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Thursday, June 4: Again, not an early start - late morning of work. So I got going around 9:30 AM back where I left off yesterday in Trotwood. Again this is part of that vast rail trail system emanating out of Xenia. And this is the furthest northwest reaching trail. The first 7 miles was not as great as yesterday, but it was reasonable and enjoyable. Mornings are definitely my favorite time to ride. Just really peaceful, cool, and nary a person on the trail. Made pretty good time to the city of Brookfield. And that’s when I was given my gift for the day - a 1.5 foot wide hardpack gravel berm on both sides of the trail. They must have repaved this section since I did recon out here two yrs ago because my notes don’t say a word about that. Nonetheless, this little slice of heaven was just amazing to ride on. I was able to crank it out in the big ring at 10-12 mph. Felt like pure pleasure!


And this gravel berm continued all the way to the trails terminus in the hamlet of Verona. I did this 14-mile section in like 1:20 hrs. Felt like a freaking rocket ship. Surprised Judy by my speed. Did a quick coke and it was time to berminate. Now I had a two options. Follow pieces/parts of the old RR grade that continued west past Verona, or  do county road berms. Wasn’t really a tough choice - the old RR line is a total overgrown jungle in most places where it’s still intact, and then it’s farmers fields in other places with no trace. You can actually see the line of vegetation as it goes through fields, then it disappears, then it starts up again. My original intent was to take parallel county road berm that followed the northwestern trend of the RR line, and I didn’t really deviate from that plan. Just too much shit to hike through and then you have the trespassing issue to deal with.


GREAT choice to do county road berm. My first parallel to the RR line was Georgetown Verona Rd. And again, I was able to hammer it out in the big ring on this 2 foot strip of really fine hardpack gravel. As I whizzed along the RR line in places I could only imagine using a machete and chopping my way through that tangled jungle of vegetation like Stanley and Livingston fighting through the jungles of the Nile.  It changed to WiKel Rd, and again, this great little gravel berm. We were must making super time thus far…until I started to feel something wrong with my bike. Felt really sloppy and slow. I popped up on the asphalt to kind of bounce up and down to check the shocks and the tires. That’s when I saw that my front tire was just mush. Front flat! And what’s more I had nothing on me. We were just leapfrogging down the road and I stowed my pack with all the tire fixing gear in the van with Judy because we were passing one another about every two to three miles. 


No choice but to dismount and walk until I saw Judy, OR until she figured that something was wrong. Walked the bike for about 20 minutes until Judy drove back to check on me. By that point I was about 1/4 mile from the little town of Eldorado. So I told Judy to just flip it and I’d walk the rest of the way to Eldo to meet her in a place with a good parking area. Once I got there, in a great parking area next to the local grain collective I got to work. BUT this is one of those new fangled wheels, where the whole damned front axle pulls out. You have to disengage the quick release lever, then position the lever in a notch and actually unscrew the axle out of the wheel. Well, I’d never worked on one of these new systems, and wouldn’t you know it but the damned thing was welded into the wheel, not rusted per-say, but just super tight. Must have been all the water I’d been submerging the wheels in as I Xed God knows how many creeks over the past weeks. 


So what happened was that as I tried to twist the axel out counterclockwise, it began to crumple the edges of this notch. Trash that notch and you just trashed the whole axel assembly. At that point I was sweating bullets. Hell, we were out in the middle of nowheresville western Ohio. So I gave my mechanic and friend Steve Thomas a call, hoping he’d be available at the phone. Thank goodness he was (he’s on vacation in CA, but did indeed answer his cell) Told him of my dilemma. He suggested that the first thing I do was to lube the screw side of this axel system to try to get some of the lubricant to seep down into the threads, then turn the bike over and let the lubricant seep down for a while. Once I did that he suggested that I take some channel locks and GENTLY twist the locking mechanism counterclockwise to see if the axel moves a bit. So we waited about 15 min and then I did the deed. If that thing wouldn’t move, or if I crushed the mechanism, I was royally screwed. So I got a good bite without crumpling that cup, and gently applied some english. And be damned if it didn’t move. Then I was able to position the quick release lever in the notch and twist the axel out of the wheel. DONE. Steve…thanks a million!


Next step was to find the bugger who gave me the flat. Now I looked and looked but found nothing. And this is a problem because the tube was definitely punctured by something sharp. It was a very distinct pinhole in the tube. I went over that tire for 10 minutes and found nothing. Maybe it came out? So I patched to tube, and then as I was positioning the kevlar rimstrip back in I found this massive thorn. This thing was like a big ass thorn for sure, and it went right through the rimstrip. Then I lined that up with the tire and found the head of this thing still in one of the squares of tread, kind of at an angle so it was hard to see. So I pulled both sides out with pliers, put the tube back in, pumped up the tire, then put the wheel on and re-screwed the axel back into the wheel. But now I couldn’t get the quick release to tighten. 


By this time we were taking to a local trucker who had parked his truck in the lot we were in. And I was kind of showing him all this new and fancy technology. So in the midst of this I called Steve yet again, telling him about the quick release issue. He gave me a few more tips and I finally got that to work. GOD these new technologies can be a pain in the ass sometimes. So I got the thing back on, and rather than tighten with the quick release lever, I gently used to channel lock to tighten, this so I wouldn’t crumple that notch any more. By the time I was ready to roll we’d killed like 1:20 hrs on this damn flat. The trucker, a super friendly guy took me into the depot area and showed me a big county map of the roads we’d told him we were taking to New Paris. Looked good. 


We were off again, and once again all super great gravel berm, all the way into New Paris. Now there were a couple of spots where I could have ridden some ATC dbl track on the old RR grade, but the road berm was just way to good. Met Judy in New Paris. Now from this point I just had her drive into Indiana to the Cardinal Bike & Hike trail in downtown Richmond, IN. I had a section of RR ahead of me and there was nothing she could help with. Rode the old RR grade through New Paris as it was like some old dirt road, then got on berm of Rt 121 west and took that into IN. From there I went down a little road and just jumped on some active RR tracks that paralleled the abandoned RR line. Between the two is this dbl track that goes all the way into downtown Richmond. Got into the downtown with no hassles and then I see this Norfolk-Southern truck as I’m rambling down this ballast berm. “Time to get off that train!” Had to do a quick berminator session instead and took that down to the Whitewater River, then X’ed a hanging pedestrian bridge and bingo bango I was at the trailhead. Only got 32 miles in for the day due to the flat/mechanical issue, but nonetheless I’m happy with the day. 


This has easily surpassed what I did back in 2012 when I attempted the American Dirt trek. Back then I bagged it in Athens and began riding sections of asphalt in total frustration. This time, I can safely say that I’v maybe done a handful of 100-200 yard sections of asphalt since I we left Lewes, Delaware. Of course I’ve Xed thousands of asphalt X roads along the way, but honestly, this is insignificant compared to the big picture of making forward progress on soft surfaces only.  Tomorrow could be very tough. My notes say this about the first 10-20 miles of the Cardinal Greenway Railtrail: “BITCH, BITCH, BITCH is what this is going to be. The asphalt trail is awesome, BUT the berm is this thin strip of limestone atop RR ballast - both on a slant.” Well, let the smackdown begin again!