Travel Journal: GOBA Day 1
Dropped Jake off at "summer camp" yesterday and headed to GOBA.
Funny story there, but first, GOBA is a 7 day, 350 mile bike ride in Ohio. Each year it is in new cities across Ohio. This is my 14th year over the last 20 years. It's good mom daughter time as my mom travels from her life and rides GOBA as well.
This years GOBA: Mansfield to Orrville to Coshocton to Mount Vernon to Bucyrus and back to Mansfield (some are two nights in the same city). Some how, some way, some reason Mom and I were tracking that GOBA started in Marion this year. We were so convinced that I even scheduled Jake's "summer camp" stay IN Marion. We travel the 2 hours from Troy, Ohio (our hometown), get Jake settled in and venture out to find the fairgrounds (aka GOBAville). We find the fairgrounds but we are like wait, where is everyone!? There are no cyclists, no volunteers, no signs, no people...no NOTHING. Are we in the right place!? Fumbling for our phones we Google GOBA 2014. MANSFIELD!! Oh my God... We are in the WRONG city. Mom is nearly in tears...we are freaking out and have no idea how far we are from the actual starting point. Come to find out, Marion is about in the middle of all the cities we'll be cycling to and about 50 minutes away in every direction. OH THANK GOD! I feel even more relieved that in any city, I'll be in close proximity to Jake should there be an emergency.
Arrive to our own summer camp, GOBA, find the Dayton Cycling Club (our hometown cycling club that we enjoy GOBA with) and get settled in. Mansfield is so much cuter than Marion ;)
GOBA hosts their little costume bike parade and we ride into town for some local BBQ and a sweet rock n'roll band. A very chilly night of not much sleep and we are awakened by a chatty foreign couple before 6am. Well, we might as well get up...
Our first riding day was 60 miles from Mansfield to Orrville. We climbed 2,570 feet. Lots of hills. I rode nice and easy sometimes doubling back for mom or spinning out for her to catch up. I'm training her for the rest of the week... ;)
Breakfast stop: Miflin (skipped)
Lunch stop: Jeromesville (sweet potatoes topped with sloppy joe and cheese cubes)
Snack stop: Wooster, Seacrest Arboretum (which had the coolest park and longest slide ever! see pics above)
Camp stop: Orrville (we have the whole evening ahead of us!!)
A beautiful day of sightseeing in Ohio!
