From: "Christine W" christineweir@hotmail.com
Subject: Kiwis crossing USA: hi from Berne, Indiana
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 17:59:51 PDT
Hi again everyone
I didn't expect to get to the email so soon, so this is a bonus!
The other night when we were in Frankton, our host Brenda invited some people around and neighbours called in, and we spent the whole night talking to people. It was great, and really interesting to hear how they live in a small town, and they were interested in our journey and what we do in NZ. Brenda rang the newspaper in Anderson and I did a phone interview. The next morning we were wheeling our bikes to leave Brenda's place, and a guy stopped his car and said he had read about us, and good luck and be careful! Then we stopped further along in Alexandria and someone else said he had read about us, etc! So we bought a paper and there is the headline: Foreign bikers trek through county, and a good article to follow. We felt like film stars, even start believing in our own publicity!
Another beautiful day, with tail wind all day, sunny, flat roads, a few bends as we went East then North following a grid pattern until we hit upon Montpelier on Hwy 18, found a park and plonked down in the corner. Some early morning walkers and joggers were somewhat surprised to see a couple of tents beside their walking track and a billy boiling on the fire!
Then - today, well this for me is the highlight day of the journey so far. We are in Berne on Hwy 218, nearly at the Ohio border, procrastinating about leaving Indiana! What a beautiful day - perfect really, tail wind, cloudless sky, warm temperature, very little traffic, and we only did 50km for the day. We went to Amishville, had delicious lunch there, saw several Amish driving around in their horse-drawn buggies, dressed in their traditional clothes with long dresses, covers on their hair, men with beards.
We stopped at an interesting looking building which turned out to be a general store where the Amish shop, very cheap prices, and Madi was talking Swiss with the shopkeeper and an Amish woman in there doing her shopping.
Berne was only a few km away and we went to the Chamber of Commerce to see if we could get an Ohio map. The woman phoned around and found a shop where we could get one, phoned the newspaper who sent the reporter around for an interview, phoned the local Swiss Heritage Park to see if we could camp there! We have a whole park to ourselves (a bit like Founders Park at home), camped by the lake, the caretaker left the restrooms unlocked, and the police know we are there so we won't be thrown out for tresspassing!
While we were down town we saw heaps of Amish people, and 3 guys stopped to talk. They were as fascinated with us as we were with them, and I was surprised that they talked to us because we aren't exactly dressed the way their women dress. The ones here seem to be fairly adapted to local life, they drive their horse & buggy along the main street and cars give them plenty clearance. The buggies have steel wheels as they won't use rubber tyred vehicles, and if they want a ride into town they pay someone to drive them. They use uncovered buggies in all weathers, whereas in other areas apparently they have covered ones.
We have been so well treated here, it's incredible. We are going to see if we can stay another day and do some work in the park. It's a Swiss type of town, so Madi is quite fascinated with it. It's really interesting for me too, so would be nice to spend a bit of time exploring. It's quite small so won't take long, except that we keep stopping to talk to people to a walk down the main street takes a long time. The local gardening club people were watering the window boxes and tubs of flowers that are out in bloom all down the main street.
The countryside around here is so beautiful, and still quite flat, just some very gentle undulations. There are corn fields, soya, and wheat and heaps of trees, huge lawns around the houses and farm houses. The favourite hobby seems to be mowing lawns using the ride-on mowers, and some of them must take most of the day to mow because they are so big.
The temperature is climbing day by day, nights are very cool and dewy so the tents are wet in the mornings, gives us an excuse to wait for them to dry off a bit so we don't have to make such an early start!
In this flat country where we could be doing huge mileages, we are actually doing the least that we have done on the whole trip, because there are so many small towns, and such a lot to look at and find out about, and people to talk to. The grid system of roads is great, we just go East a while and then North and gradually end up at some town, sometimes we just go and read the water tower to see where we are because we aren't too sure, and it doesn't matter anyway! From now on we will be heading mostly East, across Ohio, then Pennsylvania (back into the hills again) and then northwards to NY.
All this slow riding and lots of towns and bakeries means that we aren't burning off so much energy so we are having to be careful with all the tempting food around. It's hard though, the ladies in the Chamber of Commerce today gave us some chocolate, and we bought Swiss cheese, yummy!
Better go, library is closing.
till next time
Christine and Madi