First stop out of the wind.
Picnic tables are still great.
My plan for the day was to leave Ohio behind and reach Indiana. More specifically, Yoder, Indiana … about 110 km away. And the plan (Spoiler Alert) went well. The distance really wasn’t at all a concern but the same couldn’t be said about the weather – which was filled with wind. From the southwest. If you haven’t deduced it by now, yes, I was travelling southwest today. For 110 km. Did I mention it was windy?
However, before I would hit the road, there would be breakfast. Not particularly (or remotely) noteworthy but when I woke this morning, my hosts were gone. This had no impact on the breakfast portion of the day but it made things significantly more difficult to get a photo with my hosts – perhaps I should’ve considered that last night. Inspiration (in its loosest sense) struck me when I went to the fridge for some milk. Photo problem solved.
In lieu of my hosts’ presence this morning, I improvised …
With breakfast and requisite photos taken care of I was ready to roll. And as “things to report from road” go, today provided very few things. It was very much a day of just working through the wind. The thought of pedalling for potentially six hours into the wind seemed more than a little unpleasant so it was definitely a day of mind games. Instead of biking 110 km to Yoder, I decided it would be easier to pedal 31 km to Paulding, OH. Then 15 km to Payne, OH. Then 20 km to Monroeville (crossing into Indiana in the process). Then 32 km more to Yoder. And finally 8 km to my host’s place. (There MAY have been an additional 4 km detour thanks to questionable Google routing. On the upside, I had a glorious tailwind for about 1 km of that detour.)
To say that crossing into Indiana from Ohio was unremarkable would be a gross understatement. There was no signage. At all. Clearly this was a bit unfortunate from a photo point of view but it was also the norm. When you’re cycling along back country roads there generally aren’t any “Welcome” signs along the way. Today I entered my third state on this tour and I’ve yet to see a “Welcome to …” sign. Again, not particularly important but kind of a bummer. The best I could do was take a couple of photos at the state line road and resume pedalling into the wind. And that’s what I did.
Goodbye, Ohio
In the end, my tactic of breaking the day into smaller segments worked well. The wind continued as per the forecast but I just kept pedalling. Rather than focussing on the wind (and despite the very flat terrain) I just kept telling myself, “It’s just a hill. It’s just a hill.” Sometimes, it’s all about the mind games.
Today’s totals:
Distance: 109.20 km
Ride time: 5:37:04
Average speed: 19.43 km/h (my first sub-20 km/h day)
Maximum speed: 33.65 km/h
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