One of the nice things about being unemployed is the ability to do things like bike along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail on a Tuesday, when it is much less crowded than it is on a Saturday or a Sunday. It’s about three miles from the house to the Harvard Ave trail crossing, making it extremely accessible by bike. From there it’s a mere 19 miles to Peninsula, OH. Some good distance was put in today, totaling about 44 miles in all.
The Towpath Trail is really a wonderful stretch of cycling in northeast Ohio, running from Cleveland all the way down to Akron and a little further still, in fact. The stretch from Brecksville to Peninsula and through the rest of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is fantastic, with some nice riverfront views and no shortage of gorgeous foliage, especially now that it’s properly spring around here and everything has started blooming.
Peggy and I set out shortly after 10am, having finished a nicely sized breakfast of bacon and eggs. Early on in a ride I like to push hard to really get the blood going and see how quickly I can get to the “endorphin-rush” stage of things. After that I tend to mellow out. So, I took a significantly lead early on the ride, but around Rockside Rd, I relaxed a bit and let Peggy set a leisurely pace on down to Peninsula. We stopped for a quick snack of granola bars and apples while I picked up a couple things for my bike at Century Cycles in Peninsula. Rested and restocked we turned around and headed back towards Cleveland.
It was a bit of a struggle towards the end; it’s been several months since I’ve done this many miles in a day, and there’s a decent-sized hill at the end just before we get home. We arrived to a nice potful of lentil and beef chili that was cooked up the night before. Two bowlfuls of that barely sated my voracious hunger, but it was delicious, and followed by a hot shower, we were ready to get on with the evening.
We moseyed on over to Visible Voice Books to enjoy a bottle of wine on their patio (it’s a bookstore with a wine bar — how cool is that?) and poke around a few books. The nice thing about the bottle of Papillon pinot noir we had (from Cherry Hill Vineyards), is that while it goes very well with food, it is at it’s best enjoyed outside on a warm evening. It’s not two-thirds as expensive as Cherry Hill’s main label pinot, but is almost as good, making it a much better deal. What better way to celebrate a nice, long ride than with a bottle of delicious wine on a beautiful May evening?
I’ve got some more pictures of the ride today if you just click on through.
Peggy found us some wild leeks (ramps).
More Towpath Trail pics.
This sounds basically like the best day ever. I have a feeling that reading this blog is going to make me very jealous.
Well, I’d be lying if I said this blog wasn’t, on some level, about making people jealous.
Hopefully, it can be a little more than that, too. I would very much love it if this blog inspired people to do more shit like this.
I was chatting with a guy on a bike touring forum who is doing what he calls “The Life’s Too Short” tour this summer. He provides, and I would like to provide as well, a reminder that you just gotta get out there and do some shit.
Oh yeah, and thanks for the mini Papillon review; I’d been thinking about trying that & now I will go for it! Maybe to celebrate the arrival of my new patio furniture, which ought to be showing up any day now.