Thurs Sept 7 - Ashtabula OH to Kendallville IN

The Gods must be angry because we have not had a day without rain yet. The good news is our rain stuff keeps us nice and dry and the gooder news (is that a word) is that we have had nothing like we had the first day in NY, so easy-peasy.

We tried to stay on Rt 20 to re-enact what the folks back in the 40's and 50's would do driving west on Rt 20, but it's a little different now of course. A lot of Rt 20 is very pleasant with grapes and then eventually soy, but the closer to Cleveland we got, the slower and more congested it got. After crawling along in 2nd and 3rd gear for what seemed like an hour, we finally saw the Cleveland city skyline and realized the last thing we needed was to wade through another hour or two of this. A sign for 90 (interstate) came up and in about 5 minutes we were riding along at 65 mph again making up time (which we have plenty of BTW). The interstate is butt ugly but we stayed on it a half hour or so until it looked like we were out of the suburbs. We found Rt 20 again and once again were in rural Ohio. Each town is like a little surprise. What did they make here, How are they doing. Some with banners and flowers and trim lawns, some with boarded up storefronts and grass growing in the sidewalks. After each town is another 50 miles of farms, bigger and bigger as we head west.

I saw a guy closing the gate at the local John Deere dealer and pulled over and started firing questions which he happily answered (and more). The corn is either picked for the kernels and fed to chickens or used for ethanol, or it is chopped and fed to dairy cows (maybe ethanol?). The soy is made into meal and shipped all over, but a lot of it is fed to hogs for that crispy bacon in your BLT. He says they can chop about 12 rows of corn at a time these days. Our little chopper on the farm back in East Putney chopped two.

We decided to stay away from Toledo and took Rt 6 which is a 2-laner straight into Indiana. A fun detour (we were going south east at one point). We got rain in three stretches today and you can see them 15 minutes before you ride into them.

About 6pm we stopped in Kendallville where a golf tournament of some kind is going on, got a room and found a place we could walk to for a cold beer and dinner. Watch a little hurricane news and off to bed.