Day 36 –Chillicothe, OH to Parkersburg, WV

Weather
Temperature: 85°F
Conditions: HHH
Wind: SE 6 mph

Ride Info
Altimeter Trip: 2,670 ft
Altimeter Odometer: 71,860 ft
Maximum Speed: 38.0 mph
Average Speed: 19.9 mph
Distance Trip: 96.1 miles
Distance Odometer: 2,806.0 miles
Elapsed Time: 4 hr 49 min 45 sec

Hope you brought your climbing legs with you because you’re gonna need’em the next few days. Another sign we were east of the Mississippi River is the hazy, hot, and humid weather we’ve been experiencing. Jim and I tried riding with Bart and Noud again, but they were hauling ass even more than Jim and I cared to do. They must have been eager to watch the soccer match on the television. We kept up with them for a while, but we didn’t want to try and keep up that crazy pace for too long. Even though we weren’t racing, it was cool how many of our rides played out that way. We wouldn’t just put our heads down and ride fast from start to finish. We would work together in an organized pace line, and then someone would want to stir things up a bit and attack up a big hill. Being the guys we are - we’d have to chase them down. Once everyone catches up, we’d settle back into our pace line at a more reasonable pace until it was time to attack again.

I felt good today, but I felt I expended a lot of energy. I was pretty dead by the time we finished. I was surprised at how hilly southern Ohio was (not that I thought it would be flat either). I remember riding on the outskirts of Athens, OH which is the home of Ohio University. I seem to remember a lot of road construction going on during a portion of the day’s ride which majorly sucked. I was able to get a picture of the “Welcome to Ohio” sign when we crossed over the Ohio River into Parkersburg, West Virginia. Parkersburg is a decent sized town (over 30,000 people) and is the third largest city in West Virginia.












We stayed at a YMCA in downtown Parkersburg. Very industrial looking town as you would imagine most towns in West Virginia would look. We all set up camp in the gym and took a nice long shower. There was a noisy fan running all night long, but it made for some great white noise and drowned out the noise of all the snorers.
















Tomorrow’s ride would be a little shorter at “only” 75 miles but would be much hillier. I was excited about all the climbing we’d be doing over the next several days. I know that others in the group were dreading the next few days.