Ohio

Well, I know I had promised trying to blog while in Ohio, but alas, the only computer I had access to had an ailing hamster off his wheel. Microsoft DOS is strange, so was playing Dig Dug. Anyways, the trip was pretty eventful. If I had never been to Ohio before and was basing what I knew about Ohio on this one week, I might actually be impressed. The weather was unbelieveable (75 or so, low humidity and sunny), the trails were dry (an oddity), and there was plenty to do!

The first outdoor activity was taking the new pup, Lorien, on a short hike in one of the metroparks. The area is called Oxbow, for one of the bends in the river. This lovely river might look mildly pretty, but it was the one that was made famous by catching fire in the late 60's. Needless to say, there was no swimming or fishing done in this river!


The next fun activity was taking my brother-in-law for a ride. I picked him up at his parents house, and we went to the Towpath. The towpath was alongside the canal that connected the Ohio River and Lake Erie. Essentially the towpath was there to allow animals (namely horses and mules) to pull the canal boats up and down the canal. I wrote an enormous paper regarding this canal when I was in undergrad at Akron. This was a huge project in the 1820's and 1830's. The railroad arrived shortly thereafter; it wasn't long before the canal was obsolete. The towpath today, and some of the canal and locks have been restored. I believe the trail now, from end to end is over 100 miles. Pretty cool, but flat as a board of course. We rode almost 16 miles, and climbed only 37 feet...gnarly! Nick did extremely well, he's such a cool kid!

We stopped at a snack shop alongside the trail called Trail Mix. We got some homemade ice cream and hung out for a bit. Around back was this cool bike art.


I was able to make it out for one legitimate mountain bike ride. I met up with some of the guys I used to work at Eddys Bike Shop with. We hit the trails at West Branch State Park. There are two sides to this trail. A wide open, super fast, non-technical lake side. Then there is a rocky, super technical South side. I arrived about an hour early to attempt some of the rock gardens. I knew that they had been riding these trails at least twice a week since I'd been gone, and they knew all the lines through the rock gardens. I had to get out there and try to remember/pick some lines. After about an hour of tooling around, I headed back to the trailhead to meet up. We rode for about 3 hours, making two laps of everything out there. That 3 hours constituted about 20 miles, a testament to the technical nature of the south side.
Heath tearing it up!

Nick riding rigid and single on the same section!

Another section of techy goodness.