In celebration of my 52nd year on earth, the bike tour headed south out of the Michigan November snow....to the Ohio November snow, but not as much. The destination, Mohican State Park in Loudonville, Ohio, a little east between Toledo and Columbus. The park maintains a 23 mile mountain bike loop (largest in Ohio) that this large headed rider had yet to experience. I wish I had experienced it when I was turning 40 as opposed to 52 as it was a bear. The first couple miles are a climb up to the ridge and then you level off somewhat with smaller hills. You think of Ohio as flat but the Mohican State Forest has some serious hills. I would compare it to a larger Pinckney Recreation Area with more rock gardens that this rider cares to see. I didn't plan on making the full 23 miles but even the abbreviated ride had me dragging ass more times than not. One of the drawbacks of riding solo is you don't have the other rider(s) to feed off of to get you past your ass drag (then again, maybe that is a positive - ha). I attached a short video of my ass dragging along with a cool view of the gorge within the park.
gorge view
The trip was not restricted to bike riding as I put the tourist hat on Thursday and took the Shawshank Redemption tour at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield where a portion of the picture was filmed. The tour took you to the warden's office where Andy played the opera music and the warden blew his brains out, the parole board room where Red got reviewed a few times and the post prison room where Brooks and Red stayed. Cool tour.
Nightlife in Mansfield Thursday had me experiencing what I was expecting with the local Cleveland Browns on television that evening. I knew the Brown faithful were VERY passionate based on the handful of Lion-Brown games I have experienced over the years. My conflict was that Michigan State had a basketball game at the same time Thursday evening. I could watch it in the hotel but being cooped up in a hotel room is no fun. I wanted to see some Mansfield-iens. A few blocks from the hotel was a sports bar and I left towards there thinking maybe a 10% chance that I could get a secondary tv to show the hoops game. My 10% turned to 0 upon entering the bar as pretty much every patron had some form of Brown merchandise on. I didn't even bother asking and just took it all in while these passionate son of a guns were cheering on their 3-6 team (soon to be 4-6). They were even doing group cheers. One guy bought a round for the entire bar so....go Browns. Fun experience.
Trail Head
In celebration of my 52nd year on earth, the bike tour headed south out of the Michigan November snow....to the Ohio November snow, but not as much. The destination, Mohican State Park in Loudonville, Ohio, a little east between Toledo and Columbus. The park maintains a 23 mile mountain bike loop (largest in Ohio) that this large headed rider had yet to experience. I wish I had experienced it when I was turning 40 as opposed to 52 as it was a bear. The first couple miles are a climb up to the ridge and then you level off somewhat with smaller hills. You think of Ohio as flat but the Mohican State Forest has some serious hills. I would compare it to a larger Pinckney Recreation Area with more rock gardens that this rider cares to see. I didn't plan on making the full 23 miles but even the abbreviated ride had me dragging ass more times than not. One of the drawbacks of riding solo is you don't have the other rider(s) to feed off of to get you past your ass drag (then again, maybe that is a positive - ha). I attached a short video of my ass dragging along with a cool view of the gorge within the park. 
