2020, Day 12: Misdirection

"When you gotta go, you gotta go."

Famous last words. Mom took a detour today to find a bathroom, and though no T-Rex appeared to gobble her up, it nearly led to a tyrannosaurus detour of similar gravity. Meanwhile dad, also at the behest of unclear paths, wound up on another non-bike-approved roadway. Read: multi-lane freeway with a left-hand exit. At least he didn't get pulled over this time! They really ought to build bike freeways for these sort of things. Between the emergency and dad's freeway crossing to the exit, mom's nerves nearly didn't make it through the day.

From Dad:

"Flat, flat, flat terrain. Quite a few miles of narrow shoulders, Mom getting lost in the middle somewhere, and a wrong turn onto a freeway where I should have gone straight through Fremont at the very end--which freaked Mom out big time. But it was a very successful day on the road. We started out at 8:15 and ended up around 1:25, having ridden 60.8 miles.

Today’s route went 15 miles toward Toledo airport, and then around the south end of town into Maumee, over the Maumee River into Petersburg (nice bike paths here), and on out to Fremont. Somewhere southeast of Petersburg Mom stopped for a restroom break, and I rode right on past her. When I didn’t see her where I expected to meet her, I called her from down the road a ways and told her to go to Woodenville--I should have said Woodville. So when she put that information into her phone, it said her destination was 10 hours away. We finally got that straightened out, and continued on our way.

Riding was so pleasant and easy today. I wasn’t that tired when we quit.

But when I pulled the bike off the car carrier, I found that another spoke was broken. We got it fixed, but the mechanic told me I need a new wheel. We called ahead to Cleveland area and found a shop that has one in stock, so we will pick it up Friday or Saturday and hope that resolves the problem. And Mom says, 'No more freeways!'"

From Mom:

"We have to read the maps more carefully I guess, but Dad literally pours over those maps making sure he has good routes and good roads. We just missed that part where the road temporarily switches to freeway. We will pay careful attention to that from now on. I won't go through that again! I was seriously scared for his life. When he got to where I was he just said, Ah, it was easy!

The guy at the bike shop said Dad is working way harder than he would if he had a different kind of bike..."

If only someone had, you know, provided money for dad to get a new bike or something...

But I suppose if you want to sail the pacific in a tugboat and end up 5 miles offshore with a leak, you swim the rest of the way and don't bother with a new boat.

In my tall tale of dad's adventures, I'll write about how he rode so fast that the smoke from his wheels blocked the sun. Only those who lived through 2020 will know that it was really due to fires three timezones away. Hopefully dad's wearing his mask or he might get smoke in his lungs and get pneumonia, and that would just be too ironic, even for 2020. (Wherever you are, find the nearest wood[en] object and knock on it.)