Greene County Ohio Cycling Classic

Super proud of these two!!  The lady earned her second century (the first was at the 2015 Classic) and the handsome gent earned his first metric century.  I highly recommend this area for biking any time of year but especially each July when Green Trails sponsors four days of rides.  It is an affordable event whether you are camping as I did in 2015 or staying in a hotel as I did this year. The registration fee covers camping, most meals, SAG support, etc. The unique plus is that you reside in one place during the entire event and ride out in a different direction each day.  Each day's destination is enjoyable (city of Dayton, Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum, village of Yellow Springs, etc.). A nice by-product of the event is that over two of the days you will cover 50+ of the 320 mile Ohio to Erie Trail that crosses Ohio diagonally from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.

Slippery Elm Trail

Hello!!  The big gap in posts was due to lack of time to post, not lack of time to bike. Although I wish I could have biked twice as much, I have added 1180 (in 2012), 1294 (in 2013), 493 miles (in 2014) to my odometer, and 248 so far this year. I'll try to find time to fill you in on past rides but for now I'll report on my latest trail, Slippery Elm, which is found in western Ohio.

My cousin, her husband and I rode the 13 miles from North Baltimore to Bowling Green on 6/18/15. After a nice lunch in this sweet little college town we rode back to our cars at the North Baltimore trail head. Luck was with us as we totally dodged an early morning and late afternoon drenching. The trail is paved and very flat, passing through agricultural land. There were a few wild cherry trees that provided occasional shade.  They also were dropping carpets of cherries that threw up a red muck on the undersides of our bikes. The path was well engineered. There was no standing water despite more rainy than sunny days for the past six weeks. The path is starting to show its age (20 years old). The cracks have been repaired and are of no consequence to bicycles but I'll bet the ride is a bit bumpy for inline skates, skate boards, razors, etc. Here are a couple of links to more information if you are interested: ohiobikeways.net/slippery.htm and WoodCountyParkDistrict.org

Folding Bike

Last summer Max bought a folding bike. Here is a slideshow of Max folding up his bike and stuffing it in the trunk for transport to a trailhead on the Towpath Trail in Ohio. It is pretty slick. Now I have to decide if I really want to be able to fold a bike, too. I'm not sure yet. (If you are interested, after viewing the slideshow you can take more time to view this annotated set of photos in Flickr.)