Today we went from the rural areas we have been traveling through to the city. The day started with thunderstorms overnight but it was clear in the morning and we were dry because of our Warmshowers stay last night. The four of us rolling out this morning.
The forecast was calling for thunderstorms this morning and possibly more this afternoon. We had some sprinkles starting about 10 miles into the ride so we stopped and covered the panniers in hopes of fending off the rain. It didn't work! Here's our first view of Lake Erie.
We found ourselves at Granny Joe's in Vermillion for second breakfast and watched the rain come down. We wanted to head to the bike shop in town during the rain, as well, except they were closed on Wednesday. So we just stayed at Granny Joe's until the rain stopped. The reason for the bike stop was that Rhonda's front wheel wasn't holding air. Jon got out his Stans sealant and went to work on her wheel to get us down the road to the next bike shop. Here's Jon doing his "wheel dance" to get the sealant spread to hopefully get us to the next bike shop.
We got back on the road about 11:30am and the storms had brought us a nice tailwind. Once we hit Vermillion we were finally on the shore of Lake Erie. From here until Cleveland it was all developed. Gone were the quiet, country backroads we had enjoyed for so many days. There weren't many photo opportunities today. Here are a few lake pictures and one neat little cemetery on the route. As you can tell, it was just gray and threatening rain all day.
After that, we hightailed it along the lakeshore to Cleveland. With the impeding storms, we were glad we had a Warmshowers stay again tonight. We rolled into Troy's house in Cleveland about 30 minutes before the storms broke. Troy is another touring cyclist that has had many adventures. He and his girlfriend Tina got us settled in rooms and showed us the shower. We had a lot of grit on us from the wet roads on and off all day.
Two additional cyclists that came from Akron today showed up just as the storms broke. We had a full house last night, but Troy cooked us an amazing dinner finished off by homemade ice cream. We sat around the table after dinner sharing stories of adventures near and far, while we ran a load of laundry to get our grimy clothes clean.
You know you've entered a cyclist's house when this us what you see walking in the front door!
To top it all off, Troy is a very accomplished pianist. Behind the bikes is a beautiful baby grand piano and Troy played a little for us while dinner was cooking. His playing was amazing! We stayed up way too late but it was a great evening!
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