Day 17 No Poles!!! June 8th

Hilliard OH to Xenia OH 67 miles (819)

Today I rode with Rick, last night's Warm Showers host. We had to decide on where to stay tonight between John Bryan State Park or the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia, Ohio. After some flip-flopping, we finally settled on Xenia because John Bryan State Park has no showers and Xenia is more proximate to my next overnight. I employed the WSNS (Warm Showers Navigation System - see yesterday's blog), and after a day of riding through occasional rain showers and on more beautiful Ohio trails, we arrived late but in plenty of time to set up camp before the rainy night that was forecasted. Rick was first to begin setting up his tent and when he emptied it out of the stuff sack and began sorting he discovered that he had left the poles at home. This left us in quite a quandary as I only have a very small one-man tent that cannot possibly fit more than one person. What to do? We decided to go look around at the big fairground buildings. We found some bathrooms that were unlocked and clean; Rick said he could sleep in the men's room if worse came to worst. We decided to try all the doors in all the buildings and found one that was unlocked near the back of the humongous exhibit hall! We decided to hunker down in there for the night and if a guard showed up we would simply say that we were sheltering from possible tornadoes.

The unlocked side door.

The exhibit hall where we spent the night.

We slept on these (carpeted!) tables in the ~30,000 ft^2  exhibit hall

This is a trailer with five little rooms and a shower that belongs to the fairgrounds that was parked near the campsite area. There's a story about two guys who used the shower only to find out later that a lady lives in one of the rooms and claims the shower for her own - but I won't get into that story right now.

During yesterday's ride, the elastomer - a hard rubber spacer used for absorbing shock - in my seat post disintegrated. Rick used his ingenuity to shape an extra elastomer that he had for his mountain bike and we were able to shove it into the space on my seat post. Then a bit of gorilla tape and - voila - good as new (almost?)

Today one of the corners on my phone mount for and as I was trying to improvise with a zip tie, Rick pulled out this rubber band that was holding together his folded up bicycle tube. This fix held up perfectly for two days until I was able to get a replacement.

Rick has this very cool, comfortable recumbent that he rides when he tours. He is also able to carry a lot of supplies, so he does. At one point he looked at our two bicycles and commented, "How is it that I have more stuff for one night than you have for a whole summer?"

This is me pressing on Rick's cushy bike seat and wagging my finger saying, "No, no, no - not fair!"

The cicadas are back!

I noticed this multi-eyed alien in a park where we stopped. Upon closer examination, I found out it was ball shaped structures with holes just big enough for birds to fit in for nesting.

 This is a prayer wall in the Corner Bakery in Cedarville, Ohio. People put their prayer requests on blue tags and hang them on the wall and the owner prays for them while baking in the early morning. 

This is Jenna. She said that she also prays while she does some baking. She sold me and Rick some very tasty "no-bakes."  No-bakes are cookies that don't require baking.