SEA TO SHINING SEA: Riding Indiana's back roads
DAY 65 - July 17, 2013 - We hit the road early this morning while the soybeans were still wet with dew. Traffic is light at 0630 and the sun hasn't had a chance to get its full game on. We rode a trail out of Greenfield, switched over to Route 40 for a while and then slipped over to some of Indiana's thousands of miles of rural roads. No traffic. Nothing but farmhouses and fields of alfalfa, corn and soybeans They might as well be a system of bicycle trails. No one was on them but us. Occasionally they devolved to gravel, but not much. For the most part nice easy rolling riding.
By 10:30 a.m. we had 35 miles logged and stopped at Cambridge City for a late breakfast at Lumpy's. Then on to Richmond here on the eastern edge of Indiana and home to Earlham College.
We finished riding when we hit the 55-mile mark. Too hot for much more. Tomorrow we'll be out again early to beat the heat as we head into Ohio and the bicycling hub of the midwest: Xenia. Lots of trails tomorrow and I'll be thinking of my Ohio friends of many years ago - and during a different dimension. B and Caesar, MP and Noodie and Luther and Gary. Imperial quarts of Iron City and good hippie conversation on the porch of a white clapboard house in downtown Oberlin.
They had an FAA control station in Oberlin and I remember one day looking up and seeing the largest airplane I had ever seen in my life coming over town. It was one of the first C-5s and the pilots were giving the guys in the FAA station a close look. Since the main fleet of the Air Force's Globemasters have been stationed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. I couldn't believe anything that big could stay in the air. It was probably going about 150 mph but it seemed like it was just floating. That was about 1971.
That impressed me almost as much as the icy cold quarts of beer that MP kept in her refrigerator. There's something very civilized about ice-cold quarts of beer in the fridge. Maybe I'll just have one more glass.
It will be fun to be back in Ohio.
Stay cool and thanks for riding along. Total miles as of today: 2,567.
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Dennis Forney has been a journalist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972 and has been writing his Barefootin’ column for The Whale and then the Cape Gazette for more than 30 years. Like his Barefootin' Facebook page to get notified of blog updates.
