June 24, 1903
(Kensington, IL to Ligonier, IN)
“In the morning I ordered and paid for some gasoline. What I got was a vile mixture of gasoline and something that was much like linseed oil. I believe it was that, but I did not discover the imposition until after I had started. and I did not go back.
A man who will sell such stuff has no conscience. Only a club will appeal to him, and I had no time to waste in fighting. I simply went on and made the best of it till I could get fresh gasoline elsewhere.
The roads were heavy from recent rains when left Kensington at 6:45 a.m., and here in the smooth and “built up” east I had to resort to the trick I learned in the deserts of Nevada and Utah. I took to the railroad track, and rode 20 miles along the ties to the lake. I saved a considerable distance by following the railroad, and as I was seasoned to such riding, the bouncing did not hurt so much as the thought that I was having the same sort of traveling east of Chicago that I had west of Omaha.
Well, it as a big country to build up and supply with good roads. Anyone who has made such a trip as I made can appreciate this in a fullness that others cannot. When this country is eventually built up with good roads it will be truly great and wonderful.
I left the railroad at Porter, Indiana, and got onto a road with a good rock bed, which lasted for several miles.
The rains, which had so severely damaged the roads, had not hurt the crops much, so far as I could see. It was all a “ranching country,” as we say in the West – farming they call it in the East – through which I was passing at this stage, and it looked flourishing.
I reached La Porte at noon, and lunched there, having made 55 miles in the forenoon. I had been keeping company with a smell like that of burning paint all the morning. It came from the mixture that I was exploding in the motor. I got fresh gasoline at La Porte, and at least had an honest smell for my money after that.
I passed through Goshen at 5 p.m.,
and reached Ligonier, where I stopped for the night, at 6:30 p.m. The roads began to get better after I left La Porte, and the last 19 miles of this day’s run were made in an hour and 10 minutes.
I thought that when I got east of Chicago folks would know what a motor bicycle is, but it was not so. In every place through which I passed, I left behind a gaping lot of natives, who ran out into the street to stare after me. When I reached Ligonier I rode through the main street, and by mistake went past the hotel where I wanted to stop.
When I turned and rode back the streets looked as though there was a circus in town. All the shopkeepers were out on the sidewalks to see the motor bicycle, and small boys were as thick as flies in a country restaurant. When I dismounted in front of the hotel the crowd became so big and the curiosity so great that I deemed it best to take the bicycle inside.
The boys manifested a desire to pull it apart to see how it was made. There was really more curiosity about my motor bicycle in the eastern towns than in the wilds of the Sierras. The mountaineers are surprised at nothing, and seemed to have caught from the Indians the self-containment that disdains to manifest the slightest curiosity.
Although when spoken to about it, the Westerners would frankly admit they never saw such a machine before, yet they turned toward me on my first appearance stolid countenances with which they gazed at the sky and the surrounding landscape. This day, when I reached Ligonier, June 24, I had made 130 miles.”
Due to a 26-mile traffic jam coming out of Chicago heading to Gary IN and beyond that was at a standstill, I struggled to follow George’s route too closely and make any headway. I looked at the tent space map to see if anyone was close to where I was.
Just 30 miles due north in Sturgis, Michigan inmate @epix1718 offered me a spot, and what a spot it was. Would George think if he knew what a spaceship was this could possibly be it? What it really was a 1976 GMC Eleganza II…Stripes anyone??
So a huge thank you Pete for putting me up at very short notice, and his bulldogs are also awesome
I left in the morning, rode through Amish country and back to join George’s route…
June 25, 1903
(Ligonier, IN to Perrysburg, OH)
“At 8.a.m. On June 25 I left Ligonier and struck out over a sand road, through a rolling and fertile farming country, to Wawaka, where I came to a stone road, and had good riding to Kendallville.
East of that place, to Butler, the going was a good second to what I had in Iowa, which was the worst of anywhere that there were roads.
Between Butler and Edgerton, after having ridden 48 miles from Ligonier, I crossed the state line into Ohio. The road improved some then, but it was very bad in places all the way to Swanton. at which place I resorted to the railroad for more comfort and fewer dismounts.
I rode nine miles to Holland along the tracks, but the railroad bed was a poor one and about as rough riding as the road, so I returned to the highway and found a six-mile stretch of good road south to Miami(sic, Maumee). By taking this road I made a shortcut that saved me 15 miles, and did not therefore, see Toledo. I arrived at Perrysburg, Ohio, at 7 p.m. with 126 miles to my credit for the day.
Leaf Hotel, Perrysburg, OH c.1890
The price of gasoline continued to decrease as I got East. In the morning of that day at Ligonier I had paid 10 cents for half a gallon; at Butler I got the same quantity for 8 cents, and at Swanton the price was 7 cents.
The table board did not improve, however. For me, with my vigorous Western appetite. the bounteous supply of plain food served by the little hotels in the Rocky Mountain country was much more satisfactory than anything I got East. The meals out in Nevada and Wyoming were much better than anything I got in Illinois, Indiana or Ohio, at the same price.
Everywhere I stopped during this part of my trip a crowd gathered about me and my motorcycle, although neither the machine nor my self had any sign on telling our mission.
Whenever I told someone in a crowd I had come from San Francisco there was at first open incredulity. The word was passed along, and they winked to one another, while staring impudently at me. At this stage of my journey I had with me, however, a copy of the June issue of The Motorcycle Magazine. with the story of my start from the coast and a picture. This convinced the doubters, and immediately my bicycle became the subject of unbounded curiosity, while I was the target of Gatling-gun fire of questions that it was impossible to answer satisfactorily. The consequence was I became more particular when and where I took the trouble to convince people of my feat.
About this time I began to feel the effects of my five days’ rest in Chicago. That length of time led to me growing tender. and I was more saddle-sore at Perrysburg that night than at anytime before. I felt then as if I would have to finish with a hot water bag on the saddle.”
The route so far, San Francisco to Perrysburg OH
continued…
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rtwPaul 
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