No Ghosts - Just a Great Ride: Mansfield Reformatory Ride Recap

The weather report for the day called for rain in the late afternoon so we decided to make the trip to the Reformatory and hope for the best. Because this was a destination ride we had plenty of wiggle room in the schedule. And for once our wonderful Ohio weather actually cooperated.

We started the day with 10 bikes and 12 people. We hit the road on time and had good weather all the way there. We took a meandering route to the North, heading through Canal Fulton to Rte 604. We then turned South on Rte 42, rode past Ashland, and arrived at the Reformatory around 11:30. Early enough to beat the crowds.

We decided to spend two hours at the Reformatory. We felt that would be enough time for everyone to do the self-guided tour and check out the ParaPsyCon booths. We then split up and went hunting ghosts exploring.

At around 90 an hour and a half we started congregating in the shade under the big tree where we agreed to meet. Sadly no one was brave enough to have their Tarot cards read or meet with a psychic, but a few of us bought souvenirs. Once we were all together Maria asked the Ghostbusters to take a couple of photos (we threw a few bucks toward their charity collection) then hit the road for lunch.

Our plan for lunch was to hit the City Grille & Bar in downtown Mansfield. They normally open at 3pm but offered to open early for us. Along the way on what was supposed to be a very short hop we hit a snag. In what we hope won’t be a recurring theme in 2022 we got stopped by a train. But this was no ordinary train. It was the mother of all trains! Liquid storage cars as far as the eye could see in both directions. And it was slow. I mean, really slow. So slow that it - literally - stopped at one point.

Unfortunately we needed to get to the other side of that train but none of us were familiar with Mansfield so we were stuck. Until a Good Samaritan came to our rescue! A friendly local in a custom pickup (we should have taken a picture!) pulled up behind us and started chatting with the rear riders. He offered to lead us to our destination by taking a road that went under the tracks. So we quickly made a U-Turn and blindly followed him. Luckily for us he took us right where we wanted to go and we only lost about 15 minutes.

The City Grille turned out to be a great choice. The service was fast and the food was great. Everyone liked what they had with zero complaints. And we were able to get out of there pretty quickly. I think we would all recommend that place to anyone heading out to Mansfield.

When we left the restaurant four of us decided to head out on their own. It was getting late and people had grown-up responsibilities to attend to. The remaining six bikes (with two passengers) hit the road for the ride home. We made a quick gas stop for the lone Scout rider (I’ll leave it to you all to guess who that was) and… that’s when it decided to rain. We had been watching the weather radar so we knew we were heading in the same direction as the storm so we hit the gas and went as fast as we safely could to outrun it. After about five minutes we got ahead of it and managed to keep dry the remainder of the ride. Our return ride took us down Rte 39 to Rte 62 and ended at our favorite Dairy Queen in Bolivar. It was a fun and uneventful ride. And by “uneventful” I mean that the darn DQ was closed! No ice cream for us! Disappointing, but probably not a bad thing. The storm was still headed our way. We quickly said goodbye and went our separate ways. Some of us made it home without getting wet…

Jerry “You Never Forget Your First Time… Leading a Ride” D’Antonio