Visiting, traveling, no biking

Fremont to Bowling Green, OH

Sue offered to drive either just my gear, or my gear, bike, and me to Bowling Green today. And surprise, surprise, I took her up on the offer to drive me and my stuff to Bowling Green - assuming that we could fit it all in her rental car. It was another scorcher today, and while it would have been a treat to ride an unloaded bike from city to city, it was more of a treat not to be exercising in this heat. Tomorrow will be soon enough. This is not a purist's bicycle trip. Sometimes it's OK to compromise!

It's a tribute to the design of the Saturn that we were able to fit everything in the car. Sue had a 4-door Saturn, and with the back seats folded down everything slid in with ease. It actually surprised both of us, because from the outside it didn't look like it would work. And I didn't even need to fold the bike!

We drove to Bowling Green, walked through the downtown area, walked through part of the university campus, and had lunch. Another day of visiting with a good friend - what a nice way to spend the day!

We also stopped at Cycle Werks to pick up the new clamp-on trailer hitch that Bike Friday sent me. Remember the jury-rigged trailer hitch that those guys in the campground made for me on the second day of my trip? Well, a couple of days ago I noticed that the trailer hitch was bending and just about freaked out. I called Walter at Bike Friday, and he shipped me a clamp-on hitch to use for the rest of my trip. When I'm done I'll drop the bike off at Bike Friday so they can fix the braze-on for me. It's a good thing that I noticed the problem before it broke. When the cycle shop helped me remove the old part we found that it had cracked about a third of the way through! Many thanks to Walter for his fast response on that problem!

Hey - if you think I'm passing by any other friend's houses and don't realize it - let me know. I'd be happy to visit with you too.

Funny thing that I forgot to mention the other day... when I was talking with Scrappy and his grandson John in North East, PA, they mentioned that John and his parents were visiting from Florida. I asked John if they flew, and he told me that they drove up, and that the drive took two days. The first thing I said to him was "wow, that's a really long drive". Then I looked at what I was doing and started laughing. I thought it was too far to drive from Florida to Pennsylvania, but I'm riding my bike from Boston to Oregon!

Back to the road tomorrow...