Day 4: Wooster to Youngstown, Ohio 86 miles. 4029 feet of climb*

[*Editor's Note:  Yeah, a major correction from yesterday's ride.  Yesterday turned out to be over 3700 feet of climbing]

Ohio farmland in the morning.  It's hard to imagine any state we've ridden through without a strong measure of the farming that takes place.  You could almost forget that there are big cities all around us as well.

We finally got a full day of sunshine.  It was a beautiful day from the standpoint of the weather.  You couldn't say the same thing about the road conditions.  Yesterday, we all voted Morrow County Road #19 as the worst road in America.  Today, two more roads jumped to the head of that line:  North Benton West Road and Leffingwell Road.  Below is an example of how bad the roads were.

This was a minor situation.  In many spots along Leffington and North Benton West, the entire road surface looked like this.  A couple of cyclists broke spokes from the pounding.

It turns out the many of the counties in Northeastern Ohio are among the poorest in the state.  They just don't have the monies to do a proper repaving or even just pour a coat of chip and seal on the country roads.  So patches of asphalt are used, year over year, to repair the worst potholes.  Yet, when one is repaired, more seem to pop up.  Today was all about navigating the entire roadway [often using the opposite lane] and avoiding both the large and small potholes as well as all the loose gravel coughed up from cars and truck driving over recent repairs.

We don't just ride for pie.  We also indulge in great ice cream shops along the way.  This one, in New Baltimore, boasts of the best homemade ice cream in the county.  As far as we were concerned, they didn't lie.  But none of us got the best treat there.  That's reserved for dogs.  It's a cup of vanilla ice cream topped with a Milk-Bone dog biscuit.  We watched as two dogs devoured their treats.  Both took the biscuit off the ice cream, laid it down on the ground and proceeded to eat/lick/inhale the ice cream, then go back for the dog biscuit, as a second dessert.

It wasn't all bad today.  But it was challenging.  At dinner tonight, all the very fast riders were so fatigued from the workout we all got.  They were noticeably worn out with heads down as if defeated by today's ride.  While I felt for them, I felt better that I wasn't the only one who was exhausted by the beating we all got on the roadways.  I guess this is the closest I'll ever get to experience what seasoned cycle pros feel when they ride the classic Paris-Roubaix one-day ride.  The cobblestones in Belgium are so much more jarring to both bike and rider than anything we felt today.  It's no joke that riders lose fillings and see dentists after that ride.  We all ached from the constant pounding as our bikes rattled endlessly underneath us all day long.

The dogs weren't the only ones getting fed today.  I passed by this nest while on a crumbly back road.  The consensus was that mom and dad Osprey were feeding their kids.

Later, I passed by this cattle feeding station along the roadside.  Seems like everyone was having lunch.