After a wonderful breakfast at the Blanchard's place, Jim loaded my bike in his truck and drove me a few miles past some streets with heavy traffic to where a bike path started and dropped me off to continue my journey.
As I got out of Erie I took route 20 again and made my way about 30 miles to cross the border in Conneaut, Ohio, where I stopped at the White Turkey Drive-In for lunch on the recommendation of Renie. As I sat there eating I checked out warmshowers for a place to sleep tonight and found a mid-20's couple in Painsville that I contacted and got a quick reply from them saying they'd love to host me. I originally didn't want to go that far today but I was feeling good and figured a bed was worth an extra 20 miles. Its a good thing I didn't try stopping and camping around Geneva-on-the-Lake like I first thought at the beginning of the day, that place is a crazy tourist town.
This day's riding kinda blurred in with the last few days, riding south west, headwind, little towns, little parks, random gas stations for water or Gatoraid. I was happy that my untested Brooks saddle has worked out great, it's the most comfortable saddle I've rode for long days on the bike. I guess this means I can finally send home the original Trek saddle I also brought along incase the Brooks ended up being horrible.
In one of the towns I met a bearded guy on a bike with a small motor on the rear rack. He was pulling another bike tire in a Bob Yak trailer and had on gardener gloves as bike gloves. He reminded me of a roommate I had one, Brilex, and we chatted for 10 minutes and he told me he wanted to find the best way up to Albany and I told him about the Erie Canal towpath and warmshowers, of which he was very thankful for. It was weird hearing someone say "Oh, my wife's cousin has internet, I'll go over to his place and look that up!"
It was getting later in the day as I finally make my way through Geneva-on-the-Lake and made my way to Roger and Jessie's place in Painsville. They definitely have a cool hippie vibe going and were the most interesting people I've met yet on my tour. Roger bought his almost-condemned house for $20k and has been slowly fixing it up with recycled wood and material he's gotten for free. Jessie spent some time in Ithaca and worked for Moosewood. Two years ago they just upped and left California and decided to bicycle across the southwest. They used 5-gallon buckets lashed to their bicycles as panniers and slept out in the desert with only a tarp around their sleeping bags. They stopped in random towns and found temp work for money before moving on. Roger also told me of how after getting fired from a previous job he went to India with his friend, a 70 year old indian catholic priest, and ended up just bumming around India for 6 months, where he worked on a coffee plantation for a while. Roger and Jessie fed me some great food and I almsot thought I was back in Ithaca! We all hung out and had some beers and talked till about midnight and then they had to go to sleep and I was also pretty tired after a long day.
Start: Erie, PA
End: Painesville, OH
Distance: 90.4 miles
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