Day 57 (7/28): Oxford, OH; “80 Miles”

Woke up nice and early to a sponsored breakfast, Lisa, who had worked with Pi Kapp through national greek advising, and her husband Kevin brought us some delicious bagels and pastries. We got informed by Steve that our ride was actually more toward 90 miles-ish….always great news!

The ride started off smoothly…rollin with Jay of course as today was a state line crossing. Orange tires were workin like a champ! Team really stayed together as we passed through little towns on our way out of Indiana…prolly were stayin a wee bit too long at crew stops socializing in hindsight. When we hit the town of Rushville we got informed that the road we were taking had a detour…turning our ride into something more like a 110…115-ish mile day…woo! So we set off but by this time the day was already rather far gone, giving us little chance of actually making it.

Around 3 we stopped for lunch…only at about mile 80 at this point. Learned that if we didn’t make it to 100 miles by 4 (an impossible goal considering a half hour for lunch) that we’d have to rack up and sure enough…after just a little bit more riding we were putting the bikes on the vans. Bittersweet as usual…nice to be off the bike but kind of a downer we couldn’t make it the whole way…especially as this was Nick Cramer’s college town.

So for the THIRD time in a row we missed the state line crossing…had to snap a pic from the van window of the Ohio sign. Rolled up to our lodging at Miami University…the “western lodge” building on campus…which was, pretty much, a camping style lodge. Grabbed our shower stuff quickly and headed over to the Pi Kapp chapter house. (Brief history note…Miami University of Ohio (confusing name, I know) is one of the birthplaces of fraternity…three national fraternities had their foundings here and greek life continues to be extremely strong).

All the Miami boys were already at the house having a good time…they make it a summer event to come out and see the team. So between conversations we all hit the showers then sat down for some awesome awesome dinner prepared by Josh Poling, one of the brothers. Nick’s parents came to join us, and as planned, we all sang the rose to Mrs. Cramer as her birthday was coming up (a great move, I know) which was awesome.

With the exception of just a few guys the team wanted to go out tonight…so we quickly changed up back at lodging and came straight back to the house…where they Miami boys were waitin for us. Kicked it with the chapter guys in between games of Battleship…an intense 8 person pong-style game where you set something like 40 cups up as “ships” on your sides then just fire away with 6 balls until the whole other sides cups are gone…pretty sweet game. Some guys ended up “uptown” for a little more fun before curfew at 12:30….I ended up strolling home with Grant around 11:00 to catch some much need shut-eye!