Day 16
Start
Mount Vernon, Ohio
Finish
Poland, Ohio
Mileage
135
By Bruce Wood
www.biggreen alert.com
Poland, Ohio -- Earlier in his cross country bicycle ride Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens learned the truth about the myth of the westerly wind. (Hint: If such a thing exists it is greatly exaggerated)
Tuesday Teevens learned another truth. As high as the mountains were in California and the southwest, the climbs in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania might be just as tiring. They don't reach the altitudes of those he faced in his first week on the road, but they can be steep -- and there are more than enough of them.
“This was probably more climbing than I did any day on the trip,” a tired Teevens said late Tuesday night. “Christmas ribbon candy, that's what it felt like. Up and down. Up and down. Toward the end of the day my legs were a bit shot. It was, ‘Oh man, not another one.’ ”
Teevens put in 135 hard-earned miles before calling it a night in Poland, Ohio, where he enjoyed the hospitality of Dr. Ray Boniface, an orthopedic surgeon and member of the Dartmouth Class of 1978.
“My goal was to make it to Pennsylvania and I could have pushed through,” Teevens said. “It’s only about five miles from here, but the convenience of spending the night with a Dartmouth alum made it easier to stop here.”
Teevens was one year behind Boniface at Dartmouth. “I didn’t really know him, but I knew of him,” he explained. “He was good friends with (defensive tackle) Gregg Robinson. He’d picked up what I was doing online and cold-called me.
“I didn’t know about it, but the Dartmouth club around here was going to try to do something. I couldn't pin down a time when I’d be through so he stepped up and said they'd love to have me.”
While the end of Teevens’ day was tiring, the start was invigorating.
“Leaving Mt. Vernon was tremendous on 62, an Ohio Byway,” he said. “It was as scenic as anything I've come across, with beautiful rolling hills. It wasn’t straight like Kansas or Missouri, so you’d come up a hill and around the bend and have a nice view. It looked somewhat like New Hampshire and Vermont, but without the pine trees. There was a lot of hardwood and there were crystal clear steams. And again there were smells. Every once in a while I’d go through a pocket of sawmills with those smells.”There was also something he hoped to see in Illinois but did not: Amish.
“They are very well established out this way,” he said. “They farm and make wooden furniture. I was out there passing horsedrawn buggies and dodging piles of horse manure in the breakdown lane. When I stopped at an Amish bakery it was tremendous. Everybody was friendly. Everybody waved.
“It was quite a juxtaposition to see a mom with her two kids in a buggy going by an active oil derrick being passed by a cattle truck. It was all right there.”
Teevens’ planned route had him going through Canton and while there would be a certain natural appeal to a stop at the NFL Hall of Fame, bicycling through the city wasn’t high on his list of things to do. To the rescue came a former college football player.
“I pulled off to see if there was a back road and William Baker, manager of Surbey Feed & Supply in Navarre, Ohio, was a big help,” Teevens said. “He was a football player on the Baldwin Wallace national championship football team of 1978. He was a cornerback, punter and holder. He shared some stories about (Ohio State coach) Jim Tressell and his day, and then showed me the back roads I needed to take to skirt Canton and get over toward Youngstown. He was a neat guy and had a neat store.
"I didn’t really make any other stops except to get something to eat or drink. I was just trying to push through.”
The push got him to Poland where Teevens traded stories about growing up in a large family with Ray Boniface and his dad. (Ray grew up in a family of eight, Teevens in a family of nine.) Teevens learned a little more about cancer from Boniface’s wife, Nancy, a cancer specialist. “We talked about research and raising funds and awareness,” he said. “She helped give me a little more insight into how extensive this disease is and how widespread the impact has been.”
The coach also spent a little quality time in the Boniface garage with Ray, who races and works on sports cars.
“I had some chain issues today,” Teevens said. “It fell off a couple of times and was clicking. Ray doesn't know bikes but he’s built race cars and has a souped-up ‘87 BMW in his garage. He said, ‘Let me take a look at it.’ We ended up fixing the bike.”
Teevens laughed as he added a postscript to the story. “When we were done he had grease all over him and he said, 'Well, I better clean it up. I'm doing a hip replacement tomorrow morning.' "
Map
NOTES Teevens is altering his route to try to dodge some of the hills in western Pennsylvania. Where he’d originally planned to go more through the central part of the state, he’s now aiming to slice diagonally through the northwestern part of Pennsylvania and jump up into New York. With winds out of the south predicted for the next several days the change could give him a little help at his back. “If I get a good wind and an early start I’d like to make Jamestown, N.Y.,” he said. “If not, my other lockspot is Warren, Pa.”
He estimates Warren at 130 miles by bicycle route and Jamestown at 150. “How far I make it depends on the hills and the wind,” he said. “I guess (Route) 62 mirrors the Allegeheny River, so that will help. So would the wind. A good push would be nice. I could use one.”
Brown has a list of recruits and their bios here. ... Princeton and Cornell will get national exposure this fall with a Friday night game carried live on ESPNU. ... It's the second year in a row the Tigers have been featured on the station. Last fall they played Brown on the network. ... New Hampshire is No. 7 and Yale No. 25 in one of the first 2007 preseason polls compiled by AnyGivenSaturday and reported by UNH.
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