My knees finally allowed me to keep a reasonable pace, assuming I popped ibuprofen frequently and didn't have the gall to climb any hills. More farm roads took me through places with names like Independence and Defiance before taking a lunch break in Napoleon. That turned into a dinner break after I stopped in the library. I think their router had run out of internal IP addresses to assign -- that is, it wouldn't remember any new device that hadn't connected to it recently. Whatever the problem, I got around it by just by telling my computer to use an existing IP address instead of waiting to be assigned a new one. I tried to share my solution with the librarian, but all he heard was that I had ignored their prior warning that "the internet is broken". He appeared to be upset that I would defy him in this, the one domain he had control over in his life. Fine then, less competition for wifi.
I sat on a balcony in a remote enough corner of the library to avoid the surly librarian. It was far enough from anyone else that I felt it wouldn't present a public health danger to take off my shoes, which led to the discovery of a large cricket that had somehow managed to survive the trip snuggled up next to my foot, apparently unharmed. I tried to catch it to set it free outside, but it escaped with a dramatic leap over the balcony and plunged into the stacks below. Sorry, surly librarian guy. Godspeed, horribly traumatized shoe-cricket.
I killed time on things like Facebook conversations, failed attempts to update my blog, and writing a silly short story in order to explain why someone hadn't been able to respond to my messages in a while. I hoped that I could wait around to make sure I had cell service to call my girlfriend when I said I would, but I forgot to account for timezones and the library closed before phone-call time. I hung out on the library steps with a local cat and listened to a heated conversation about why it wasn't this kid's fault that he had been absent from school that day.
The cat tired of me, so I tired of that place. I got a snack and headed to the edge of town before phone call time, which of course meant that phone call time occurred in a place with no shelter, in the rain, across from a foul smelling and strangely-high-security Campbell's Soup factory. The humidity meant that the rain wasn't terrible, at least, and a guy driving his riding lawnmower on the highway (???) stopped to give me a water bottle.
I thought about camping soon after that somewhere along the Maumee River, but everything was damp and I was kind of eager to keep my mind occupied anyway (due to the depression, not the phone call), so I just put on my reflective vest and lights and kept going. I made it all the way to the outskirts of Bowling Green before I finally decided to turn in, and slept between two pine trees in the back of a cemetery, leaving what I hoped was a respectful distance from any actual graves.
Took a few pictures today, surprisingly. Here's Scooter the derby car on the way out of Morrowville; an obligatory state line photo (apparently with flash, oops); a lonely bench on a massive levi overlooking a resrvoir; and, of course, the cat I hung out with for about an hour in front of the Napoleon library.
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