We were off to another late start this morning after the luxury of sleeping inside. We plotted a way out of South Bend and set off, intending to take highway 20 most of the day. But disaster struck as we rode down the on ramp, which had a sign declaring that bicycles were prohibited. When we stopped to check the map for alternative routes, a seemingly friendly man suggested that we take a county road to Dunlap. However, the county road went to Goshen, so we were forced to backtrack north to Highway 20 where bicycles were once again allowed. The silver lining was that we met a friendly woman named Emily during our second breakfast at Martin's supermarket in Goshen. She offered to let us stay with her and gave us directions back to the highway.
It was smooth sailing with a bit less than normal roadkill amounts until we got to Ohio. Just across the border there was a big billboard advertising a tourist information center, and since we had just vowed not to buy an Ohio map, we opted to stop.
The "tourist center" was set into a dirt hill with an enormous TV antenna and gravel parking lot. THere was a rusty mailbox by the door that said "Ohio maps," but was empty. We opened the unlocked door and inside found somebody's cluttered home with the TV on. It reeked inside and our calls of "hello" went unanswered. I turned to Travis and said "let's leave before they kill us." Which we promptly did.
We continued east on Highway 20, stopping only to try a few grains of wheat. We had been warned about bringing pepper spray for dogs, but hadn't had any problems until today. Travis was ahead of me when I heard him yelling expletives. I looked to my right and saw a vicious dog at full sprint charging out of an unfenced yard. Needless to say, I poured on the steam, shouting expletives myself and veering into the center of the road to add more distance between his teeth and me. We made it out unscathed and probably gave a fun show to the minivan behind us.After asking for the town with a bar at a junction in the road, we ended up at the Lyon's Den bar in Lyons, Ohio. There we gorged ourselves, got a free beer from Raymond, and a map of Ohio from the bartender. We were fortunate to get it, as there isn't just one highway heading east towards Pennsylvania. The bartender gave us some "bakers" (baked potatoes) for the road, and we were directed to an old school yard to pitch our tent. We're still on a good pace to be finished sooner than we expected, even though our average speed today was a little slow.
| Time | Trip | Odometer | Average | Max |
| 9:16:36 | 129.4 | 2558 | 13.9 | 32.1 |
