Day 67: Chased by Storms (working book title) (Napoleon to Crystal Rock Campground)

Ohio has 88 of these stylin' courthouses

MWe left the soft grass of Napoleon to the French and Frosty Boy, on a mission to ID Rachel. Birth certificate in hand, we headed for Bowling Green, for coffee and for a post office with a visa counter. 

We intended to take county road P in, were rerouted by more construction (as on every other useful road in Ohio), but the riding was good and easy, on roads that were mostly empty. I'm listening to Garden of the Beasts, an account of the lives of the American ambassador to Berlin and his daughter Martha during Hitler's rise to power. So most of my memories of the ride, addled by decaffeination, have overtones of 1930s Nazi Germany. The road took us 27 miles straight into Bowling Green though, a decidedly more docile town. 

Newwwttt

I hunkered down at Grounds for Thought, a coffee shop with great coffee, decent lemonade, and no outlets. It is also a used book store.  Because I have no self control, I picked out two more (a Gibson; an account of the early Iraq war); in the process discovering a sci fi novel by Newt Gingrich.

I also dove deep into the Warm Showers listings for Pittsburgh, and stumbled upon Ellis', who I did the AAAS mass media fellowship with. He's no longer in Pittsburgh, but he reached out to some friends and came through 250%, I say, prescient since I'm writing this in the future.

Once the passport application was filled out in black (not blue) ink, signed, stamped and submitted to the U.S. Government, we took off toward a private campground in eastern Ohio. Only we found that it's closed on Mondays, so we turned our wheels north toward Sandusky Bay and headed to Crystal Rock. Highway 6 turned into this mega busy road being repaved and otherwise improved in 17 different spots. Maybe 5 miles in, Rachel stops and says something about getting off the road and I thought it was because of all the road work. But she motions for me to turn around and there's this grey, immense cloud bank racing behind us, literally a wall of darkness, rain visible as it blurs the countryside. We decide to pull over to the gas station ahead to wait out the storm, though it's still so hot and humid I'm in my token Hawaiian shirt. In fifteen minutes, after a Kit Kat bar, it's clear the storm is going to pass by on the west side without even touching the blue sky above us. 

We stop in Fremont for groceries, Fremont, Ohio, also the home of President Hayes' presidential library. It is fenced off. For the last hour to the campgrounds, I listen to Sarah Vowell try to find some family history in a five-day road trip on the Trail of Tears. 

The campground is pretty, you know, commercial. Mowed grass. A few RVs. Close to the scenery, but not close enough to see the scenery. Whatever it's 8:30 pm and I'm hungry so we binge on an entire family can of baked beans, accompanied by corn and pre-cooked wild rice. We also take some very long, hot showers. 

The whole northern US is supposed to be able to see the aurora that night. A Slate article declares that most of those states expect clear skies. Ohio's is almost completely clouded over. We bike down to the Bay but can't tell if the flashes we see are lightning or electrical storms. After failing to uncork the wine, then dropping it on the ground, we give up and head back to the campground. 

It rains all night. 

Day 65: East Coast

Two or three topped-off cups of coffee peeled open my eyelids enough for me to actually see while riding my bicycle in the exotic sunshine. We set out from Faith and Kevin's east out some country roads and onto Hwy 6. The routes out here lining the cornfields are ideal: slightly rolling, green pouring out ether side, stands of trees every two hundred feet, wide lanes, no cars. 

Not 15 miles in, we crossed into the eastern time zone! We're officially on the east coast, less than a thousand miles from New York.

Give me such shows -- give me the streets of Manhattan! 

- a quote by Walt Whitman I looked up online by searching "quotes about New York City" because I'm not really that well read

We've reached an area of the country with deep history, classic downtowns, old stately houses, their Queen Anne and Prairie architecture beautifully kept up over the years. Towns here are like the towns in my head, although the downtowns are doing about as well as they were back in Wyoming and South Dakota, that is, not so well. A lot of shuttered businesses among the saloons and grocery and hardware stores. 

Buggies and bikes unite for wide shoulder rights  

We passed through our first bit of Amish country. I was on the phone with Rachel and rode past a lady in a tight blue bonnet wielding a weed whacker, and a 10-year-old boy with a golden bowl cut and brown coveralls mowing beside his family's orchards. One or two black buggies, with their big wheels and bright orange cation signs tacked to the back, were parked at every farmhouse (which are all painted white, instead of the traditional red, anyone know why?). Shortly down the road, I passed  through Amish Acres, in Neppanee, but didn't have time to stop. Anyone know any more history about the area?

One neat plus: shoulders wide enough for a horse and buggy are wide enough for a bicycle. Superb riding for.. three miles or something.

Out of town, after buying threes banana for 50 cents, I talked to a lady in a bonnet on a bicycle outside the Rite Choice, Carol Helmuth, about our trip. "Wow you really have come a ways!" she said, accent emphasizing and rounding the w's. I wish I could have asked her more, but I am shy and kind of awkward and also I was really hungry.

Post-nap, mid-dinner chompin

I made it to the Cottonwood campground by 6:30, pretty long after Rachel. She was napping in the tent. No hammockable trees sadly, but it was so pleasant to arrive before dark, to have a few hours to tootle around and write and eat and clean before the sun set. Earlier that week, I had ordered a new sleeping pad to be delivered to La Porte. Unfortunately, it arrived late - five hours after we left the farmhouse. Kevin drove it over even though it was already 8 pm and we were an hour a way. So write him thank you's, shower him with flowers, mail him bottles of artisan balsamic vinegar!

I did not take a shower because I do not like reenacting the Saw series

Like every night we camp, the weather report predicted thunderstorms. And it stormed and stormed, starting around midnight, big, blinding flashes of lightning and uncooperative cramps in my right calf keeping me awake. But it's neat to be outside and still dry in weather like that, like you're there in a dream and it's only half real. Eventually I ate a banana, plugged in some ear plugs, threw my pants over my face as a sleep mask, and drifted off. 

Day 59: Cedar Rapids to Wildcat Den State Park

A couple of things about Iowa: 

1. Every Iowan checks to make sure other Iowans have been nice to you like, "Hey where are you going?" <explain etc> "Well that's just great! You've liked Iowa right? The people you've met have been great, right?" Verbatim x 12. Like there is peer pressure to be a Good Samaritan because there is going to be massive collective Iowan shame if you aren't. But hey, everyone's truly been unfailingly kind so I never know what to say other than "Yes everyone here seems like they'd pull out their own kidney if I needed it, please, no need to fret about your brethren."The niceness is kind of freaky but let us all strive to more like Iowans and hold our fellow citizens accountable for immense generosity of heart and home.
2. Despite it being the most bike-enthusiastic state we've been in: no roads have paved shoulders; county roads are fabulous; city road suck.
3. There might not be sports but there is RAGBRAI.

Anyways, this morning, we ate a fabulous, nerdy pancake breakfast with our couchsurfing host Sarah, big thick pancakes browned on the griddle. Her Log Cabin syrup brought me back to my bottling days in the UCLA cafeteria. Actually I really never need to go back there again.

Post apocalypse industry in Cedar Rapids 

Going into detail about our route today since Google kept trying to put us on gravel so read on if you're interested, or feel free to skip ahead if you're not.

We didn't leave 'til late and it's hot every day now. We were able to take the Cedar River Trail out about 10 miles to Ely before ending up on some classic no-shoulder Iowa highways (Ely Road/W6E/hwy #?). Pro-tip: stay on that road and follow it to Solon. We stopped at the Big Grove Brewery for a sip and some lunch for Rachel and spent like an hour and a half there. We took 1 down to the turnoff to Morse, and then took Morse road into town. We couldn't find a way to get to West Branch without gravel but maybe you can. At least it's hard packed and short (2 miles, maybe 3). The Herbert Hoover trail is this great, overgrown crushed limestone trail that is surprisingly easy to ride. Take F40/290th to 38, then bear left and follow 38 over 80 until you get to Hwy 6 or 155th street. Google's good from there, except definitely ride down to New Era road, which is paved and pleasant, if a little hilly. 

Herbert Hoover's trail; he might get someone to mow it

We didn't get into Wildcat State Park until it was almost dark. We've just started to get into firefly territory, and they'd float up out of the grass and out of the cornfields in the hazy dusk, lighting our way to the park. The camping area was one of the strange-ish open ones where all tent sites are right next to each other on the same meadow of lawn grass. They had fresh water, though, and good picnic tables, and fees were only $9 which seems like kind of a steal when you're from California. I tried to go tootlin' off to find Pine Creek but realized I'd have to go down a big hill to get there (aka I would have to climb it on the way back) and the skeeters were out in force so I turned back. I made a really mediocre tofu stir fry for dinner and prepped the tent for the predicted thunderstorms by hooking the tarp grommets onto the tent poles and tying the rest of it up via a couple pieces of cord.

We didn't go to bed 'til late but the thunderstorm came even later and it was a heavy metal kind of rain, endlessly pounding the tent and trees around us. My Big Agnes Air Core has been leaky for a while, but it totally gave out last night, so I slept-woke on the ground (soft, muddy, grassy ground, not bad) and ate a granola bar at 3 am to reflate my deflated spirits/reality.

I'd hoped to leave early to beat the heat a little and run some errands in Davenport but it poured like hell from 7 til 9 am, so much so it didn't make sense to leave. Eventually, though, the rain let up enough for it to get hot and sticky inside the tent and I couldn't take the claustrophobia anymore. I talked to Vince for a while, who's doing his own east-to-west trek (Chefs Fore Vets). He's averaging 35 miles a day and has 'til December and is trying to get on Jimmy Kimmel Live on December 7, so go forth, and tweet about and for(e) him.

Day 8: Rainy days and weird dudes (Chico to the Potato Patch Campground)

We actually woke up early to start our climb into the Sierras. For me, the climb started slow -- Rachel and Spencer biked ahead and stopped every mile or so to wait for me to catch up. I studied the geometry of the power lines. I thought we’d be able to see more mountains looming in front of us, but highway 32 really is just a gradual, relentless upward climb with lush, green canyons dropping off on either side, the town of Paradise at the edge of the next ridge over.

We stopped for lunch at 2000 feet at the one-stop shop of Forest Ranch, bought some snickers, tried to convince Haggen Daz to sponsor us.

Spencer turned around after 20 miles and not too long after, we were rewarded with the first downhill of the day.

This was the first moment on the trip I really understood why I was out here. The pine forests ran by and the wind was cold and sweet. We saw the first fellow bike tourist, a lone guy all bundled up who hollered “What are you crazy people doing out here?”

The storm caught up with us shortly after, and we took too long to put on our rain clothes. Once you’re wet, you’re wet, and we were still headed uphill at this point, no service, no signs for the campground we’d decided ahead of time to stay at.

5,000 feet up, we found a little oasis of cell service around this big bend in the road.. and realized we’d passed our campground four miles ago. The next camp spot was 8.2 miles away and the mountain kept coming. My legs were exhausted, muscles barely responsive, body only moving because movement promised warmth and food.

But every time we’re this tired, the journey keeps us going. We topped the mountain and I saw a sign -- which has become my favorite -- warning trucks of a downhill grade for the next six miles. Still raining, the drops hit hard and cold going 30 miles an hour downhill but I’ve rarely felt so satisfied. A gap in the trees next to a turn off opened a curtain to the whole valley below us, fog rolling in and the mountains fading to blue-grey outlines in the distance. Four miles to-go: our destination, Potato Patch campground.

If you haven’t been out in the upper Sierras, you’ve got plans for the weekend. Especially now, before it gets too warm.

After we set up the tent, started the water boiling for dinner, changed into dry clothes, covered our bikes, a big red pickup truck pulled into the parking spot for our campsite. There were maybe 6 or 7 campsites occupied; 10-15 open. It was weird, unsettling. For twenty minutes, old-time music played loudly over the natural din, and Rachel and I sat together and wondered whether we should pack up and leave.

Finally this middle-aged guy comes out of the front and walked over. He stammered something along the lines of him “not being weird” and just sleeping in his truck that night while it rained so he could fish in the morning. And while we aim to give the people we met the benefit of the doubt, this was uncomfortable. With so many open parking spots, with dark falling, and us camped out for at least an hour before he arrived, I was frustrated by the interruption of solitude and kind of creeped out.

Eventually we decided he was strange but harmless. We slept with mace and all three of our knives, tucked into the pockets of the tent, just in case. 

Day 7: Wildflower, rainbow lightning (Chico)

We woke up and turned the alarm off and woke up and snoozed and woke up and rolled over and woke up and slept. Finally pancakes sounded too good to deny any longer, so we mixed up a couple’a batches of rice-milk-coconut-oil hot stacks with flavors like banana chocolate and matcha-green-tea-walnut. Chico just stole the first place farmer’s market straight out from under Davis (hey Davis Enterprise, what’s up with that?!), so yeah this town is crunchy.

Our host then taught us some Muay Thai as self defense -- like breaking punches with your elbows and shrimping, which can help you escape if someone’s got you held on the ground. 

After some writing and some sorting, we headed off to our second class at Wildflower Open Classroom, a charter school trying to give kids independence and freedom within their school day. 

The kids didn't know what to make of us at first - and actually it was more difficult to get the kids to work in groups than in the Sacramento classrooms. 

I worked closely with Owen, a shy kid at first. I’ve never had dimensional analysis open kids up, but he got out his happy calculator (a scientific calculator he could make a happy face on) and we sat together as he figured out how many miles per hour the Sol Cycle could ride. At the end of class, a kindergartener came up and asked Owen what he was doing. Owen took it into the sun and handed it to the kid and let him play with it while explaining the solar panel and motor, and the kindergartener’s jaw dropped and his eyes got all wide. When we went back inside, Owen pulled out this beautiful drawing of a character named Rosalina and told us he wanted us to take it with us on our trip; those are the moments that make teaching so worth whatever stress planning brings. 

That evening, our Warm Showers host Spencer showed us to the Chico’s farmer’s market, a hoot with lots of hollering when the sky turned to candy and lightning cracked. We made a run for it and ate damp pineapple, pork and veggie tamales under a construction awning. The sweet and spicy sauces were A+ bingo go time. Tomorrow: the mountains awaited.