Ride Down The Dead End Road

November 1, 2007 on 3:24 pm | In Road Racing |

The captain raised the steel two-car wide gang plank.  Before it clanked and locked shut we were already on our way to Ohio, bike via ferry.  I’ve lived in the Cincinnati area for nearly seven years, and this was the first time I’ve ever been on the Ohio River.  Rachel, Ann, Phil and I laughed like little kids as the Anderson Ferry’s Detroit diesel muscled its way across the current.  It was a blue sky beautiful Ohio Valley day and we decided, spur of the moment to turn off Route 8 in Boone County Kentucky, and take the ferry across the river.  It was only a buck a piece for cyclists.  We pointed at the weathered logs floating by.  How silly for four so-called Cincinnatians to never have been on the river before.  Seven years in Cincinnati without being on a boat on the Ohio River?  It’s not quite living in Hawaii and never going swimming, but its close.

I’ve always thought you should never take your town for granted.  No matter where you live.  When we lived in Milwaukee, I couldn’t believe the number of people I knew that had never been on Lake Michigan.  It’s like a freaking sea for Pete’s sake.  Not to mention the slogan is “a great place on a Great Lake.”  How many people in Chicago have never been to the top of the Sears Tower or Hancock buildings, top of the cock?  You know there are people in Buffalo who’ve never been to Niagara Falls and people in Asheville, NC who’ve never seen Bridal Veil Falls near Brevard, just 30 minutes away.  Wherever you live, you need to take advantage of the things that make those places so wonderful.  Otherwise, I think you’re kind of a braggart, telling people you live here or there without actually LIVING there.

That got me to thinking of the other wonderful things I’ve seen in Cincinnati that my bike and passion for cycling has allowed me to see that other so-called Cincinnatians have never seen: the sunrise over the steaming Ohio river from the Monastery in Mount Adams, the Cincinnati Skyline in motion on a decent from Northern Kentucky’s Devou Park, and the rolling green vistas on either side of the no name ridgeline roads in rural Kentucky. 

On a bike, every ride is a little adventure.  A few months back, Tony, a buddy and Bio Wheels teammate of mind took us down a dead end road.  “What!  Where are you going?  It says no outlet!”  All he said was, you gotta check out the twisty descent back here.  He was right; a dead end road was worth riding down.  Now, I ride down that road nearly every time I’m out in rural Boone County, Kentucky and I’ve started to keep an eye out for the things that others just pass by.  Just the other day on a short little poke through the neighborhood at dusk I discovered cherub like gargoyle faces on the façade of a church on Eastern Avenue in Columbia Tusculum.  It’s less than eight blocks from my house.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in training or the regular group ride scene.  Do yourself a favor, next time you head out for a ride, go up the dead end road and see where it goes, make a right where you usually make a left, don’t put your head down and hammer, sit up and take a look around, hop a ferry ride…see what you’ve been missing. 

Joe Bellante

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