Continued from previous
Day 3 of my bike trip across Ohio. Columbus to Cedarville.
This should be an easy day, or so I thought. As Woody Allen once said “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
I leave the house early and backtrack roughly 5 miles to get to the trail. I live in the suburbs of Columbus, where we like to turn cornfields into subdivisions. There has been massive development out here in the last few years. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to get out of my neighborhood on the bike without taking my life in my hands.
Once on the Alum Creek trail I have one detour to contend with. They are rebuilding one of the bridges and there is no official detour. I know of several unofficial detours from social media and I decide to chance the shorter but riskier one. It requires me to jump on normally busy road for about a half mile. Fortunately it’s early on a Saturday morning and there’s no traffic to speak of.
The Alum Creek Trail is a well kept secret that runs along the east side of Columbus. There’s a more popular trail that runs past the OSU campus but it tends to be congested.
Where the trail branches I take the I-670 connector towards downtown Columbus.
Let’s talk about food for a minute. A subject near and dear to my heart. The problem I have on these long rides is eating enough calories to keep myself going without eating so much I upset my stomach. A road cyclist at my weight supposedly burns 30-50 calories per mile. That means I’ll need an extra 2000 or so calories for the 70 miles I plan on going today.
I stop at a coffee shop downtown for a breakfast sandwich and a cappuccino. This will later prove to have been a good idea. Years of night flying have made me a bit of a coffee addict. When my doctor asked me how much coffee I drink I told her “as much as it takes”.
I plan to stop for lunch in London OH, which is right around the 50 mile point. London has: a very busy McDonald’s, a diner like the ones NPR goes to when they want to interview Trump voters, and a coffee shop with a bike shop in the back.
I lose the trail for a couple blocks on the west side and pick it back in a part of town called “The Hilltop”. For those not familiar with Columbus, it’s considered to be a rough neighborhood.
No sooner do I get back on the trail when my back tire goes flat. My day was going pretty well right up to now.
After going through the lengthy process of removing the bags, flipping the bike on its back and getting the rear wheel off, I can’t find anything wrong with it. I feel around inside the tire but I don’t find anything. I’m usually careful to avoid pinch-flats but maybe that’s what I’ve got here.
I swap the tube, put the whole mess back together, and head back down the trail, about a hundred feet before it goes flat again.
I’ve got one more inner tube but it’s my last one. Fortunately Mrs. Kong had decided not to ride that day so she’s back at the house. I text her to grab as many 650b tubes she can find in our basement/bike-shop and put them in the car (just in case).
Despite the hilltop’s rough reputation nobody bothers me. I am carrying bear spray in my bag but that’s more in case I run into dogs. A woman on a gravel ride in southern Ohio recently stopped to fix a flat, was attacked by three pit bulls and ended up losing a leg. I’ve outrun dogs a few times but if I’m broken down that’s not an option.
A young mother and her two young children that are playing on the bike path come over and talk to me. I explain that I’m riding from Cleveland to Cincinnati and she in as many words asks me why any sane person would want to ride a bike to Cincinnati. I don’t have a good answer for her.
This time I pull the tire completely off the rim, like I should have done the first time, and give it a thorough inspection. I find what looks to be a speck of dirt but is actually a tiny sliver of metal. About the size of a breadcrumb (Americans will use anything as a unit of measure except the metric system). A pair of tweezers would be really useful right now (note to self) but I don’t have any so I dig it out with my pen knife.
By the time I finally back on the trail this incident has cost me at least an hour and I’ve got 45 miles to go.
Well, things are never so screwed up that they can’t get worse. I barely make it past I-270 on the west side of Columbus when the rain starts. I knew I would probably get rained on at some point today but I didn’t expect it this early. As I’m struggling into my rain gear a nice park Ranger stops her car and asks if I need any help. I wave her off and keep going.
I lose the trail at Darby Creek Metro Park and have to ride a section of gravel through the park to pick up the connecting trail. I don’t mind rain and I don’t mind gravel, but both is not a good combination. I work my way through much slower than I normally would.
Fortunately It’s just a steady rain and not a thunderstorm so I don’t need to take shelter.
I have very good rain gear, but the problem with rain gear is that anything that will keep rain out will also keep sweat in. Fortunately the rain has cooled the temperature off somewhat so I don’t overheat too badly. My pace is slowed by the rain and the headwind that has been a constant companion on this ride.
The flat tires have blown my lunch plans out of the water. By the time I get to London the coffee shop has closed and I don’t really have time to eat at the diner. I stop at a gas station convenience store and grab a protein bar and a sports drink (it’s got electrolytes!). There’s no place to sit down so I stuff my face and get back on the bike.
I resign myself to having to eat a late lunch in Cedarville. The next closest town is South Charleston, which just has an IGA grocery store and an ice cream shop that never seems to be open when I ride through there.
Cedarville is roughly 20 miles from London, with South Charleston about halfway. Two miles outside of South Charleston my rear tire starts to go flat again. Some choice words may have been uttered at this point.
Fortunately by now Mrs. Kong has driven to the hotel in Cedarville so she’s only 10 miles away with the car. I text her to meet me at the South Charleston trailhead and bring inner tubes. She does better and meets me there with a couple of inner tubes plus a sandwich and a frozen chai from our favorite place in Cedarville. I inhale both as by now I’m seriously bonking as well as hot from riding the last 30 miles in rain gear.
I pull the tire off and sure enough, there’s that tiny metal piece. Or maybe there was more than one. It’s so small I can’t really tell. Once again I use the tip of a knife to hopefully dig it out of the tire.
By the time I get the flat repaired it has stopped raining so I’m able to ditch the rain gear. I push hard and ride the last ten miles to Cedarville at 17-18 mph. Cedarville has something like 4,000 people, a small college, a very good coffee shop and exactly one hotel that happens to be right next to the bike trail.
We have dinner in Yellow Springs, which is a funky little town that hosts Antioch College and one of our favorite restaurants.
Total miles for the day 71 with 1500 feet of vertical. Total number of flats changed — 3.
Tomorrow will hopefully see me in Cincinnati.
To be continued.