The rest of Ohio to Ann Arbor, Michigan

From Cleveland we went to Sandusky. Due to a mix up in the directions in the morning, we ended up going through the heart of downtown Cleveland at 7 in the morning. While we probably wouldn't have planned to go this way, the roads were safe because there is no large amounts of traffic in the early morning, and we all rode in large groups in double file (car formation). Most of us really enjoyed being able to bike through downtown. We were able to see the morning sun peek through the skyscapers to the left and right of us, and waved to people waiting at bus stops to get to work. There is something about a large city that just made the ride exhilirating, perhaps because we were seeing the city from a different view. The rest of the ride went pretty well (I did get two flats though), and once again we stopped for lunch right next to the lake in a beautiful park. Also there was a small communist takeover in one of the biking groups by the People's Republic of the Bike Challenge North using small squirt guns, led by party leaders Chase, Dan, and later Patty (she is the only one who speaks German. Supposedly the party leaders spoke German, therefore she had to become a party leader). While we did have some trouble finding the church in Sandusky, the real exciting thing of the day (for me at least) is that I went to Cedar Point Amusement Park.
For those that don't know, Cedar Point Amusement Park is one of the large Amusement Parks, as Courtney put it "It's like Six Flags, but with less of those annoying game booths." Since we had only recently figured out that we were staying in Sandusky, we had not been able to work anything out with Cedar Point in which they would give us a deal (When we called the day before, according to the park, it was "too little time" to figure out anything. Take that to mean as you will.) However, a bunch of us just piled into the van, and went to the amusement park anyways, all wearing our green Habitat shirts, hoping to get a deal as we were part of charity, and we were only going to be there for the last two hours of the day (8-10). While the lady at parking didn't help us, ($9.00 for parking) the nice lady at the ticket booth referred us to guest services where we got a half off deal ($12.50 a person). We ended up going on 5 different rides, including the famous Race Car Dragster in which you are launched from a speed of 125 mph up 480 feet. We didn't get back until 11:00 which was the latest I've been up on this trip when we had to get up at 5 AM the next day.
From Sandusky we went to Toledo, OH. Toledo is a relatively big city and the the interesting stops of the day include a picture at the Heinz tomato ketchup factory (no tour! in fact, no entry.), a barn where we had lunch, and an ice cream stop. The whole town where the ketchup factory was located smelled of ketchup and made us all very hungry. The main thing I would like to point out about Toledo is that bicyclists should be wary of the bridges in Toledo. There are two main bridges which cross the river, one which arcs, and another that is flat. Both bridges have extension plates (metal parts that basically sucks in the tire through the cracks and causes a flat), but we didn't know til later that the flat bridge has small metal plates that cover the extensions on the very far right for motorcyclists, that also work for bicyclists. Needless to say, some people got a flat from the bridge extension plates, and thus everyone who followed crossed the bridge using the pedestrian walkway. Toledo has an amazing cyclist group who showed up at the church to talk with us and to help us. It turns out that even the pastor was a cyclist. About 5 very experienced people came to help us, the pastor of the church we were staying at lent us her bike tools, and the pastor of another local church gave all of our bikes a tune up. Finally Chase got some paint from Sherwin-Williams (they donated it to us) and we managed to paint most of the trailer, so our trailer is no longer white.
Finally the trip from Toledo to Ann Arbor was a very short ride (55 miles!) While no one noticed where we crossed the state border form Ohio to Michigan, there were a few hills in Michigan and it was a beautiful day, though a bit windy. I will let the next person who will write about our day off (the build day was canceled) tell more about the bike into Ann Arbor.