus of 25 – 30 mph. After the wind came the rain, which pelted us stinging any exposed skin like hail balls. After about 5 – 10 miles of battling the elements we finally fought through it and came out unscathed at the other side, however we were wet and beat so we decided that we earned a hotel stay in North Vernon.

We realize this entry wasn’t as exciting as many of you may be used to… However we can do something to make up for it. Please enjoy another entry into Anthony’s awkward situation corner:

Earlier in the trip on a routine lunch outing at a pizza restaurant that shall remain anonymous, I decided to take advantage of their above average bathroom facilities. Now before I get to the juicy center cut of this story it is necessary to relate a slightly unexpected side affect of riding on a bicycle for 4 hours at a time. I’ll do my best to keep this clean, so lets just say that when you sit on a bike seat that is as hard and small as our seats are, certain umm…. functions in your body’s plumbing system require a bit more coaxing before they can work properly. Ok, I’m pretty sure you’re all on the same page at this point so I’ll continue.

I sit down on that gloriously clean piece of porcelain to take care of my business and, as usual, it took me a while to relax and, ya know… get things moving. A short while I’m just about good to go, the bathroom door of my stall unexpectedly flies open. It takes me a moment to recover from the shock of this, but when I do I see a tall man in a baseball cap standing in the doorway staring at me.

“What are you doing?” the man asks

There I sit, pants around my ankles, in the stall of a pizza restaurant looking up at this man who has seen fit to interrupt the one public place that I thought was the industrial equivalent of holy ground. I think of a number of ways to answer this question. My first response was to go rhetorical on his inconsiderate ass. “What do you think?” “Are you retarded?” “What does it look like?”

In the end I decide to play it cool and state the obvious. “Um, I’m droppin a deuce dragon dude”

“What?”

“I’m pooping.”

“Why are you doing that in here??”

Now, this one stumps me.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll be out here. You just hurry up.”

“o…k….”

And with that he shuts the door, and waits on the other side. I sat there for about a minute, looking at his huge steel toed boots just beyond the base of the stall and thought about the appropriate course of action. Needless to say I was seized with such stage fright that I could not complete the task at hand, and was forced to go and take part in the dining experience in a far less comfortable state than I had imagined. The moral of this strange tale (if there is one) is this: always choose a bathroom with multiple stalls if you want to remain uninterrupted. I pray none of you have a similar experience.

Peace out home slice.