Day 3: New Bremen to Van Wert, 49 Miles

Day 3 started with a nourishing breakfast at the Spiritual Center in Maria Stein — a calm, quiet start before 51 miles of Ohio weather decided to test us.

With a bit of time to spare before rolling out, our group of 17 cycling enthusiasts did the only sensible thing — toured the Bicycle Museum of America. Three floors of bicycle history, which felt less like a detour and more like a pilgrimage.

The original Swiss Military "frame bag" looks a lot like the bike packs that Bob and I use on tour!

One exhibit stopped me in my tracks: a wall devoted to women's bicycles from the late 1800s. It turns out the bicycle wasn't just for leisure to women back then — it was a path to freedom. For the first time, middle-class women could pedal off into the countryside without a chaperone, which was a wildly modern concept in 1892.

Bob was ready to peddle off into the countryside on this beast!

And then there was "bicycle face" — the supposed medical condition where doctors warned that cycling would leave women red-faced, exhausted-looking, and permanently disfigured by their own exertion. It sounds like a punchline now, but nobody was laughing at the time — it was used in all seriousness to talk women out of riding. A joke that wasn't really a joke: the actual fear wasn't about anyone's face. It was about what happens to a society when women get a vehicle and a reason to use it.

After too short a stay at the museum, we headed out into a drizzly, windy day with a very unfriendly northerly headwind. There wasn't much to do but put our heads down and crank out the miles.

Yep, that's a serious case of "bicycle face".

We caught a break from the weather — and the wind — in Celina, where the Celina Rotary Club hosted us for lunch at the Eagles Lodge overlooking Grand Lake.

The afternoon was more of the same drizzle-and-grind, and by the time we rolled into Van Wert, 51 miles in, we were ready to be done. Our stop for the night was Camp Clay, a YWCA facility with a log bunkhouse built in 1837 — which means we slept in a building older than the bicycle itself.

Girls took the bunks on the bottom floor, boys took the bunks on the top floor, and everyone settled in like overgrown campers, because that's exactly what we were.

That evening we loaded into the van and headed to downtown Van Wert, where the Van Wert Rotary Club treated us to a barbecue dinner.

Bob and I ended up at a table with the Executive Director of the YWCA and the local Superintendent of Schools — these bike tours are more about the personal connection during the ride than how many miles you logged that day.

Back at camp, we wound down watching the sunset (the clouds finally cleared!), and one brave (or possibly delirious) soul in our group took a dip in the pond. It wasn't either of us. The water looked cold enough to qualify as a second headwind.

Tomorrow's forecast promises better weather. After today, we'll take it.