GOBA 25

Every year, on the third week of June, two to three thousand bikers descend on a circuit of rural Ohio towns like a swarm of spandexed locusts.  GOBAville, our itinerant campsite, claims status as "Ohio's Largest Moving City," and for that one week of the year, its inhabitants live in tents, shower in trucks, crap in Easy Bake Ovens, and wait patiently in lines to eat, shower in trucks, and crap in blue plastic hot-boxes. I've been doing it since I was ten.

Meadow View Growers maintains this Slow Moving Garden, and parked it at one of our food stops on Sunday.

The Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure has a new route every year, which in itself is impressive, considering 2013 was the 25th anniversary of the tour.  There's only so much of Ohio, and we've covered an awful lot of it.  Many towns have been revisited over the years, as food stops, overnight stays, or both.

Would you go here for a shave and a haircut?  Would you believe it's constantly busy? (phone number  has been obscured from picture)

I've written about GOBA before, but maybe you're new here, or maybe you're curious about longer bike tours, so I'll give some more background on what it's all about this time, because it turns out my pictures don't illustrate the whole week.  They do illustrate a lot of the statues in Troy, Ohio this year (they change regularly) depicting normal people doing normal things--normal enough that if you don't notice the circular plates they stand on or the creepy gold skin tone, it's possible to not realize they're statues.  Alternatively, my aunt pointed out a statue that turned out to just be a person, sitting very still on a bench.

If you look really closely, you can see that his watch is on backwards.  But I love kites, so I still like the statue.

Originally, GOBA was a solid seven days of riding.  Fifty (or so) miles a day for a week, with a new town every night.  Now, there are two "layover days," giving you the option of riding your fifty or staying in town and seeing the sights, watching a movie, doing laundry, or taking a bus to a local event, like canoeing or outdoor theater.  One of the loop days has a century option, which means one hundred miles in a day.  I've ridden the century for the last several years, and Dad joined me after the purchase of his much nicer, faster bike.  The trick is to not think of it as a century, but as two fifty mile rides.  The other trick is to get ice cream and other fuel at every possible opportunity.  Last year, Dad, The Girl, and I stopped for ice cream three times along the route.  It's a personal best.

Despite the stunning detail in the texture of his clothes, this is not a real person.

There are three food stops each day, sponsored by the communities along our route.  You grab whatever food you want, and pay for whatever you grab.  After 25 years, GOBA has a pretty good idea of what we need, and they do a great job telling the towns we pass through what (and how much) to provide.  The loop days are not as well supported, but usually those days pass through towns with good local options for food.  At night, there is almost always food available in camp, and local organizations like churches and schools will hold dinners (in addition to whatever restaurants are in the area).  Nobody goes hungry on GOBA.  A lot of people actually gain weight during the week.

I like that he seems to be the model for the sign he's ignoring.

Our tent city springs up each night at a high school, college, park, or fairgrounds--whatever the city has decided will best serve our needs.  Vendors and bike repair shops line up their booths, luggage trucks disgorge our bags, and the shower trucks (I really wasn't kidding about that) connect to water mains.  As riders trickle in to camp, we find our bags, set up tents, shower, and figure out what to eat that night.  There are usually lots of people who bring games and books to keep themselves occupied until it's late enough to go to sleep, but there are often local concerts and other entertainment options.  The next morning, you repack your duffel, collapse your tent, and toss your bag into the back of a luggage truck before you set out riding again.

Our route didn't cross this bridge, but I liked it, so I took a picture anyway.

With a ride this big and this popular, you see a lot of the same people year after year.  My aunt has only missed two years, and there are a lot of people who know it just from seeing her in the past.  On the very first year, my mom stole a bite of sandwich from a guy named Mike, and he still remembers her.  You end up with an ephemeral sense of community, because most of these people you only see for one week of the year, but you end up knowing a lot about them from talking at food stops, along the route, in lines, on shuttles, and in camp.  This year, we met a man named Dennis on the second day.  It was his first GOBA, but by the end of the week we knew about his sons, his recent (and very successful) improvement in health, and his riding club.  Saturday morning, he invited us to his place for dinner.  I thought he was joking until he gave Dad his address.  That's the sort of thing that happens on GOBA every year.  Mom's friend/victim Mike, who barely knows me, invited me to join him on a cross-country ride this fall, and if it weren't for the training I still need to do, I would go.

When you glue pennies all over an Ansonia tiger, it looks like a leopard.

There were a couple small problems this year, but nothing insurmountable.  Both of Dad's tires went mysteriously flat, but he had three spare tubes (on a vehicle with only two wheels--I can't figure this out, but it worked out well for him, so who am I to question his tactics?), so we took care of that.  The route markings were not as good as they had been in the past, and were sometimes located where they were difficult to find, because they were far from where bikes should be (and were) traveling, but with two thousand other people going to the same place as you, you can usually just follow the stream of people.

The Bicycle Museum of America, in New Bremen, let us try their penny farthing in a stationary rig.

We've been riding GOBA as a family (and ever-changing network of friends) since the very first year.  My first year was GOBA's third, and although I missed a few years in the middle, I've been riding it ever since.  Even when I was a little guy, I rode my own bike, under my own power.  Next year, of course, I'll have to skip.  Dad and I have been trying to decide whether to keep riding after that, or try a new ride.  He found out about a bike tour in Maine that's having its inaugural ride this August.  We can't make it this year, but maybe in two years, we can return to Mom's childhood home for a good long ride.  He and I took our bikes to Maine for a little trip a few years ago, just him and me putzing about in the mountains, and we had a great time.  But before we do another serious ride, I need a new bike.  Something light and fast.  Not this thing.

Sure, this seems reasonable.