The Ideal Bakery and A Meeting, East of Bowling Green Gibsonburg, Ohio Day 15 - Monday - June 17, 2002  Back   |   Next

The Ideal Bakery The Ideal Bakery I arise in the morning to see the rosy eastern horizon fade from finger tufts of overcast cloud reaching across the sky. Before long it begins to drizzle and I don my gortex and arm warmers. I refill my water bottles at a gas station where rumor has it that today will be a day of scattered showers. I find an old bakery at the crossroads in the middle of town. While sitting down at the soda fountain, drinking coffee, and nursing a blue berry muffin, I can't help but overhear that one of the customers recently bought a Magnum at a gun show. My great friend and fellow English major, Dan Miller (DM), once advised me that I shouldn't preach, but it's a rainy day, and something is baking in the oven, so lets pull it out and see what it is. There is something weird happening on this trip-happening-something I can't yet begin to figure out much less say what it is-maybe this is an attempt to articulate it. Rest assured it is something that I feel is wonderful. I feel that it is beginning to take root-so pardon the melodrama-I thought I'd just share this with you before I write a few things that are on my mind: As I ride through Ohio, I am once again reminded of my naiveté in a new way. This is Johnny Appleseed country. A month or so before graduation I began saving my apple seeds from lunch and dinner at the UC (or the University Center: "They put the UC in SUCKS"). One day, DM saw me cut up the apple core and place the seeds into a zip lock bag, and he asked, what on earth was I doing? I told him I was going to plant an apple seed in every place I camp, and I would leave a trail of apple trees from sea to shining sea! He brought me back to earth, administering his usual dose of diplomatic sarcasm, "I'm sure that Aramark must have done something to sterilize those seeds." Oh. Hmmm... That sucks. Aramark is the corporation that has a monopoly on student cuisine, which may or may not be responsible for the mysterious phenomenon known as "The Freshmen Fifteen." (a term used by students to refer to the amount of weight gain their freshmen year) In any case, it made complete sense to me that an evil corporation dedicated to ravaging student's digestive systems would also conspire against my adventure plans. So I decided I would have to get seeds from an alternate source. It was a week before I would embark on my quest and I was in the gardening section of Home Depot with my mother. I told her I needed to get some apple seeds. Not possible. Apparently, if one wanted to grow an apple tree one has to buy the sapling from a corporation. And there was no way I would be able to load my BOB trailer with apple tree saplings. So much for one of my naive goals. The Schell Family and Ideal Bakery of Gibsonburg, Ohio John Jr., his daughter, and Mrs. Elizabeth Shell So here I am in The Ideal Bakery in Gibsonburg, Ohio. The rain has stopped and sunrays are prying open the cloud cover. Fifteen days into the trip and I feel like a month has come and gone. The hills of Pennsylvania almost made me want to call it a summer. The Erie wind and freezing drizzle dampened my passion-and bike repairs make me worry about making ends meet. These three elements combine to demoralize me-make me want to get a desk job. Perhaps I will have better luck riding a swivel chair, and letting an elevator do the climbing for me. I could exchange the handlebars for a keyboard, and deck the walls of my office cubicle with posters of mountains and hills I never quite conquered. But something always happens. Not a day goes by without something beautiful, amazing or astounding that I see or feel. It just happens. It materializes just when you least expect it and aren't quite looking-yet when it happens you have to recognize it and go with the flow, and not let destination's ghost cloud your vision in the present's here and now. Whatever it is, the happening, it is just enough to stoke the cooling embers in the bread oven, and it is the people I meet that make this journey possible-that keep me going. There is some kind of electric... Elizabeth Schell asks me if need any more coffee. I ask her about the bakery and she tells me that it has been a family business since 1922. Her husband John is the third generation owner. Elizabeth went to school at the University of Michigan, thus answering a riddle that had been on my mind since I had sat down: I was in Ohio yet there was a U of MI clock on the wall above the ice cream and coffee counter. She got her degree in nursing, but decided to work in her husband's bakery. Her son, John Jr., had been a diver in the Navy, and is now preparing to take over the family business. She shows me pictures of the bakery in its previous incarnation as an early 1900's hotel, in which horses and carriages were parked outside. ...charge that sparks between people of the land and the traveler. A bond is established with smiling eyes and welcoming hearts, and the traveler's woes are washed away and he is ready to journey onwards at least for another day unknown. Sometimes people think that I am either crazy or brave for riding alone and cross-country, especially in this post-9/11 age. I do know that if I listened to half the things on TV I would never have left my living room. That to me is craziness. If I didn't open my ears and just read the lips of current events then I would stay in my living room, upon an arm chair with hands folded over my breast, believing that this country is rife with sick, bad, people just lurking in the shadows of all hoods and woods. Instead, I left the TV dominated living room and found a more real living room just beyond the foyer door. It begins with a road and it goes any and everywhere. And on that road I am daily renewed by what I see and feel. I am more showered with hospitality and kindness along these roads than I am with summer rain. And it is enough water to make a garden grow where once a desert festered. At a meeting east of Bowling Green: A northern Ohio farmstead. A Meeting, East of Bowling Green Around noon I am enjoying sunny blue skies and for once the wind is in my favor. I'm cruising at about 18 mph on flat, fresh black asphalt. During times like these I sometimes zone out. When I actually come to, as if from a dream and slightly startled, I look back to see if my beast of burden trailer is still with me. After checking myself I see that I am approaching a major college town called Bowling Green. Ahead two cyclists beneath a tree are stretching and map checking. They wave to me and it takes me a couple seconds to break. I ride over to the other side of the road. Greg and Dave are from Denver, Colorado and they are on a cycle trek from Ft. Wayne, Indiana to Lackawanna, New York. We eat raisin bagels with peanut butter and honey while swapping cycling tales. They ask me how I'm budgeting my trip, and how I could live on $20 a day? I tell them they could live on less than $10. A pound of rice and a pound of bananas is more than enough to eat in one and still have enough to spare to splurge and get a sandwich at a country deli or Gatorade at a gas station. Alas! They would have done this but unfortunately the airport did not allow them to bring their camp stove. Ft. Defiance and the Lands of Pontiac, Tecumseh and Blue Jacket Paul and Betty Holtsberry of Paulding, Ohio I lunch in Grand Rapids, Ohio which is a former canal and railroad town founded in 1822 by a former Revolutionary War soldier. The town is situated on Maumee River and was once the homeland of the Ottawa Indian tribe, and is just upriver from the site of the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. I ride through Ohio farmlands of winter wheat, soy, and corn, and I finally make it to Paulding, Ohio where Betty and Paul Holtsberry grant me permission to camp in their backyard. Their ferocious poodle Barney is named after the sheriff's sidekick from the Andy Griffith Show.