We spent 2 days in Sandusky, but I”m only considering them 1 day.
We left Upper Sandusky on Wednesday morning feeling good about our speed and how much improvement we’ve made this year, and even on this trip.
That didn’t last. The route to Sandusky was pretty brutal… and I’m not sure why. The elevation chart showed a fairly high elevation for the first have and then it slid down to a low elevation for the second half. The grade charts we’re extreme, or that bad really. But man, it felt like the entire route was just slightly uphill. We were also fight a slight headwind the entire time. A headwind that didn’t exist when we were standing still, but you could feel and hear in your ears as you moved. Our legs were burning almost from the start, something we hadn’t felt in this way almost the entire trip up to this point.
The traffic wasn’t great either. In the more Southwest area of the state driver are more accommodating of cyclists. They’ll slow down for you, stop for you to cross (sometimes you just want them to go themselves because you already stopped and unclipped from your pedals). Our area back home people will gladly run your ass over if given the opportunity, while yelling out the window to get off the road. On this route there seemed to be confusion about what to do around a cyclist. While no one screamed out the window, there were some pretty close calls with semi’s and cars. But then there were the confused that either wouldn’t pass around us, trailing us very slowly for long periods of time, so stopped really far behind us at stop signs and red lights. It wasn’t so bad at stop signs, but some red lights sense the weight of the vehicle as a signal to change. My bike, with me, and all of my shit I carried, although heavy, is not as heavy as a car. There was one instance where there were 5 streets/traffic lights that changed based on traffic. The car behind me wouldn’t come up to the line. I was well ahead of the line and over to the side, they had plenty of room. I stood there for 4 cycles, inching over a little more each time. Eventually that car did an illegal turn into a parking lot to get around the light, I moved over as much as I could and the next car eventually moved up to the light, and finally it changed.
We never ended up going to Cedar Point, and although Thursday was a rest day we ended up riding about 20 miles, first to go to breakfast at Berardi’s in Huron, then, after laundry, to Goofy Golf for the Fujupz Goofy Golf Invitational, and then Toft’s on 250 for ice cream. Plonker won the invitational by 2 strokes after shitting the bed at the end of the second course where he initially has a significant lead. It was strange seeing so few tourists at our normal stops. There were only a couple other tables taken at breakfast, and the other restaurants only had a couple customers where we stopped.
Today we head to Cleveland on a route we’re road multiple times on these trips. Neither one of us are looking forward to it, Upper Sandusky to Sandusky has killed our confidence and it also means we’re getting closer to home.
