Ohio to Erie Tour Oct '20, Gear, Trip Pics
 

All,

Attached is a link to a video I put together on my trip. A lot of people on the trail and here have been curious about the trek and the gear so I broke it down in the video here. It is long. Check the description for a list of timestamps to assist in navigating the video if you wish to click through to a specific section, or if you want to revisit that section later.

I realize there is a lot of "noise" as what I do and the way I do it is not the usual, and in a lot of ways I diverge pretty far from conventional wisdom. For that reason - on all my videos all comments are moderated. I can't moderate the discussion here, but as with other threads and discussions - it will be what it will be.

Anywho, heres the video if you want to check it out.

I did not want to bury the video in another thread I had going that I started part-way in to the tour. However, that discussion may be of interest if anyone is browsing through this at a later date. That discussion is in the following link:
https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/1...-rain-row.html

Great pictures!

You don't need to defend the way you like to tour, any more than the minimalist bikepacker on a carbon race bike doing touring has to defend his or her style. Many (most) of us just skip over those comments to see the actual touring posts anyway.

73 John K3TN and Rick WA3UOO says hi

Wow, that is a long video. I'm sorry, I don't want to waste that much time watching it. Is there a reason you choose to carry so much stuff on a tour that you are never more than a few miles from a town to resupply?

No problem on the length. If you check the description there are timestamps to the different gear segments - organized by category.

As to carrying a lot of stuff - that was the point of the video - to detail that and explain my gear, what it is, and why I had it. I had to stop every 3-4 days to resupply food, water was more often - and I should have carried more.

I dont race. I take my time. Both in camp and on the ride. In one instance on the n side of the cuyahoga valley national park I had to resupply. That was only a few miles off trail, but 400ft up in elevation with the first 200ft of that in the first 1/2 mile or so. Those detours take time. The less I have to do them the more time I get to relax and take things easy.

i dont expect anyone to agree with my ways. It is different. Hopefully through the video you can gain a better understanding of that, not that it would make anyone agree but hey - we should all ride our own rides.

Speaking of which - I am back out on tour for a while. 2nd night - in the tent and 0deg bag toasty roasty. Colder trip, but much drier than the one in the video.

I grew up in Ohio, and plan on riding that trail in the spring. I plan to park my car in Kentucky and ride the trail to Cleveland and loop back down to the farm for a visit, then ride back to the car again. I would like more details about the trail if you don't mind. I don't race either, but pack light and ride about 60 or so miles a day. Whenever I go back east of the Mississippi river I am amazed at how close together all the towns are. It felt much further when I was growing up.

I rode the Ohio-to-Erie Trail in July this year. What I did was perhaps the exact opposite of your tour: I did it in three days (340 miles) on a very lightly loaded single speed.

Journal here: https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/ohiotoerie/

What do you want to know? Give me some direction and Ill do my best if I can give you more specific insight on more specific subjects.

I would be interested in knowing where you camped or what you came to learn about camping on or near the trail. When we rode it earlier this year, we didn't see too many campgrounds right on the trail besides Rivers Edge and so we sought more indoor lodging.

Stealth/gorilla camp.

You are correct - there are not very many official camping spots.

As to "what I came to learn about camping" - instinct. I cant teach anyone that. To start - you have to shift your mindset to accept where you are and how far you have gone etc. If you go in to town to resupply and are down 3 hours of travel time that day side tracking to a store and shopping that is 3 hours you dont have to move. How many miles does that equate to for you?

My daily (not moving) speed averages are around 4 mph (from the time I start my clock/odo when I first roll to when I shut down to camp for the night - stops included). So that would be roughly 12 miles for me. If I have a repair to make (ripped bag, flat, etc) all that changes my mileage. So I only loosely set a destination for the day. Sometimes if there is a good spot to camp then no matter the clock and how little daylight (if any) there is I will move to get there.

On my 1st leg I stopped in Apple Creek to do laundry and wash up. That was better use of my time that day than moving - but I still had 11 or so miles to go to get to the trail where I was comfortable to camp. It was about 1:30am by the time I shut down. And that was a stealth camp spot I found.

If you arent comfortable with accepting stealth camping there is no way I can explain it to you in a way that would make sense. So far I have never had any problems. I have had a lot of people talk with me for a bit (some too long), but no one has complained and I have not had any issues with rangers or police. That comes back to instinct - I cant explain that other than to know your surroundings. Timing also plays in to that - sometimes its best to be rolling down the trail again by the time the sun comes up. It might be best that you shut down late the night before - like 11-12:00. If the sun comes up at 7:00 you have say, 8 hours to stop riding, set camp, sleep, break camp, and roll. So if you minimize camp to the essentials and cut meals out - do dinner elsewhere, camp, and do breakfast down the trail - you will maximize your potential rest time.

Have been doing extensive planning for a 2021 trip as well. At 60ish miles a day you are looking at 5-6 days, as the official route is 326 miles.

I am doing it in 7. Cincy - Xenia - Columbus - Mt. Vernon - Millersburg - Massillon - Akron - Cleveland.

Realize that the route north of Columbus is tougher than down south due to the elevation. You will hit some elevation on the Holmes County Trail around Holmesville. Then the road section to the trail in to Massilon is loaded with hills. Just be aware. 70 miles with 500ft of elevation gain is a different 70 miles than the same with 2000-2500ft of gain.

I can only comment on the south end of the trail - Caesar Creek State Park (~55 miles from Cincinnati) and John Bryan State Park (~75 miles from Cinn) both have campgrounds with full facilities. Neither is right on the trail, though.

John Bryan is outside of Yellow Springs, which is on the Little Miami bike path, which splits off from the OTET at Xenia. It's nice because you still have a nice flat trail to ride on, but to save distance you may want to use a road route to reconnect with OTET north of Xenia (if you're going north) or to get there without having to go all the way down to xenia (if you're going south).

Caesar Creek is about 8 miles on the road away from the OTET/little miami from either direction. Area around the park is hilly relative to the trail. There's a private campground (Frontier Campground) in Spring Valley that's closer to the trail but does not allow tent camping, just cabin rentals or RVs.

That is why our long days are south of Columbus. If you check mileage, We have nothing over 50 after Mount Vernon.

I finished the southern end of the trek yesterday. My intent is to make another video - there are a couple notable gear changes from the first trek (that the video in the first post here covers). Since nearly everything else, gear-wise, is the same I won't rehash the bulk of the video that is already made - just note the differences and go to the picture slideshow. I have more pictures this round.

I am hoping to get the video out in the next week. As to when I'll sit down and record the gear changes talk, not sure yet. It might be a couple days. I'm starting on the pictures today.

I am compiling data here. I input all my ride data yesterday to my chart for the 2nd leg of the trip. Looking at it here it is interesting to compare days vs distance vs avg speed/daily pace vs. what I did those days. Below is the chart for reference. Of note - the avg speed column, as noted, is based on the recording time of the day. This means - from the second I start recording a daily trip when I leave camp until I shut down for camp. On some days larger meals - breakfast and dinner, for example - are included in that time because I did not eat where I camped. Therefore there was moving time between camp and eating/eating and camp = that meal time is included in the averaging of the pace for that day, whereas when meals are included in my camp time that is not included in the recording as I have either already ended or have not started the recording for the day (still in camp, or have already arrived in camp).

The thick line is the separation between the northern/1st leg and the southern/2nd leg treks.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5590898201.jpg

If I have a full day of riding - meaning an early start and good mileage - even with stops a 4mph or better daily pace is a good number for planning purposes. You can't bank timing of getting to a destination off of a "moving average" because you aren't moving all the time - at least I am not. If you can figure out how to eat (possibly cook), drink, and go to the bathroom, at least, if not fix gear and adjust your load while moving also then maybe a moving average can start to approach your daily pace and you can more accurately use it to predict timing to a destination. Otherwise, all of the fore-mentioned will pull away from your moving average.

Case-in-point - line item 21. I used a 4mph average to plan that day and my "get up" time. I had set the mileage to 37. So 37/4 = 9.25 hours. If you look at the chart - I made the run in 5hrs 23min. So I shaved close to 4 hours off with the 6.5mph average - 2.5mph faster average and a couple miles shy of my estimate. If I had a stiffer head wind and had more slow-downs through town that would have quickly filled in that 4hr window.

On the other hand, look at line item 20. That was over 50 miles with few stops - but I did stop. By taking out a supply run and trimming the stops to just the essentials, even with a heavy tail wind, my daily pace was nearly 8mph. That is still way under a "moving average" - but it is the highest daily pace of any day in either of the legs of the trip. Line item 17 was similar trail to where I had the head wind on in line item 20 - going the opposite direction with a head wind. That made over a 2mph difference in my daily pace with the same type of daily activities - just essential stops. Over the course of, say, 5 hours that 2mph difference in pace is a 10 mile penalty. Or, for the same extra 10 miles that is a 5 hour penalty on the clock.

If you take the line item 20 distance and put it against the line item 17 pace - that would take the 6hrs 55min up to about 10hrs 15min - over another 3 hours. That's 3+ hours difference, essentially, due to weather. This estimate doesn't account for the extra energy being spent fighting the wind, either - just the slow down. I know me - I know I wouldn't be able to do that in 1 day. I wouldn't hold up that long/hard. That's something to think about in trip planning...

It is interesting to see the numbers and think through the trip looking back on it. Good stuff.

Addition - line item 10 on leg 1/northern = that was one of the few days I had decent sun. I camped near the canal visitor center on the N tip of the CVNP - which was one of the few(!!) places on the whole trip that had running water that was still on (not shut off due to covid). I knew that from my trip up so staying close was the best plan. I stayed at that park for 3.5 hours cooking breakfast, soaking up sun with the solar panels (and myself... it was quite nice), and yaking with people. So that factors heavily in to the daily pace - not just the climb getting to town with the resupply run as noted.

Also for what it is worth - I run a tablet with an app called GaiaGPS for my trip recording. This breaks down moving vs all up speed averages. The trip stats for line item 10 have a moving average (as opposed to the all up shown) is 6.7mph. I am actually shocked the speed is that high given the day. See data below and note the profile graphs towards the bottom:


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c2e1cf0e7b.jpg

So you built a nest in the trees every night?

More accurately, a birds nest. Yes.

Pound your chest too? Maybe go looking for damsel’s tied to altars?

Followup video below.