Wednesday morning, Binghamton, New York: We got up in the dark and made reservations for an oil change at the local Ford dealer, at the next town west, having traveled nearly a thousand miles past the ‘next change’ sticker on the windscreen.  Once again, we had surged north into the cold with no clear plans for the day or a firm destination.  The traffic around the megapolis running from Washington, DC to Boston is just unthinkable, so we tried to avoid that.  Our intent was to watch the weather and work our way northward with warming.  Unfortunately, the warming trend was only local and short-lived.

Halfway to Albany, over bagels and cream cheese at a coffee-shop/brew-pub, we made a decision: head west and seek warmer climes farther south on the way home, dashing our intent to revisit Quebec and Ontario and return via the prairie provinces.  The late winter and early spring is just too cold north of the border.

Again, we faced the problem of toll roads: I-90 is the New York Thruway, and is toll.  So, we made our way slowly across New York, through Utica, Syracuse, and all points in between, first on NY 5, then sparsely-populated stretches of winding road, until we called it a day and headed south to a truck stop at one of the toll-road exits, putting in well before dark.  With the cold night coming on, we chose a hot meal, but this time from our own stores, cracking the roof vent to  avoid the butane fumes.

With a promise of fair weather, we headed for Erie, Pennsylvania on Thursday.  Interstate 86 is no-toll, but rough and bumpy.  Pennsylvania wasn’t much different.  We got off at Erie and made our way to Presque Isle, the spit that shelters the city from Lake Erie.  This would be a good bike ride, had we planned it.  But, this time, we drove to the end and walked out to the old lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor, where ice floes swirled.

Back on the highway, we heard a loud thump, but couldn’t identify anything inside.  But, when we got to our destination for the evening in Canton, Ohio, we discovered the bike leaning precariously, held on only by one bolt, with the gear cassette wedged in the bracket that is supposed to hold the tire.  As it turned out, the constant hammering of the exceptionally bad roads in New York and Pennsylvania had severed the nylon belt that held the tire on, allowing the bike to bounce off the rack, which pulled on the vertical support hard enough to snap one of the bolts and bend the remaining one.  We were fortunate not to have lost the bike or destroyed it, as the tire didn’t touch the ground.  We took the wreckage apart, checked out the bike, which worked fine, stowed the broken bike rack inside, and locked the bike to the safety chain rings on the trailer hitch for the night, too tired to figure it all out.

On Friday morning, we removed the broken end of the bolt from the fixed nut (it just screwed out by hand), loaded the bike into the van (thank goodness I made provision in the design to do that), and went to Ace Hardware to get replacement bolts.  We couldn’t replace the broken strap, but the rack came with one we don’t really need, because we have a different way of securing the front wheel.  We then went to the nearby Lake Street Trailhead for the Ohio & Erie Canal Trail, suited up, and rode 12.5 km to Heritage Park, where a mile of the canal has been restored to Lock #4 and a replica canal barge and horse team pulls tourists on the canal.

Exhausted from the warm day, rough limestone trail, and the longest ride of the season, we reassembled the bike rack, carefully mounted the bike, and set off for Springfield, Ohio for the night, a 260-km drive in building winds and heavy traffic.  Having missed a meal, subsisting only on bananas and bars for the ride, we stopped at a Waffle House on the way and chowed down on their famous waffles.  These restaurants are ubiquitous throughout the east, so we felt obligated to stop at least once–the last was on our 2016 bike tour, in Kingsland, Georgia. Judy got extra bacon, because it would have cost more to omit the bacon from my order. Ah, the Midwest: “We don’t serve your kind here,” if you are vegetarian.

The rain came during the night, with hail, and wind in the morning.  We declared a maintenance day, bought a shower at the truck stop, and headed into town to a laundry.  Our fellow wash day crowd were mostly Haitians, pleasant folk who chatted away in Haitian Creole as they took care of business, and one woman sang in the brilliant acoustics of the laundromat.  It dawned on us that these were the people lately in the news, who were absolved of the vicious election campaign rumor that they were eating the pets of the genteel population of Springfield, Ohio.  The Haitian influence in the community was evident with colorful and significant murals on building walls downtown, as well as their happy demeanor.

We spent the rest of the morning at the new Clark County Library downtown, an impressive L-shaped edifice with the stacks on one leg, meeting rooms and classrooms on the other leg, and a commons area under the towing peak of the intersection.  The WiFi was free and fast, so we were able to catch up on some work.

We chose to head west on side roads, avoiding Interstate 70 and the freight lifeline.  Just out of Springfield, we stopped by the Roger Clark Historical Park, where there was a replica Native American village, though in disrepair.  The park was popular with hikers and dog walkers on a blustery Saturday.

Leaving the park on US40, we resisted the pleas of the GPS to take even more remote roads to the south.  We finally relented after losing US 40 in one of the towns and stopping for grocery resupply at a giant Kroger superstore, akin to our West Coast Fred Meyer branch of the Kroger family.  We got drenched by a sudden downpour as we left the store. The GPS route took us on a tortuous route back and forth, farther south, over the Interstate, through small towns and one closed road (we took our own detour, which was, of course, in the wrong direction).  As the day wore on, the  gusty winds tossed us around the slick wet roads, and we decided to call it a day not far into Indiana, just north of Knightstown and east of Indianapolis.  The wind was supposed to subside by 7:00 pm, but the rain continued through the night.

We watched the weather for freezing conditions and tornado warnings farther on before planning our next day’s route and destination.  At this stage of our journey, we devolved into a non-plan characterized by “No where to go, and nothing to do when we get there.”

Our next day’s travel took us across Illinois via a circuitous route, thanks to asking the GPS to avoid highways and save fuel.  Redirecting it to use the most direct, we turned south from what looked to be a detour far up the Mississippi, back to the beltway around St. Louis, and I-70 to Boonville, Missouri, where we had stayed before, with the intent of riding our bike on another segment of the Katy Trail State Park, along the Missouri River.

In early morning, we walked the Katy Bridge, a short section of the lift bridge that spans the Missouri, which must be frozen perpetually open for river barge traffic, so the Katy Trail detours across the US 40 highway bridge.  We caught up on some computer tasks at the local public library while waiting for the temperature to get to comfortable riding zone.

We thought we might ride from the New Franklin Trailhead east to Rocheport, where we had turned around on our 2023 ride, but the trailhead was on a remote gravel road in a sketchy campground, so we opted to drive to Rocheport instead and start there.  We had lunch at the Meriwether Cafe and Bike Shop, during which we had a nice conversation with another tandem couple, locals who live in Columbia, a 25-km ride from Rocheport, on their Santana (our other tandem is a Santana).

Then, we suited up and set off on the trail, through the tunnel and past our 2023 turnaround point.  But, at 1500 meters from the start, the timing chain fell off, probably derailed by a twig thrown up from the path, as it has done several times on this winter trip.  But, this time, the chain wedged between the chain wheel and the crank and no amount of repositioning would yield a way to easily pry it loose.  I thought of just uncoupling the quick link to free it, but my arthritic hands simply wouldn’t budge it, and I forgot we had my Leatherman tool in the handlebar bag, so we hike-a-biked back to the bike shop, which turned out to be simply a bike rental shop, with no mechanic and no tools.  At the van, I fished out the pliers and unhooked the link.  But, with the chain free, inspection showed that the violent wedging had bent the side plate on one of the links, so the chain was useless.  We carry a spare link, but it is for the drive chain, a narrow 9-speed chain, while we had replaced the timing chain with a more rugged (and cheaper) 6/8-speed chain, so it wouldn’t fit.

Discouraged, but practical, we packed up and headed north, thinking we might end up the next day near Des Moines, Iowa, get the chain fixed or replaced, and ride some of the Raccoon River Trail.  We ended up for the night at the junction of I-35 and US 36.  A check of the weather showed a late winter storm due to hit Iowa the following day.

After a check of the weather elsewhere, we decided the best bet was to head west and try to get around the edge of the storm, to avoid both snow and extreme cold.  We headed west on US 36 across Kansas, heading for Colorado, in a stiff and gusty side wind that shifted through the day as the storm approached.  But, as the weather reports grew more ominous, we diverted northwest into Nebraska, cutting through the corner of Colorado and back into the Nebraska panhandle, stopping for the night in Sidney, which was predicted to have the least snow but cold temperatures.  The storm hit, and the van rocked and shook all night with the gusts.