The Great Ohio Bike Adventure (GOBA) kicked off its six day route through Ohio in Mansfield on Saturday. Two-thousand riders – families, individuals, and couples from Ohio and all around the world – streamed in at noon to register and set up their tents at the Richland County Fairgrounds, where they will spend the night and leave from Sunday morning.
The 26th annual bicycle tour will take riders on a roughly 250 mile route through Ohio. They will pass through Mansfield, Orville, Coshocton, and Bucyrus. Along the way, riders will pitch tents for the night. The ride will return to Mansfield on June 21.
“This thing is not a race. It’s really just a family outing of joy,” said Roy Meier from Cleveland. Meier is a participant in this year’s GOBA, which will be his tenth GOBA he’s participated in. Meier brought along two friends, of whom he rides with back home. He and his friend Bob Gaier started a 12-day tour around Lake Eerie.
“Biking gives a real sense of freedom. You zone out – you have to be careful of that – but it’s spiritual in a way, you know? And it’s good exercise,” shared Gaier, a resident of Solon, Ohio.
Richland County Fairgrounds was filled with tents and road bikes, prepared for the next day’s journey. At 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, a group prepared for the parade to the downtown center in Temple Court, known as the Brickyard, to partake in GOBA’s kick-off ceremony.
This year’s theme for the tour was “Take a Ride on the Wild Side.” Many riders dressed in costumes, hoping to catch the attention of the contest’s judge: Mansfield’s Mayor Tim Theaker. At the rally Theaker announced winners for the costume contest, among them a few prisoners – a nod to the Ohio State Reformatory; giraffes, gazelles and other safari creatures.
The Jimmy Warner Band played live music for the kick-off event. Food was made available from vendors Smokin’ Joe’s BBQ of Perrysville and Phoenix Brewery.
Mark Sheaham from Hilliard said that he wishes he could join his wife for this year’s GOBA. He has biked since 1972, and started getting into recreational distance rides in the 1980s because of a friend. His last time doing the tour was three years ago with his son. He agrees that this race is about being with other people, especially family, but he would like to see more of the younger generation participating.
“It would be nice to see the younger kids to start to explore a little,” said Sheaham. He remembered the time when he rode bicyles with friends in the seventies. He recognizes that the demographic most attracted to this are middle aged individuals.
According to GOBA, 59 percent of the total participants of this year’s tour belonged to the 51-70 age group. The oldest male registrant is from Columbus at age 83. The oldest female registrant is 80-years-old and from Little Hocking, Ohio. Many of these registrants were veterans, having participated in the GOBA over 10 years. Two of the riders had ridden since the beginning, 26 years earlier.
Most of the participants this year are from Ohio, but some came from Canada, Japan and Taiwan. There are also 37 different states being represented, including Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, and Maryland.
First riders make up 28 percent of this year’s registrants. Along for the ride for her first time is Richland Source correspondent Trazy Graziani. She will be blogging live from her tumblr site that she will write on an iPad after each day’s 50-mile ride. Read her first story here.
The primary sponsor of this year’s GOBA was Richland County’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. During the evening’s ceremony in Temple Court, Marketing and Meetings Director Kim Miers was presented with the GOBA Rider #1 placard.
“We couldn’t have done any of this without Kim,” said Director Julie Van Winkle.
For more information on this year’s GOBA, visit their website or Mansfield / Richland County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“Biking gives a real sense of freedom. You zone out – you have to be careful of that – but it’s spiritual in a way, you know? And it’s good exercise,” shared Gaier, a resident of Solon, Ohio.
