Last Saturday (I cannot believe I am a week behind still; I really must catch up) I started out fast out of Vermilion on my way to Cleveland. Chris, the motel owner, had encouraged me the previous night to take as many tomatoes from his garden as I wanted. He was a curious guy in that his natural likability was always at war with his need to be a control freak. It was a funny combination for a motelier as he liked being on the property (which was a series of charming, funky cottages set above the lake, one of which Chris later told me had a cellar underneath that was used to store Canadian whiskey that had been brought across the lake during Prohibition), but in the few years he had been running the place he had grown increasingly exasperated by his guests. So he created a rule book for the place and put a copy in each room and instructed guests to read it. After I got to know him a bit – I sat outside with Chris and his girlfriend, Tiffany, Friday night and watched the sun go down – I asked Chris how soon in his tenure had he come up with the rule book idea, and Tiffany laughingly confided that not only was it within the first year but that Chris continued to add new instructions whenever a guest committed some new “outrage.” The rules were mostly normal stuff about not smoking or sneaking in a dog but also included things such as turning off lights and appliances to keep costs down; I’m afraid I have to say that I didn’t bother to read them all.

Anyway, I took his suggestion to heart the next day and had three juicy delicious tomatoes for breakfast, and since they had tough skins, I picked two more and put them in my jersey pockets to take with me. They were the first really good tomatoes I had had on this trip.

So powered in part by this vegetable fruit, I raced alongside the lake covering some 17 miles in the first hour. Just as I was winding it down a bit – my ride that day would be about 68 miles – Matt came out of a side street to join me.

He was on the kind of sleek tooled-out bike that seems to send dollar bills sailing behind in the slipstream as bike and rider effortlessly knife forward. He told me later that the bike was a 40th birthday present to himself and that it was really more than he could live up to. His friends still laugh about his dismay when there was an unexpected downpour during his first ride on it.

Matt was a great guy – he had seen my panniers and turned around to join me on the main road to find out where I was going and where I had been. After learning what I was up to, he offered to accompany me and show me a different route for when the road we were on deteriorated. I gladly accepted even though the knowledge of this detour would evidently be gained at the price of an 18 mph pace, the slowest Matt could apparently go.

Consequently, I got into downtown Cleveland well ahead of the appointed hour when I was to meet up with my friend Thomas Cook to ride out east of the city to stay a few days with the family.

A couple years ago, Thomas and I had a great time biking across Ohio, which was my first bit of credit card touring so I have him to thank (and Rachael has him to blame!) for getting me into this! Riding with him again was great fun – even though he was mostly out front (though, in my defense, I had already ridden some 40 miles and was on a fairly laden bike) – and I hope we have the chance to do a real trip again sometime soon. Rachael has known Bitty (Thomas’ wife) since college so there’s a lot of great history there, and Thomas and Bitty are some of the nicest and most wonderful people we know (to say nothing of their amazing and entertaining kids, Nash and Izzy). And so herein begins the transitioning.

Over the course of this ride (not counting the beginning when we saw Mark and Heather in Portland or when Rachael and Laura came out to Minneapolis), I have seen people I know twice – Dan Vance in Mankato and Jackie Burkhardt in La Crosse – and in both cases, it had been decades since I last saw them. So when Bitty and Thomas and I went out to dinner that first night in Chagrin Falls (great place called Umami – loved it), it was the first time I was with people that I knew and so various stories of the trip just came tumbling forth as one thing reminded me of another. For the first time, I was telling the tale of the trip in a fairly familiar setting, which I was excited to do (and they seemed excited to hear about it, I think), but – especially since Roger and I had parted company – this telling had a kind of finitude about it as if the past was now claiming this wonderful adventure as its own even before the journey was actually over. For the first time, I got a strong sense of the trip coming to an end – where before, like the country itself, it seemed that the ride would go on and on and on – and I was not ready for that. (I may return to this again but if I don’t propel this on a bit any hope of becoming current will be doomed.)

I ended up staying with Bitty and Thomas for three nights (Monday was a rain day), and I got to cook, play games with the kids and even go to a family reunion. I took a bunch of pictures (some of which Thomas kindly offered to touch up a bit – he is quite a talented professional photographer – but I haven’t gotten them back from him?!?) and Thomas even took a few of me as I was getting ready to leave town.
This is one of my favorites (Thomas and Izzy at breakfast):

Here’s the family including Bitty’s mom, Nancy, who is amazing and inspiring in so many ways especially for all the relief work she does in Haiti:

Next time, Thomas will be suited up and ready to go as well:

And here’s one that might look familiar to Roger:

Despite my misgivings about the winding down of my trip, I had a wonderful time in Cleveland and set out happy and refreshed for a two-day ride to Pittsburgh, where Rachael would join me for the last leg.

Coming up: we have dinner in Pittsburgh with Jen Carroll (née the incomparable Bridy) and I am bested in my attempt at conversational supremacy!