Leg 4, Ride 3: Chatham to London

Well, we made it!

Today had been sorta looming ominously on the calendar for a while. Today's ride is the longest of the entire trip, by a decent margin: 76 miles. On a loaded touring bike, that's a lot! At least it is for us.

This was also the most rural/remote ride of the entire trip. There were exactly two settlements on our entire journey: a small village (Glencoe) at mile 40, and a tiny village (Delaware) at mile 60. Any injuries or mechanical problems would have been a Very Bad Thing today.

We did have a slight headwind in some places, but overall, today went about as well as we could have hoped. We made pretty good time (our second-fastest average speed of the trip), we did not run out of water, no injuries or cramping, etc. This leaves me extremely optimistic about the rest of the trip. Everything from here to Troy should be less of a challenge than today (but then come the mountains).

There's not much to talk about with the ride itself today, I suppose. We left Chatham early, then we rode through non-stop farmland for 70 miles.

One of the useful tools for planning a trip like this is the "Strava Heatmap", which shows you the roads that are most used by other cyclists. The more well-used, the brighter blue the road is depicted on the map. This lets you find good cycling routes -- just look for the brightest blue roads. Today's route followed the dimmest dimmest little thread of blue. Essentially nobody cycles here.

But, mostly, the roads were fine. The low cycling rate is presumably just a combination of the very low population, and the long distances between settlements.

Our last 4 miles or so today were the best, and it really pepped us up. A very nice shaded urban park trail along the river was a very nice change up from the monotonous (but nice!) scenery the rest of the day.

We planned two full days off here in London to sorta rest and recover. That was maybe overkill -- we're not anywhere near as beat as we feared. But, still, the only activity on the agenda tonight is to fall asleep while watching the Brewers game in bed.