GOBA 2012

When I was nine years old, my mom, two of her sisters, and a couple other friends embarked on the inaugural Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure.  I trained with them as much as they would let me, but I was told that I was too young to join them.  They were probably right; they still had to stop often to let me catch up.  In my defense, my bike was much smaller--and so was I.

When I was eleven, I got to ride GOBA for the first time.  Fifty miles of biking a day, every day, for a solid week.  We camped in tents at fairgrounds and school campuses, showering in their facilities or in semi trailers refitted for that purpose.  For the first time in my life, I was part of a traveling biker city which descended upon small towns like a swarm of spandex-clad locusts, devouring everything in sight and disappearing by dawn the next morning.

I loved it.

In September, when other kids started getting wound up for Christmas, I thought "it's only nine months until GOBA!"  It became a family tradition, and our riding group grew, peaking at around fifteen friends and family members.  2012 was GOBA's 24th year; my aunt has only missed two.  I've honestly lost count of how many I've ridden, but I think it's in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty (I missed a couple years when I had to work, go to school, or couldn't afford it).

It's also become something Dad and I can do together.  I tend to ride a little faster than him these days (he has a great bike, but I still have an edge on hills), but several years ago GOBA started including loop days and a century option.  On days when we need to secure a campsite, I ride ahead from the second food stop and find a place for our tents, get the luggage, and set up camp (when The Girl started riding, she found out that part of riding my speed is doing more work when you get to camp).  On loop days and Saturday, I get to ride with Dad; last year I convinced him (on his shiny new bike) and The Girl to join me on the century ride.  This year, he suggested it.  GOBA is the week we get to hang out together without worrying about shoring up someone's house, trimming trees, or even doing laundry.  A lot of people would look at 400 miles of riding in a week as a brutal punishment, but for us, it really is vacation time.

This year, we started riding from Hillsboro, and spent the next two nights in Yoctangee Park, in Chillicothe.  We found an expansive mural, watched part of a criterion race, and drank dollar margaritas at a local tavern until they ran out of tequila.  That's how we roll.

Can you tell which windows are real?  How about that slate roof?

I wanted to include this detail because that lady looked at me, and it gave me the willies.

 The Girl rode her first century with us last year (it was also Dad's first, and my... third?), but opted out this year due to meteorological and dermatological concerns.  Plus, the last twelve miles into Wilmington the day before really pissed her off.  They pissed all of us off, and I don't think I go too far to include the other 2,000 riders in that statement.  It was slightly uphill, completely exposed (the only shade trees we could see were well back into the endless cornfields on either side of us), and most of it featured a headwind.  The Girl did the smart thing and drafted me.  I did the belligerent thing and pedaled hard, occasionally growling.  She might have made the right call; a couple parts of the century loop were very similar, but we did get to see my new favorite barn quilt and a pair of confusing signs.

Pay no attention to the smudgy UFO; I need to clean my lens.

I had no idea how to proceed.

Our midway food stop was unsupported by GOBA; they routed us to a tiny town called New Vienna.  There were only two tiny restaurants in town.  Not great news, but not bad, either.  The bad news was that a storm had come through a few days earlier and destroyed the roof of one of them.  The other bad news was that nobody had told New Vienna that they would soon feed a couple hundred hungry riders.  The diner that was still open ran out of bread and had to call in two more people to help staff the place while Dad and I were there.  They apologized profusely; so did we.  I was just happy to feel like I had experienced one of those moments from GOBA's early years, when our host towns honestly had no idea what to expect, and the gang of bikers would shut down entire restaurants, but I felt really bad for the staff of the diner.  They did the best they possibly could have, and probably set a local record for business done in a day, but they could have managed more easily if they had been warned ahead of time, instead of suddenly being swarmed with spandex.

That night, after Dad and I had found something to eat, the four of us went to downtown Wilmington for dinner (I know--but on GOBA, sentences like that make sense).  We didn't have any particular plan, but that worked out well, because we ended up wandering into two really neat places.  The General Denver Hotel, named after an American badass (also the namesake of Colorado's capital), is home to one of only two manually-operated elevators still running in Ohio.  I've never seen one of these in person, and I was really impressed to find out that two of them were in Ohio, much less that I got to step inside this one (only staff were allowed to run it, and I had no business on other floors, so I didn't get to go for a ride).

After we decided that the General Denver was way too busy for our dinner plans, we stepped back outside and I noticed that the nearby Murphy Theater offered tours.  I had no idea what to expect, but I'll tour just about anything if I think it might be cool, and I had high hopes that we'd get to see parts of the the theater one wouldn't usually see.  Our guide picked up on that and showed us everything.

Dad is easier to find than Waldo.  He's the one in the white hat.

 We got to see the Rope Room, high above the stage, and pull the lines to see how heavy the curtains and backdrops are to move; we went down through the dressing rooms and saw the under-stage entrance to the now-closed orchestra pit (she told us that no other tour that day had seen that, but after hearing that I wanted to see everything, she obliged--she even opened the door to the loading dock so we could peek outside), and I got to go into the box seats for the first time in my entire life.  The box seats in this theater have a peculiar acoustic property: you can hear the people in the matching box seat on the opposite side of the theater.  A couple people, unaware of that feature, have left believing that the theater is haunted.  One guy who had done work for the theater and received box seat tickets in gratitude had been sick and full of cold medicine during the performance and thought he had hallucinated the voices.

Each of the box seats has a small plaque with a fitting quote.

 Back on the street we found another, even larger, and more detailed mural.

None of these people are real, but Picasa wanted to label them.

We found large, tasty sandwiches for dinner at Jen's Deli, in the same cavernous space as a book/toy/furnishings store owned by Jen's dad.  They were also chock-full of bikers, and locals excited to see that their usual lunch spot was open unusually late.  Beware Jen's cookies.  If you ever get one from me, I guarantee there will be something creative inscribed upon it.

On the last night of GOBA, there is always a song contest.  This year's featured an unusually high number of portable toilet jokes, but it ended with me (and the woman who tied with me) winning sweatshirts for counting the barn stars we passed during the week.  Dad and I also got to talk to the gentleman behind Sojourner Cyclery, who hand crafts gorgeous black walnut bicycle frames.  I'd be afraid to ride it outside, but man, they were pretty.

Shenandoah strolls

I fell way behind on updates.  My apologies; June has been kind of a big deal.

Two of The Girl's high school buddies (now married to each other for one convenient package) invited us to join them for a weekend of "camping and hiking" in Shenandoah National Park.  I was so excited that it was only a slight letdown when I learned that their idea of "camping" was "cabin with a hot tub."


That's ok.  I still got to go hiking.

I also took charge of the menu, as is my wont (my wont is also to use the phrase "as is my wont" at every opportunity), and baked two apple Dutch Babies to fuel us for the first morning.  The oven was only large enough for one at a time.  Oops.

It's also my wont to go swimming in frigid streams whenever I get the chance.  As luck would have it, we found this pool right around lunchtime, and there was nearly enough sunlight for me to dry out afterwards while munching a pepperoni roll.  Sadly, it was not nearly deep enough to allow jumping, but it was still so cold that when I stood neck-deep in the middle of the pool, I couldn't get my chest to expand enough to yell over the sound of the waterfall.

The Girl informed us these were mountain laurel blooms.  Most of the other blooms had passed.

On our last hike, I saw a small sign for "Cave Cemetery."  Following it, I found a small graveyard which I assume was a family plot; most of the surnames were Cave, and a protected chart on a signpost indicated that their were several unmarked graves for the Cave family.  There were a couple wooden markers dated as recently as 2006, and some obvious replacement markers for graves dating back to the Civil War.

I've always been fascinated by natural history (I'm especially proud of my 5 year old godson's encyclopedic dinosaur knowledge, which far surpasses my own at that age), and although the Shenandoah is not known for its fossil beds, I did learn a valuable lesson about evolution.