What’s the point?

Upper Sandusky to Bellefontaine, Ohio Saturday, May 8, 2021

Having reasonably recovered from yesterday‘s grind, I was looking forward to a more leisurely day today, only 48 miles to go and again, a northwest wind which would be just a little bit back of a crosswind. I was dawdling packing up, until I checked the website of the highpoint I was going to visit (my first for this trip), Campbell Hill. It is on the grounds of a vocational school, and they close at 3PM on Saturdays, not reopening until Monday. There were a number of posts of people who had come a long way to see it, only to be disappointed.

Oh shoot. Guess I’ll have to gut it out after all. I had allowed myself just enough time, with minimal stops, and no unanticipated curveballs, like the wind shifting again.

The wind held steady this time, and was a bit more of a help than a hindrance, but there was a new wrinkle—dogs.

I love dogs. I have had one for most of my life. Truly man’s best friend. But a potential problem on these trips. Dogs love to chase things, and bicycles are irresistible. Nine times out of ten they are just being friendly, but the other time, they can be dangerous. Trouble is, you never know. If they really are out to get you, you are quite vulnerable, especially on an unwieldy loaded bicycle with traffic speeding by. Serious injuries, even death have resulted.

One of the joys of bike touring in Vermont is that this never happens, for some reason. I guess it’s just a tacit understanding that bicycle tourism is so important to the economy, people just keep their dogs restrained if they tend to chase bicycles. Truly, I have toured tens of thousands of miles in Vermont and never had the slightest problem.

Things are very different as soon as you cross the state line, however. I have learned from experience to always be a bit on guard. If you see the dog coming, you have much more time to react and plan your strategy. Typically, this involves seeing whether you think you can outrun the dog, given the upcoming hills, wind, and your stamina at that instant. You don’t want to be wrong, and have the dog overtake you at a time when you are at your limit.

If there’s any doubt, the thing to do is to dismount, put the bike between you and the dog, and try to talk it down. This is successful in the vast majority of cases, although it can be quite time consuming, you have to walk away slowly until the dog (or the owner) decides to call it off and head home. For that very rare time that the dog is truly aggressive, you can squirt it with your water bottle, pretend to throw a rock at it, or use pepper spray. I do have pepper spray accessible, but I really, really, don’t want use it. I never have.

This strategy has worked for me for all these years. Still, the sense of hypervigilance take some of the fun out of the tour. Especially today, when I was in a hurry, and really couldn’t afford to take the time to dismount. I did get chased a couple of times, and made a run for it, although I think I was successful because the dog stopped at the property border, not because of my speed. Sometimes I crossed the street, dogs are generally trained not to do that although it does put you on the path of oncoming traffic. After each chase, I was exhausted from the adrenaline surge and the resultant tachycardia and hyperventilation. This is the one part of this big trip I am not looking forward to, unsure how things will be in different states.

Other than that, though, things went fine. Today’s “Easter egg” was passing through a bit of Amish country, with many horse-and-buggies, farming with no mechanized equipment, people in the classic period dress. I waved gaily to them all, but generally got no response. I imagine these good people are heartily sick of tourists. I didn’t dare take a picture.

I really didn’t know what to expect, approaching the highpoint. These minor highpoints intrigue me, I have done so few of them, but I hope they will be at least slightly prominent, stand out from the surrounding landscape, and be obviously a highpoint. The big ones are invariably impressive, I keep hoping the little ones will “step up”, so I don’t feel so foolish.

Alas, Campbell Hill did not “rise” to the challenge. As I approached it, I kept searching for something to see, but other than a cluster of antennas, nothing was visible until I was right there. The landscape had slowly changed from flat to undulating, and I was aware that each uphill was not fully matched by the next downhill; I did gain 1400 feet but it was all in that gradual way. I guess I was grateful, not to have a big climb at the end of this rush to make the deadline.

Anyway, I made it with five minutes to spare, good thing because the whole compound was protected by an imposing barbed wire fence. You go behind this vocational school and there was a small parking lot, with a bench, a flag, and a sign.

The view, such as it was, was partially blocked by the surrounding antennas. As the sign indicates, this used to be a NORAD radar station, a relic of the cold war. My Dad’s line of work. Appropriate to scatter his ashes there.

Another tourist, Sean, arrived in time to help me take my picture. He was from Florida, was mirthfully aware of its ridiculous highpoint, Britton Hill, the lowest of them all at 345 feet. Now that he had moved to Ohio, he wanted to bag one of the big boys.

We were shortly interrupted by the caretaker, who booted us off, she had to lock up. The hill is in the town of Bellefontaine, and it was an easy downhill for the 2 miles to my motel there. The motel clerk had never heard of it. I searched the horizon, and once again saw no eminence at all, nothing looming as I had hoped.

Nevertheless, I was thrilled. I had biked 22 days, come almost 1000 miles, and truly had “scaled” Campbell Hill from the bottom, from sea level at Troy, New York. That ugly picture of the boat ramp there was the true beginning of the climb. The summit was only 1549 feet, but adding up all of the elevation gains since Troy totals 13,800 feet. Eat your heart out, Sir Edmund Hillary.

Yeah. Uh huh. Whatever, dude. Surely some, if not most of you are wondering, what the hell is this clown doing? It’s the elephant in the room. One of a few, actually, along with my daddy issues, and my abandonment of Jane for a year while I pursue this, this, whatever it is.

It had been my intent, in my “gap year” between retirement and this trip, to explain myself. It never happened. Sure, there have been some attempts, in my very first post here, in the opening paragraphs of my long ago Denali journal, and in that Hamilton song, but they don’t really address the issue. Maybe it’s not possible. But I want to try, when I have down days in the near future. They will be “in between” posts, tentatively titled Elephant in the Room #1, #2, #3. Bear with me. If I ever turn this blog into a book, those will be the opening chapters.

Distance 48.8 miles, 990 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,453 feet.