Spring! Waiting for the lake ice to break, the tulips to bloom, and the bike trails to dry. Monitoring the national forecast maps for weeks, I hoped for a few days of dry weather somewhere in the Midwest so I could continue the
Frizbo Fifty. My original plan, a loop through Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, went from unlikely to hopeless as first tornadoes and then Mississippi River floods pummeled the southern states. Finally in early May, there was a break in the continuous rainfall, with clear skies and warm weather in Ohio and Pennsylvania. I
proposed a trip to my wife and started packing the van for an early morning departure.
After 7 hours in the car I was ready to stretch my legs. The first stop, just outside Cleveland, was Cuyahoga Valley National Park. As it was Mother's Day, the parking lot was full of parents trailed by their offspring much like imprinted goslings. I swung onto the Towpath Trail and headed north.
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| Ohio & Erie Towpath Trail |
A flat limestone trail, interspersed with boardwalks and bridges, this bike path travels 20 miles along the Cuyahoga River, through wetlands and surrounded by bluffs. Other trails connect to take you north to Cleveland and south as far as Akron. There is even a scenic railroad that will shuttle you one way for $2.
As I'm riding, I see a couple of other bikers approaching in the distance. Suddenly, one of the riders appears to have some sort of fit, wildly swerving his bike and nearly crashing. I'm eyeing him cautiously as they pass me and and I overhear the word "snake." A few moments later, I see a large snake appears before me stretched across the bike path. I violently jerk my wheel to the right to avoid the snake and nearly crash into the undergrowth.
"Oh, well that would explain it," I think to myself.
Snakes are a common bike path hazard. In the spring, a bike path is the preferred sunny spot for snakes to thermoregulate their body temperature. Unfortunately, they typically stretch themselves perpendicular to the bike path and are easily mistaken for a stick. Which means I have run over more than a few snakes. I always feel terrible and turn around to see if the snake is injured. Usually, I find them as they were, happily sunning themselves, and apparently unharmed.
I've discussed this with snake experts and their assessment is there is no way that a snake run over by a 180lb man on a bike would be uninjured. But my first hand experience is the snake seems more bothered by my checking on their welfare than by being runover and after a few moments of me hovering over them they will slither off the path.
I'm not particularly fond of snakes, but I don't like hurting them. Besides it's bad karma. I once ran over a snake riding in the Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area, I got lost trying to find my way back to my van.
My father, on the other hand, was a snake lover. As a boy, Dad kept as many as 16 snakes as pets. The exact number was hard to determine because they were always escaping. His mother, not a snake lover, would find them hiding under the kitchen table, or curled around a house plant, or slithering across the bathroom floor late at night when the light came on.
Dad was an excellent student with broad interests beyond just snakes. He once read the entire encyclopedia, A to Z, perhaps assuming once he finished he would know everything.
This did not go unnoticed. At 14 years old, Dad was invited to appear on the Quiz Kids radio show. This was a big deal -- the Jeopardy of its day. The producers knew the kids' interests and in the case of my father, served up a softball question about herpetology -- the study of snakes. Dad got the softball question wrong. This must have haunted him because he recounted the story years later in a book he wrote about failure entitled “How to Peel a Sour Grape.”
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| Quiz Kid! |
Dad's other love was sailing. The only way he could get into the South Shore Yacht Club was to swim around the breakwater. Instead, he built a sailing skiff with one of his high school buddies and spent summers sailing it along Lake Michigan's south shore.
After a stint in the army, college on the GI Bill, marriage, and kids, his love of sailing had not diminished. His solution was But he couldn't justify spending money on a boat when he had a house full of eight children that needed to be fed, clothed and and occasionally provided braces. had a bunch of kids. started raising a family. graduated from the University As a family man, he still longed to sail His solution was again to build a boat.
Basic Boat Building ("Boat Building for Those Who are All Thumbs")
Dawn Treader
Scamper foam boat
I know who your father is.
Tom was bequeathed boat
It nearly sank
Stored in boat yard, must be out by winter.
Finally went to yard, Matt Binns drove it there.
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| Bridal Veil Falls |
Distracted by all the connecting paths, I broke off the towpath and headed up Tinkers Creek Gorge, following a bridal path, and then a blacktop trail maintained by the Bedford Park District. Having climbed to the top of the valley bluffs, I then enjoyed an exhilarating flight back down to the towpath and the car. Next stop, Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest.
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| Route easily accessible from the interstate |
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| I-80 Bridge |
-- Frizbo
- State: Ohio
- Date: 2011-05-08
- Route: Cuyahoga River National Park, OH
- Distance: 32 miles
