Today's Acronym is - IOIHMCS*
We started the morning with a hail storm
Todays' start was delayed a bit by tornado watch in the area. When the weather window opened up we started off down the hill to downtown Milford and the head of the Little Miami Rail to Trail route. By 2 miles into the ride it had gotten very dark and scary still, then the wind and the sirens started simultaneously. since there were no cars on the road, we blew through the last three stop signs and pulled into the gas station just as the rain and hail started. When we checked inside with the owner of the small store, he said the sirens we were hearing were for a severe thunder storm rather than a tornado, so we stowed our bikes in his little eat in area and hunkered down to wait out the storm. After a bout of pea sized hail, lots of thunder and lightening and heavy rain, everything subsided down to a dull drizzle so we headed out again.
The SAG wagon caught us at the start of the rail trail and said that the tornado watch had cleared and that there was going to be a couple of hours of clearing and intermittent rain so we decided to do the next 10 miles to Loveland and see what was happening there. As we pulled into Loveland the skies opened again so we took shelter in Blue Ribbon Choclate Chip Bakery and called the SAG to let them know where we were. SAG told us to hunker down and wait out the storm and they would get to us as soon as they could. More and more bikers piled into the Bakery and watched the fireworks overhead. By the time the SAG got to us an hour later, they had decided not to call the ride, as they had had a chance to look at a weather radar and seen that the storm bands were past so we continued on.
Informational sign for the Little Miami Rail to Trail path
The Little Miami Rail to Trail is lais in the rail bed where the railroad used to run. Aside from the leaves and twigs from last nights' storm littering the path, it was a pleasant and level ride. What grades there are were less than 3 % and there is a generous shoulder on both sides. The trail is two lanes and nicely paved. The river is in sight most of the time through the trees, and on the other side are intermittent wooded slopes with streams and farmland.
One of many small streams draining into the river
The only hinderance was the wooden bridges spanning the gaps where small streams, now flooded streams, flowed into the river on our left. These were wooden, very slippery and irregular and uneven. We rode them carefully, unclipped and slowly so that no one would fall. A couple of really cracked paving had been heavily marked with red spray paint. The only real hazards were the road crossings, all of which were marked with stop signs. Several had nasty blind curves of vectoring side streets that made seeing the traffic difficult, but the drivers were courteous, and if they saw us stopped, would stop and signal us across.
riding in the rain at the bike sculptures, Judy and Jennifer
As we passed through South Lebenon, there was a round paved area in the path surrounded on one side by big metal bicycles in bright colors. As we stopped for a photo option a park ranger/policeman drove up to inform us that the bike path between Lebenon and Oregonia was impassable because of fallen trees. He described a by pass route that involved going up a narrow curvy highway 42 to highway 48 with no shoulder and then back down the hill on 42 and getting back on the trail "somewhere near Corwin." We all heard the words "hill, narrow, curvy, no shoulder and decided that we would go on to the first blockage and see how bad it really was, figuring if worse came to worse, we could backtrack to the bakery and call in the SAG.
As it turned out, the ranger had not figured on the determination of women bikers who didn't mind riding in the occassional bursts of rain, but were not by any means going to go on curvy uphills or downhill with or without shoulders, in the rain.
We spent the next 20 miles cruising along through the leaf litter and stopping to swing aside smaller tree limbs and trees blocking the path. There were several that were too big for firefighter Kathy to move, even with the four of us helping. Several of these we were able to break brush and portage around, while several others we crawled under lifting our bikes along on their side, and several others we either climbed over carrying our bikes on our shoulders, or formed a bike line and passed the bikes over, hand to hand. Several of the trees had firefighter Kathy saying " if only I had my chain saw...."
Here are some photos of various trail clearing, portaging and crawling we did to stay on route.
Top to bottom
clearing a limb off the path
clearing the limbs around a large branch
portaging the bikes around the tree
crawling under the tree
finally some clear trail in sight
At the next SAG stop, we could see that the local playground/park as well as the road going past it were flooded, and as we rode we were very aware of how high the river next to us was, but the rain held off for the most part, and after a while the sun started to break through and the humidity came up along with the temperature.
Flooded Street
Flooded park
high water beneath the bridge 
the river flooding over the banks
By the time we neared Xenia, the storm had pretty much passed through, and the bike path was clear, dry and clean so the last 10 miles of the ride were a pleasant cruise.
Of course, we were all wet and muddy, and the bikes were even worse. The undersides of the frames were plastered with mud, sand, wet leaves, scuzz and in one case either seed shells or small snails, and in another case, several worms. There were leaves hooked on the gear teeth of the front and rear derailleurs, and mud everywhere .
I have been commenting on the noise of the cycadias and there were definitely their little corpses ground into my gears. Earlier at the bakery stop in Loveland I took this picture of the little beasties on the outside wall.
cyclic cycadias on the bakery wall
I decided that my bike was far too disgusting to even take into the Holiday Inn, I have seen mountain bikes that looked cleaner, so I grabbed the bike stand, filled both my water bottles with clean hot water, sprayed the whole thing down with green soap, rinsed it down with the water bottles several times and then proceeded to spend an hour detailing it by wiping all the grit out of all the nooks and crannies, disentangling the weeds and leaves from the pedal, crank, front and back derailleur, cleaning off the brakes, checking the spokes, checking the tires and dong anything else I could think of to do to get it clean and dry before I took it inside with me to check in. Several of the ladies actually took their bikes over to the local do it yourself carwash and sprayed them down before vacuming the water off and out of the crevices.
After several hours of standing upside down in front of the fan, I redid the lube and chain job I did yesterday and checked everything out. The garmin stayed dry wrapped in a sandwich bag, as did everything in the bike bag and bento box (cell phone and camera) because they too were encased in plastic bags. My shoes, jersey, shorts, and gloves are all wrung out and drying and tomorrow looks like a clear day. There are a couple of small nciks on my wheel rim from bouncing stones or twigs, but all in all it was an interesting and challenging day in a cross country sort of way.
Todays Stats
Weather- thunder, lightning, hail, winds and rain
Number of small trees or branches cleared off the bike trail- 2.5
Number of trees portaged around-2
Number of trees crawled under 3
Number of trees climbed over with bikes 2
Number of trees climbed over with bikes being handed over -3
Distance 55.5 miles
Ride time 4:46 including tree obstacles but not the bakery
average speed 12.5
elevation gain 429.7 feet
****Today's Acronym If only I had my chain saw!
Safe arrival in Xenia
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