Saturday, July 12th: Youngstown, OH

Early Morning Fishermen

Another, yes another, day of being up and down on and off the saddle for pretty much the whole ride.  Started hallucinating about The Shropshire Plain around 2 hours into the day.  Oh, and if you thought Shropshire's roads are in a bad way, you clearly haven't been to this part of Ohio.  Quite simply, the middle 40 miles of today's roads were an absolute disgrace.  THE most appalling surfaces (or rather lack of surfaces) you could ever witness.  Huge potholes, and hundreds of them, crumbling edges reaching fully 18" into the roadway, and the 'good' bits consisting of a multitude of mushrooms of badly packed tarmac.  A great number of these hazards were hiding in the shade of overhanging trees, so it was extremely dangerous to ride anywhere but the centre of the road.  You have perhaps guessed that I was unimpressed, and am very thankful that my bike seems to have survived for the last nine rides of the

Missouri Comes to Ohio

 tour. 

It got fairly hot by as early as 1000, so it was good to have broken the back of the ride by that time.  To get to SAG 1 at 38 miles, we had been advised to ride through a 'closed' section of road near Akron Airport, where construction was going on.  The first few got through OK, but later riders were threatened with arrest if they tried the same thing! 

SAG 2, scheduled for 75 miles, wasn't there when George and I got to the appointed spot, so we both pressed on the last 22 miles to the Best Western in Youngstown without top-up.  My custard creams saved from SAG 1 did the trick,

Forest Surprised Again

until the SubWay just up the road from the motel hove into view.  Forest got surprised again on arrival; this time it was his work colleagues who had set up camp at the motel entrance.  Tonight Fred & I were visited by Gail & Jim from neighbouring PA, who took us out to dine.  Gail & Jim were on our previous ride across country, the Seattle - Boston jaunt of 2002. 

Mileage : 97

Cumulative : 3271