Some Fellow Bikers

6/26/09~ Woke up that morning, in Tipton Indiana, only to find David cooking us up a great breakfast of fried eggs, and all the cereal we could want, it was beautiful, and he's quite the chef at making great eggs. We waved goodbye to our incredible hosts, and rode on out, bound for Ohio, and excited to be entering our last and final state before the Great and Wonderous, Pennsylvannia. We again had great weather, with a slight tailwind, and averaged 20 mph for the next 70 miles which put us in Union City, on the border of Ohio, where we would eat lunch. Just as we were pulling into the subway there however, Dietrich, yet again, broke another spoke sending his rim way out of true, and unrideable. Luckily however it could not have come at a better place, right next to a Napa Auto parts store. Since there was no bike shop, Dietrich needed to fix it himself, and so the great guys at the Napa let him use their shop. He threw the rim in the vice, and quickly fixed his rim back up and ridealbe, while Bobby and Seth enjoyed a great lunch of Subs, and napping.
After lunch, we hit the road again, entering the nice state of Ohio, riding a final 20 miles into the small town of Covington. We entered the town at about 2:30, and began the usual, knocking on doors. We always seem to be catching people when they're "just leaving town" however, soon enough we found our guy, Craig Cota. He was a great big, Harley-Davidson rider, with tatooes, shaved head, gotee and all, slightly intimidating at first. Bobby, stuttered through his words, checking to see if maybe this guy would let us stay at his place. Being the great man himself, he walked us right over and put us in his air conditioned garage. We dropped our stuff off and rode into town to get "the best ice cream" at the local shop, as he claims. We hung out for about 3 hours just trying to meet the locals, and just maybe talk to a girl for once, it didn't work out as planned however so we just relaxed and rolled on back to Craigs place.
We hit up his pool, and began chatting with him, and soon found out he was the man with the knowledge. He began telling us all sorts of different things, about things we could imgagine, and some we even couldn't, it was great. Soon thereafter he told us, to our great surprise, that as soon as his wife, Linda, got home, she could cook us up a huge meal, and thats exactly what she did. We had all the burgers, hot dogs, potatoes, and beans and rice we could possibly want. Yet again, it seems we are spoiled. To top it all off, she made us a great dessert of brownies and ice cream sundaes, with cherry and all, they were so great. Craig also continued to feed us all sorts of great little tid bits of information, and cute stories of his past, and told us all what this bike trip could possibly mean, he even ended it all with a great showing of magic tricks. He definitlely got us excited again to be biking across country, and got our minds on track again. To conclude, a great evening, Linda told us ghost stories of the haunted house they lived in before, a great way to end and incredible night.
It seems as though we always find the best people, in these little towns. We were still 600 miles from home, a good distance away, and the days can seem to get long now, seeing as we have a whole new state to cross... again. Just when it seems like the struggles are toughest, we find great people like the Cota's, and all the other's we've met, we are yet again blown away each day by those we find just by pedalling a distance.
Your prayers are felt, and thats all we can really say about that.