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October 16, 2006
The 90
Last Sunday the Central Ohio temperature rose to something like 75 degrees F. It was beautiful, crisp and clear. (And, when I say last Sunday, I expect you to know that I mean October 8. Had I meant October 15, I would have said yesterday.)
I set out on the Mighty Schwinn with the goal of putting somewhere between 50 and 100 miles on the bike. In all honesty, I figured I'd hit 75. In the end I'd do 90. 
The 90 I did were harder on me than the 102 I'd made just a couple of weeks before. I'm pretty sure my eating habits played a big role in this.
During the 100: I stopped a lot during the first 70 miles to check my map. Every 30 to 45 minutes I'd eat something or drink some Gatorade. At the end of the trip I'd had four bottles of Gatorade, four big bottles (maybe more) of water, four Clif bars, I'd eaten (and had additional fluids) at the KFC in London, Ohio, and a couple hours later I'd eaten (and the fluids thing again) in Mechanicsburg, Ohio. I'd also had an ice cream cone in there somewhere. (Let's not forget the pre-ride breakfast at Mel's Diner.)
During the 90: I had a better idea about where I was going and didn't stop as much. I know this sounds odd, but time passes quickly on the bike and you can blow past a snack point rather easily. Blow by too many and your body starts to run out of things it needs. I finished the second Gatorade on the trip home -- right around mile 75. I didn't have the restaurant stop in Mechanicsburg -- I just really really really wanted to get home by the time I rolled through there. (I started the day at Mel's.)
On th the 90 I took a wrong turn, as is customary, but realized it in short order. Not that I turned back to undo it -- that would mean seeing things I'd already seen. I plunged on. Plunged on? [That hit's hit the ear funny ... just a moment ago (a day after this post) I noticed that typo; it hit the eyes funny)] I kept going knowing I'd somehow end up in London. Thirty minutes later, as I passed Van Wagner on Rt. 56 I had the feeling that somehow I might end up in Mt. Sterling (I used to live there and would drive to London on 56.)
If you Yahoo Map the distance from London to Mt. Sterling, you'd notice it doesn't look like all that much. You'd also notice, had you been out there with me, that I was pretty close to London before I took the wrong turn on 56; that turn came where Big Plain Circleville Rd. and 56 intersect. The preceding wrong turn can't be seen on the map but I should have ended up at Spring Valley and 665. If you zoomed in close enough -- and there's no reason to do so -- you'd see Moorman and some other tiny, country roads that I used to eventually circle back to 56 right at the intersection where the big 56 marker on the map is just SE of London.
Enough of that -- sorry, I got carried away.
While I was making my way to London I passed the building at the top of this entry. It is either an old school or an old church. Old, one-room school houses aren't that hard to come by in Ohio. Take a drive out through the country and you are almost guaranteed to drive past one that has been converted into a home or a barn. There's one about a 1/3 of a mile from me in the Historical Village in Old Hilliard. That one may have been moved to the historical village as there's another pretty close to that one -- within a quarter mile probably -- and while it isn't uncommon for huge, budget-busting, high schools to be placed within a mile of each other these days, way back when people had more sense, fewer dollars, and less need for intra-city sports rivalries, it just didn't happen. (Okay ... it's a bit more than a mile. But not much.)
Most old school houses, that I've seen, anyway, don't have the belfry, which leads me to believe this is a church. Though, I don't know why you'd ring a bell here for any reason. There were a couple of houses close by but these were certainly built after this church/school fell into disuse. It doesn't look like anybody lived close enough to this building to hear a bell ringing.
(Then again, I've had my bells rung a couple of times and I image people could year me yelp miles away when it's happened.)
The Ohio fall harvest appears to be in full swing. There's nothing to worry about. We've soybeans for everyone and enough corn to keep your livestock happy.
(It's plugged on, isn't it. Which is kind of the opposite of plunging)
Posted by delmer at October 16, 2006 8:25 AM