Sunday, May 31: Well, no thrashing sessions today, at least not on so-called “Railtrails”. And man, my upper body was just lit up this morning from all the bike portaging yesterday on that Moonville trail. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting old, or maybe it was a lot of bloody lifting. Whatever the case, my neck, traps & lats are feeling a bit sluggish right now.
Got going at 8:30 AM right out of Lake Hope State Park. Now I could have done another 4 miles on the Moonville, but checking out my gazetteer last night I counted another three Xing’s of Hewett Creek. Honestly, just didn’t have it in me so I berminated my way down Rt 278 south to Zaleski- and man, THAT was a wise choice because I could motor along at like 10 mph on this beautiful sandy berm. And you’ve got to realize that 10mph to me is like the Autobahn after the last couple of days riding. Made Judy happy to because she could always keep me in sight. So made Zaleski in no time. Then did berm on Rt 677 south to Red Diamond. Now the old RR line actually starts back up outside of Zaleski and continues all the way to the southwest where it joins up with a CSX main line just south of Chillicothe. Problem is that from Zaleski to Red Dimond, the line is kind of off-limits due to this Powder Plant being smack dab right on top of the RR. So it’s fenced off for some 3-4 miles in each direction. Don’t know what they do there…but they’re pretty big on security, so I wasn’t about to even get myself inside of that mess. , and this thing is massive. No choice but to berm ride, and again, the riding was pretty smooth, so we made great time to the town of Dundas. From Dundas the - we’ll call it a feeder line - power plant rail parallels a collection for roads. So I had the choice riding Rt 93, or riding down the middle of that single old RR. And I bounced back and forth based on how the berm/rail riding difficulty level was.
Again, Judy was pretty happy to be able to kind of stay in close contact. She’d go 2-3 miles down the road and just wait, then we’d confer on whether I’d ride rail or berm, and then proceed down the line. At the town of Hamden we took a break with about 20 miles in the bag - a massive day for me at that point! From there we got on this little county road called Lesmil, and the berm was just total crap, which in berminator lingo means THERE WAS NONE! So I was on the RR riding down the middle with the road and the RR line almost touching one another in places so Judy and I could still keep an eye on one another - until the first wrench in the cog for the day - when all of a sudden there was a “Dead End” sign on Lesmil. Now I could keep rolling on RR, but Judy was in a quandary, and honestly…so was I. I’d used gazetteers and google Earth to do a lot of my mapping for this trip and both of these had Lesmil being a thru road all the way to Rt 327. BUT when I pulled out my gps it come up as a dead end. And on the other side, my gps says the same damned thing - dead end. Amazing!
So I had to add lib a bit to get this thing done to Rt 327. Now Judy wanted no part in my add libbing with her getting on roads I hadn’t previously researched. I mean hell, I’ve screwed up routes that I HAD researched so I totally got her uneasiness. Loaded my bike in the van, pulled out my gps again and began zooming in on a van route to get us past the dead end thing and get us to Rt 327. Wasn’t too hard with Judy driving and me navigating with a gps. Made it to the other side with no problem. So I decided to berm ride from that end point back to our start point so that Judy would be ok. And actually it was much better than what I’d just ridden on the RR so it worked out ok. Minor problem, major fix. And we were back in business in the town of Byer.
From Byer west Rt 327 goes dead parallel with this same old feeder line, so again I had a choice of two evils - berm or RR. Berm won out with some great sections where I could bump up the mph to 10 and 11 on occasion. Took this to the little hamlet of Ray. From Ray, again, the RR paralleled another west trending road - West Junction Rd. BUT, big issue here was that once you pick your poison, you’re committed, because the parallel really isn’t that close, and there are no roads to connect the two. I chose the berm of West Jnc Rd just to kind of keep Judy and I together, because she wouldn’t be able to see me at all once I’m on the RR line.
Bad choice…VERY bad choice. The berm on West Jcn was just abysmal. Some of it was a fine, loose gravel that sloped down at 45-50 degrees, which just made both my wheels wash to the right down into deep ditches. Couple of time I just had to ride a section of asphalt just so I wouldn’t plant my ass face down in a five foot deep ditch. I’m all about the ethics of this trip, but I’m not going to get stupid about it. So I had several of these episodes. The good sections of berm on this tiny county road were about 6-8 inches wide where you’re teetering on this thin little line. Go right just a smidgen and you’re ass over tea kettle in the ditch. By now I’ve become very proficient at holding a good line and looking down the road. Those big fat 2.4 tires also help out.
By the time I made the town of West Junction to meet Judy I was pretty flamed from the berm ride over the prior 5 miles. Now to get to our next meeting point, I had to go full RR line and Judy had to go full little 1.5 lane backroads, and she wasn’t too keen on doing these on her own, so what I did was another reverse segment where I co-piloted her to what was to be my end point, and then got out and rode the RR line back to where I ended up in West Junction. Worked perfectly as Jude could get back to West Junction having already driven from there. And I could ride RR because there was on other option. Only down point is that we’re using double the amount of gas and it’s taking more time…BUT if she’s happy I’m happy. So we’re good.
By the end of this section my ass was feeling like I had a bad case of diaper rash, what with all the jarring from riding down the middle of RR half the day. I mean I even told Judy that I was going to have to get some baby powder for my sore red ass! So again, we drove back to where I started that RR segment for the final segment of the day, from Richmond Dale to just across the Scioto River, some 11 miles south of Chillicothe. Did that all on berm and we were done.
Feel like I at least got in some distance today, I’m guessing like 40-43 miles - huge day since we got going again last Thursday. Tomorrow is kind of technical in that I need to get past Chillicothe via no asphalt if at all possible. Got two choices here: First is to just paddle down the Scioto River to where I ended up today; OR to do 6-7 miles on a “somewhat active RR line” that has this bomber dbl track on the left side - very alluring! Bad part about option two is that I just have not been able to find a put-out point if I ride the RR and paddle half. All the put-outs are on private property. So I’m going to do a bit more research tonight and make a decision then. Until tomorrow….Late