Today was a day when nothing went quite as expected, but everything turned out great!

I left Bill's place in a steady rain that was forecast to last all day long.  I headed for the Ohio River, where a city Web site had told me there was a bike trail.  On the way I slammed into a large pothole that was concealed by a puddle.  Immediately after that, I noticed a pinging, popping sound coming from my front wheel.  I assumed it was the spokes, knocked out of their delicate relative tension by the impact.

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on September 16, 2004]

Hi, folks. I'm safely under the wing of my friend Bill, who was my youth director at church 10 years ago and whom I haven't seen since... he's now a minister, and he has a 9-year-old son who is really into geography and soccer.

Bill took me to the library this morning when he went to yoga class, but the library turned out not to have any maps of Indiana.  However, the downtown library is on my way west, so I should be able to stop there tomorrow morning without trouble.

Today was not my day... I awoke to find that one of the campground's feral cats had marked my tent as its territory; then the morning air was so humid that even after an hour of "drying" I had to put the tent away wet.  When I tried to get on the bike path as shown on the map, I found that the trail entrance had been closed to bike traffic and had to ride about 2 miles to the next entrance.

I didn't sleep well last night because a bunch of raccoons -- at least three -- were making a ruckus right outside my tent.  I never heard such noises!  The Dog Dazer was moderately effective at quieting them down for a few minutes at a time.

I left Lancaster a little later than planned because Rob wanted to try to dry out my solar battery charger, which has had condensation in it since Ludington.  He wasn't able to make much progress, but he gave me some suggestions.

Since there's no UU church in town, I just hung around the house with Rob all morning and did computer stuff.  After lunch we drove to Keller-Kirn park and hiked around, got a roll of film developed, and then hiked at Rising Park / Mt. Pleasant.  We had some excellent pizza for dinner, joined Aunt Dully for dessert, and then played backgammon.  A low-key day.

The road south to Lancaster was pretty uneventful.  I carefully chose a route that several thousand motorists also chose, so I had to deflect onto less-direct side roads, but it was no big deal.

Entering Reynoldsburg (an eastern suburb of Colubus) I saw a banner for the Tomato Festival and decided to stop in, thinking I'd buy some salsa or sauce for Rob and Dully, but the only tomatoes they had were fresh, and I didn't think they'd pack well.  I bought some cinnamon-roasted nuts instead.

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on September 10, 2004]

Well, it's official: I've been on the road for a month now. More than that: for the past month I've been going east, and for the next month I'll go back west before turning south. Lancaster, OH, which I'll reach tomorrow, is the farthest east I plan to go until next winter. It feels really good to look at the map and see how far I've gone in just a month!

Today my plan was to ride into Columbus in order to see the city and decide whether it's someplace I'd like to live.  However, I was unable to find good information about recommended bike routes or even bus routes.  So I rode into Westerville and visited the library, where I got sucked into the Internet for over an hour.  The librarians were also unable to tell me about bike or bus routes.