Friday, May 22, 2009

Day 36 Greenfield, OH to McArthur, OH (50 bike miles;2504 cumulative miles)

I decided to bike the 8 miles from the campground to Greenfield and actually got there first, since Jay needed to fill up with water and dump the waste water. Back on 28, I couldn't resist snapping a picture of Buckskin Township Hall!



Our interim destination was Chillcothe, a small city with an Ohio University campus, to seek out a bike shop. The first one we found was closed on Mondays, so we then headed for another. I got there quite easily by bicycle. Getting there by vehicle was quite another story, since the only apparent road was ONE WAY the wrong direction. Jimmy, the bike shop owner suggested parking at the high school and walking (or riding) over.

I had been having some problems with shifting, particularly in
going into lower gear; I explained this to Jimmy and asked him to take a look. He did but he also measured my chain and said that the chain was in very bad shape. When I told him how many miles I had gone, he said I definitely needed a new one. Although I had an extra chain in Tiggy, I asked Jimmy to go ahead and change it. Later Charlie and Kriss came and I suggested to them that they may want their chains to be looked at. They had Jimmy look at each and sure enough they too needed replacing. Jimmy said that he had sold his last chain to me. Fortunately, both Kriss and I had extra chains, so Jimmy replaced Kriss and Charlie's chains at NO CHARGE.

This has been our experience with bike shops the entire trip. Charlie recently wrote about our experiences at bike shops in his monthly column for the Gazette, the monthly newsletter of the Montclair Unitarian Church. Thinking back, we remembered each bike shop stop, including ones in Ramona and El Centro, CA; Flagstaff and Prescott, AZ; Taos, NM; Jefferson City, MO; Wichita, KS; Alton, Ill.; and Chillicothe, OH. At every shop they would stop what they were doing and help us out and charge us practically nothing. Bike shop owners and mechanics are the best people!

At each bike shop, we generally would buy a half dozen bike tubes to have on hand. We estimate that we have gone through at least 30 tubes among the 3 of us.
Jimmy also gave us great directions for getting safely across the Salt Creek, avoiding the Interstate and getting onto Route 50 East.

There were a few hills along the route, but services were quite scarce in the towns we passed through. Fortunately, we found a motel in McArthur, OH, which is named after a former General and Congressman from Ohio (not DOUGLAS). I managed to get an Internet connection at the pub where we ate dinner, but then lost it.


























































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