Ohio

Last Friday (yeah it's been a week or so since my last post) Melinda, the kids and I headed to Ohio to see my folks. We decided to take the Subaru rather than the truck due to gas prices so it was kinda tight. Not to mention we we're hauling a piece of furniture with us that my Mom was going to help Melinda recover.
I had originally planned to use our Thule box on top but I realized the furniture we were hauling could hold our luggage and help us even more with the gas mileage by eliminating the roof drag of the Thule Box. I decided I was going to try and drive the speed limit the whole way there to see if we could make it on just one tank of gas. I ended up driving about 5mph over and had to stop to refuel before we made it. Driving that far at the speed limit was hard for me to do, I hate long drives.









I'm not used to having the dogs in such close quarters for an 8 hour drive so we stopped at the Cracker Barrel to get a book on CD to block out the fact that we almost always had one dog panting in our face the whole trip.


Saturday morning we all got up and headed to Akron to board a train that runs along a bike path. You can get on the train in Akron for $2 with your bike and ride as far as you want then get off and ride the bike path back. The path is an old tow path used by mule or oxen to pull boats up a canal. It's pretty tame compared to the VA Creeper trail.
























Before we left I had planned to go check out Ray's indoor mtn bike park in Cleveland but I found out that they are closed for the summer. I looked around online to try and find some trails in Canton but I didn't have much luck. Everything in the area would have been at least an hour and a half drive to the trailhead. I did visit a couple of cool bike shops around town but they all seemed to carry the same thing, roadies, cruisers and commuters. Most of the shops only had a couple of mtn bikes.
One of the highlights of our trip is this little ice cream shop in my parents neighborhood that's a family owned business. We usually make one or two stops there every time we visit. Since it's so close to my folks house we always walk and take the dogs. One night as we were walking down the street Moonshine decided she was going to take a crap right in some one's front yard. She did it so fast that I didn't even realize it until a lady yelled at us about cleaning it up. I was kinda confused at first but once I figured it out I realized I didn't have anything to pick it up with. I assured the lady who we never saw (she was hiding on a dark porch somewhere) that I would be back. I ended up having to walk 2 blocks back home to get a bag to clean it up and then carry it all the way to the ice cream shop to throw it away. It never fails when we're at home Moonshine never needs to go but get her out in public and she'll drop one at the most inconvenient time. I've really trained her well.

Later