My first day on the road I stopped at a lemonade stand in the front yard of some darling children. As I was drinking my lemonade the kids asked me questions.
“Are there like a million of you er what?” said a girl who I estimated to close to seven or eight years old.
“No,” I said, “Closer to 2000.”
“You’re riding all the way to Orville?” questioned a little boy closer to ten years old.
“Yes.”
“Why? Do you have to do it for school?” asked a girl who must have been eleven or twelve.
“No.”
“Are you being punished or something? asked the first girl
I chuckled because at that point it was starting to feel like she might be right. “No, we all wanted to come. People pay to do this, for lots of people this is their vacation,” I said.
“Is it your vacation?” she asked.
“No, I’m riding GOBA to write about it,” I said.
“Ohhhhh, so it’s for work,” says the preteen, “that makes sense.”
“It’s fun, I swear,” I say to the kids as they look at me like I’m from Mars.
Last night when we were evacuated from our tents and displaced into the neighboring high school during the height of the lightening storm I watched a bunch of tired, wet people make the best of a less than ideal situation.
Some people miraculously found a way to sleep, others played games, and many read books or sat around telling stories of GOBA storms past.
I thought about the kids on my first day. Why do we do this? I know why I signed on, but what about the others?
Throughout the week I’ve found most people have a GOBA story. At the legendary Chris’ Cakes pancake breakfast I met a family that reunites for GOBA every summer. The matriarch lives in the Cleveland area, but her daughter and grandchildren now live in Colorado, but each summer they come back to Ohio and ride GOBA, all three generations, as a family.
Mike and Marti are from the Cleveland suburbs and are among the group of roughly twenty-five people who have ridden every single GOBA.
When I lived in Detroit I learned that Canadians are some of my favorite people, and I must say that Canadian Gobians are especially lovely. Just a few tents over I met a group of five Canadians that have ridden GOBA for several years now.
Why do they ride?
“Because we’re masochists,” joked Lois from Windsor, Ontario.
There aren’t really any organized rides like this in Canada, and they enjoy the beauty of our state.
“Normally when you think of Ohio you think of big boring corn fields, but it’s so much more,” said Tim Hartley of Windsor, Ontario.
“You see what you’d never otherwise see because you are on a bike,” added Nestor Klem, also from Windsor.
Serge Brousseau travels the farthest, coming all the way from Winnepeg, Manitoba.
“It’s a good excuse to stay in shape, and when else can you eat like this and not gain any weight?” Said Hartley.
“You know, there’s 2500-3000 people, depending on the year, and they’re all so different, people you just couldn’t meet any other way. They all work different jobs, come from different places, and yet you have this thing in common, you’re all into cycling, going the same place.”
The Kerr family has their own subdivision within Gobaville, they call it Kerrville. The tradition began 18 years ago when Dan Kerr of Ashland, OH, and his friend Pat Marshall, first rode GOBA. Now three generations of Kerrs ride and they even have a flag for their settlement.
Some of the loyal Gobians are also volunteers. Donna Mesyn of Clinton Township, Michigan has volunteered in the information tent for the last thirteen years. “I love the community, the interaction, the helpfulness and caring. Everybody looks out for each other, and somehow everybody is able to go with the flow too.”
I suppose there isn’t one reason why we GOBA, but somewhere in the totality of all the reasons is this bigger idea. Maybe we have more in common than we realize. Maybe community is something we create with simple kindness and maybe, just maybe Ohio is beautiful after all.
“I love the community, the interaction, the helpfulness and caring. Everybody looks out for each other, and somehow everybody is able to go with the flow too.” – Donna Mesyn, volunteer
