Rooster in Review: Cincinnati bound

I'm going to do it. I'm going to ride my bike to Cincinnati.

I bought a Dutch-style cruiser bike in May 2022 at the Merion Village Garage Sale. The original purpose was to make the two-mile round trip to the gym a little easier.

Cycling is a dangerous hobby that can escalate quickly. Since then, I’ve done over 10,000 miles, primarily in Columbus.

This is what the map of every road I’ve traveled at least once looks like:

Via Wandrer Earth, one of my favorite apps in existence.

London, Ohio, is the furthest I’ve biked from Columbus. But tomorrow, I’m going to try to break that record by completing my first 100-mile journey to the Queen City. Pit stops will occur in London, Xenia, and Mason.

For the unfamiliar, Ohio is home to the exquisite Ohio to Erie Trail, which lets you travel from Cincinnati to Cleveland (or vice versa) via protected bike lanes for like 90 percent of the journey. I want to bike to Cleveland sometime next month to complete the entire trail, just to say I did it.

If you want to support the journey, the best way to do that is by subscribing to The Rooster, the largest independent voice going in Ohio politics.

If you are also inclined to contribute a few bucks for a road burrito or whatever, I’m not above accepting donations through Venmo, either.

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Oh, and I apologize for the late arrival of dispatches on Tuesday and Friday. I used to be able to blame that kind of thing on being drunk and forgetting to schedule my posts. But I have no such excuse this week! One late dispatch is an error. Two in the same week is a travesty!

But don’t worry, I’ve fired the intern responsible like a dog.

This week in Ohio Man…

Thefts are usually a crime of opportunity. You might not wake up one day thinking you’re going to rob a cigarette delivery truck of a felony’s worth of cancer sticks, but then you notice the driver leaving the door ajar while he ferries his wares into the store.

From whio.com:

ROCKY RIVER, Ohio (WOIO) - A Cleveland man was arrested last week after stealing thousands of dollars in cigarettes, according to Rocky River police.

[…]

Officers learned that a truck was parked making deliveries to the store, and while the driver was away, the suspect took about 30 cartons of cigarettes valued at just under $3,000.

The suspect, a 58-year-old Cleveland man, was arrested by detectives the next day.

You gotta be smarter than that! But I can only imagine how his veins were pulsing as a (probable) cigarette addict who thought he stumbled upon a nice little payday.

This crime is up there with the one I always remember from when my mom lived in Toledo for graduate school. A teenager robbed a gas station and shot the clerk despite him handing over the money.

A customer walked in about 15 minutes later, observed the dead clerk behind the desk, and proceeded to shoplift exactly one pack of cigarettes.

Cigarettes never pay. It’s wise words to remember!

This week in The Rooster….

• The cosmos went crazy with that eclipse. Recapping a sweet natural phenomenon as another driver plows a car into a building, Frank LaRose is still shameless as ever, and the Attorney General’s office sides with House Democrats over State Rep. Elliot Forhan (D-Cleveland).

• The State of the State. Ohio lags behind its peers in several key metrics as Governor Sleepy Tea was set to deliver the State of the State speech hours after the death by suicide of former PUCO chairman Sam Randazzo.

• The circus never sleeps. Recapping a wild week at the Statehouse, including the reappearance of a former disgraced Ohio House Speaker (no, not that one! The other one.)

THOSE WMDs. The rise of the scammy car loan… The coffee apocalypse… Thieves caught with $300,000 in Legos… Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon to death in largest-ever fraud case… “Praying for death,” Gaza woman describes her nightmare…