Start: 7:28 AM

Finish: 4:50 PM  

Saddle Time: 6:44

Ascent: 312 feet

Descent:  224 feet

Miles: 83

Total Miles: 3,071

Highlight: The first 50 miles was almost all on rail trail.

Lowlight: The last 30 miles was a lot of suburban and urban riding without any dedicated bike path.

Cyclemeter:  Follow this link to see the data I’m collecting with the cyclemeter app. You can see gps information, speed, elevation, distance, cadence and heart rate. Better viewed on a computer where it’s easier to play around with the graphs.

I planned on following the northern tier all day today, it mapped out a few miles shorter than Google, but upon further inspection I noticed Google included a significant amount of rail trail while the northern tier headed to Lake Erie west of Cleveland after about 10 miles of trail.  I will gladly take longer ride with more rail trail.

After a hotel breakfast I set off heading back to the North Coast Inland Trail that I came in on last night only about a mile from the hotel. The trail will eventually link Toledo to Lorain over about 100 miles.  The span I road on covered about 50 miles between Clyde and just south of Elyria with a mix of paved and packed stone dust. The trail continues on all the way to Elyria but Google had me exit for a better route into Cleveland. Over the 50 miles I could see farm land give way to suburbia with some relics of the past mixed in like grain elevators or barns that haven’t been used in decades.

Once off the trail suburban and urban riding started right away. The roads were fairly busy with little to no shoulders. Eventually I started seeing sidewalk so I moved off the road. Some areas prohibit bikes on sidewalks but usually more so in city centers.  I was still a ways from the city in a suburban environment. Riding on sidewalk sounds better than it is. Like most suburban sidewalks this was not in good condition with a lot of shifted plates making for a rough ride. I think builders often do a poor job installing sidewalks just to meet code requirements. My sidewalk riding went of for a good 15 miles.  It was a rough, slow ride but kept me off the busy streets.

I left the sidewalk as I entered a more urban area. City riding isn’t bad. Traffic is slow and most cities have bike lanes which I was able to ride for most of the remaining miles, much better than sidewalk riding.

Riding into the city I passed through a lot of old neighborhoods, everything looked clean and well kept. I crossed over the Cuyahoga River on a very large bike lane and into the city center. Downtown Cleveland is like any other city with lots of activity and traffic but it looked very clean and less hectic than a place like New York.

On this ride I choose hotels almost solely based on price. This is long term travel not a vacation so nice isn’t required, just acceptable. Downtown hotels in any city are often $200+/night with Cleveland no exception but I found a $100 room at a Holiday Inn Express, can’t be too bad. Half price hotels are either good deals I happen to stumble upon or a sign of problems.  I was pleasantly surprised, my room was large with what looked like original hardwood floors, probably the nicest place I’ve stayed all trip.  The building must have been some other hotel in a past life. 

While riding I had a couple people stop me today wanting to know about my trip.  One guy pulled into a parking lot ahead of me, jumped out of his car, ran over to me riding down the sidewalk and asked “are you on a big trip?”. I stopped and talked for a while, he told me about other cyclists he’s met doing cross country rides.  Another guy slowed down next to me in a pickup and yelled something out the window. I heard “do you want a ride?”. But what he actually said was “are you on a big ride?”. I stopped and talked with him for a while as well. Finally while eating ice cream down the road from my hotel before checking in a guy noticed my touring bike and asked if I was on a tour. Turns out so is he, heading from Oregon to New York City.  He stopped in Cleveland to visit a friend.  We exchanged numbers and may met up at tomorrows destination.

I passed the 3,000 mile mark today but forgot to note it with a picture. I was somewhere on the bike trail, probably just outside Bellevue. The trip is winding down now with only single digit number of days left.  The next two days are really the last of the unknown.  I consider Buffalo onward to be familiar territory since I rode the Erie Canal five years ago and I also ridden a good part of the route south of Albany. 

Tomorrow will be about a 75-80 mile ride to Conneaut. Now time for dinner at Southern Tier Brewery around the corner.