3rd Day on the Road: Paulding to Holiday City, OH (50 miles)

Hi, All,

I need to pick up from last night. I had dinner in Los Gallitos in Paulding and tremendous rains and hail hit--all over my bike and packs parked outside. But, better to be inside (me) than out in that mess of a storm. The staff there: Socorro, Rosy, Ashley and their friend, Olga, were terrific and helped map out a safer route out of Paulding than using the truck-infested 127!

Now, on to today, June 20--

Q: How many of you know where in the US is located the cleanest municipal drinking water????
A: Montpelier, OH, has this self-proclaimed award (actually, they won it twice recently). Hey! It's little tid bits like this that keep a biker going when the hills and wind are tough. Like today.

Day started with a great breakfast at "Bubba J's" in Paulding. Why? Good was great diner food. Better, I met Jack Moore and his friends (and later, several family members) who hang out at the restaurant every day, kibbitzing and having a wondeful time. This is a dense social connection that I was very envious of and it must be a wonderful support to them in their lives. I was honored to be a part of it for awhile.



Suzanne and Pete connected with me at the "Bitter Sweet," a B&B where I stayed. This was great. Suzanne and I took off at 10:45 and Pete would make guest appearances by car, checking and letting us know what was ahead. Suzanne had found an even better/safer/prettier route out of town (See Los Gallitos, above) Googling, and we took it. When in doubt, trust a savvy daugher who knows how to do these things--another lesson. For several miles it was fabulous. A road along the way was left out of the directions so we ended up a few miles off course, but figured out where we needed to go to get back to the route and got back on track.

Along the way, at Mark Center, we stopped in front of the Post Office for a drink. Sauntering by came the Postmaster and a town resident, Paul Curtis. We had a great time, talking about PMR and other life afflictions, the Boston Red Sox, our trip...we sometimes give people we meet the blog address for this trip so they can follow it. These two seemed very interested. (If you are reading this, HI!).




A little later, we came upon a young man riding his bike in the same direction, and he joined us for a portion of our trip. He was biking 20 miles to another town, Bryan, and we were on our way to Williams Center and then Montpelier. He was very nice, and kept up with us for some way, on his small trick bike even (which amazingly had cost him 2000 dollars!!). He led us to a little store, the Williams Center Carryout, where we talked with the owners for a little bit and got to use the restroom, etc.

From Mark Center on, the hills and the counter wind both picked up noticably. We had to work very hard! We traveled what we had planned, about 50 miles, had many interesting talks with people along the way, but today was some grunt work. We figure it will only get more so in Michigan. After all, we left Paulding County, the "flattest county in Ohio," to move into hills. Another point about Paulding County I like very much is its motto: "No Compromise!"

Toward the end of the day in Montpelier we had dinner at "The Maywood Restaurant" (http://www.themaywoodrestaurant.com) , which was a terrific place with wonderful staff, such as Bethany, our waitress.



We wound up at "Holiday City," 5 miles outside of Montpelier, for the night, staying at the Econolodge. In the morning we set off to cross into Michigan, which is under 10 miles from here. I have picked up about a day so far on the trip, but facing hills and some bad weather forcasted things might go more slowly.

How about my PMR? Amazingly, many of my symptoms have decreased quite a bit! Maybe this heavy exercise has done something very positively for it. Too early to tell, but I am encouraged. Yet, I am quite sore tonight, and so is Suzanne. She did really well on her first day, a tough one, and with no preparation for it.

Suzanne has some observations and then we will close (we have sneaked into the Holiday Inn Express down the road to write this entry). We noticed today that many, many houses that we rode by had their own man-made ponds, many very large and complete with diving boards. We thought this was really interesting, and I guess more practical for Northern Ohio than swimming pools. Also, we saw literally no one outside, despite it being a beautful day, except for probably 5 different people mowing their lawns on riding mowers. We found this very odd... (Maybe they are all inside writing blogs!)

Or reading them avidly, as I am sure you are right now!

So, all is well, we have about made it out of Ohio and are staring Michigan dead in the eyes. Hope not to blink, because in the next 3 days Suzanne will leave, but I will be joined by my ISU friend, Doug, my brother-in-law, Chuck (and Mary, as support), and Lynn!!!

My best

Bob (and Suzanne)