Thursday, 17 July 2008

Day 42 Wooster to Youngstown.

It is shown as Niles on the itinerery, but the hotel is sort of nearer Youngstown so that got the vote. It was another glorious day when we left Wooster as our usual 4. I was trying to conserve energy as I was going for another century today. We had another dog run out again, but it was not aggressive and ran more after Sue and Tom rather than us. It's such a shame that people allow their dog to run out as they could get killed on the road or cause an accident. There were loads of turns today and we had to keep a careful eye on the navigation, a job that usually gets delegated to me, though I'm not sure who does the delegating.
After the first SAG we got to some very rough roads that were patches on patches and not very well done. There was no shoulder so we were forced to ride close to edge of the road which often no longer existed. It was hard going and although we had encountered rough roads before, this went on for miles and miles. I wrenched my knee a little when I was going to stand on the pedals just when the bike hit a rough patch under trees so it was hard to see. My knee was a bit swollen later that evening, but will recover. The second SAG was in the shade of store's verandah, very pleasant.
It wasn't until mile 85 that we got off the rough road and onto a bike path. I did the bike path again to get the extra miles in to complete the century. At the hotel some friends of a rider called Forest were there to surprise him, he has previously been surprised by his wife and son, and they had a big banner proclaiming, 'Ride Forest Ride!' He's certainly doing that.
An original room-mate of Sarge and myself, Charlie Higgins, and his wife were at route rap and stayed to have dinner with us. Charlie is looking very well and has kept off the pounds he lost on the ride. He kept us entertained during dinner with stories from his military career, hilarious.
Today's distance was 100.91 miles,

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