Day 2: to Cincinnati 75 miles

The next morning, Rick braved his hangover and treated us to his stock of venison burgers and eggs. Mmmm, a greasy delight. We took off at 9am from Rick and Mooch's, bright eyed and ready for the 100 miles to Cincinnati (Stanich 2008). All morning, just like the previous day we saw riders heading east. Apparently we were riding on the same road as the participants in the Race Across America http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/. As we slowly crept by taking the head winds directly in the face, these riders had a van carrying all of their gear as they set sail towards Annapolis Maryland. They had departed from Oceanside California on June 8th and were almost finished in a week and a half....damn!


The ride was not as easy as we expected. Vinton County to Chillicothe was a nice warm up and after a quick pit stop at the Bike Shop we shoved off for Cincinnati. Quite surprisingly the guys at the bike shop were unenthusiastic about our ventures. Outside of Chillicothe however, the headwind picked up full force against us, and the hills just wouldn't go away. Since we left Athens we were traveling on U.S. Highway 50, however, just on the north west side of Chillicothe 50 breaks more West (Southwest) with highway 28. We decided to take 28, which was much more pleasant; we didn't see very much traffic on 28 and the landscape was gorgeous, alternating from agricultural to rolling hills (below windy wheat fields).


Sometime in the afternoon we came upon a quaint house on the side of the road with a sign that read: Honey and Honey Comb for sale. Of course we stopped. I ran up to the house and purchased some of both. When I got back to the driveway, where the rest of the gang was waiting, we immediately delved into the sticky mess. After 6 minutes of gorging on bee spittle, the honey salesman, named Myron Liming, came out and offered us his house to wash our hands, and then preceded to invite us back and see his bees.



Our goal was to ride from Chillicothe to my (Sam's) Aunt Dana's house in NW Cincinnati (100 miles) ; we, however, ran out of daylight around 75 miles, in a town called Blanchester. Dana found a neighbor's suburban with a bike rack and picked us up; so we cheated a little, atleast 25 miles of non-exclusive bike travel. When we arrived we had a warm welcome of spaghetti and hot-tub. Since we have been here, my Aunt can't keep food on the table, she keeps making food and we keeping putting it away.

After a relaxing dip in the tub, we all did some laundry and the heads hit the pillow around 2:00 a.m.



Day 2 6/18/08
mileage: 75
hours: 12
morale: medium high
sunburn: somewhat evident

Thanks to the entire Yengo family for putting us up and putting up with us.