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1. Scout peruses the campus for squirrels. 2. Veteran memorial in town near Ada. 3. Corner on Main Street, downtown Ada. 4. This is Ohio 5. On the way into Ada. 6. Corn. Lots of it. 7. More crops. 8. Ada is brimming over with history. 9. Sunset, Indian Lake. 10. What?! (Also note misspelling) 11. Random bridge shot, Cincinatti. Mission accomplished. I made it as far as suburban Cleveland Sunday night (or early Monday morning) before I had to pull over and sleep, but I was up a few hours later and rolling through the cornfields into Ada, Ohio by noon. Rolling through the cornfields? you may be asking yourself, wondering if your author may be engaging in a little terminological inexactitude for effect. That would not be the case. Ada is in the middle of nowhere. The pictures do not lie.
I almost drove right through the village, when I realized the stoplight I was sitting at was on Main Street. Ada is literally a collection of houses gathered around a crossroads in the middle of a huge expanse of farmland, population 3,000 max. Without students. Once school is in, my law school tour guide told me, the town's population doubles. Aside from a few fast food joints and a pizza place, a Mexican bar/restaurant and a Chinese place, there are no restaurants. Aside from a mom-and-pop grocery with few goods and all of them overpriced, the nearest Kroger is in Lima, fifteen minutes away. There is one movie theatre, showing one movie. A train track goes through the center of town. From most any point on any street you can actually see the crops growing at the edge of town. We're talking seriously rural.
However, the town does have a sort of classic American midwest small-town charm. Everyone waves at each other as they drive around. Kids on bikes populate the sidewalks and streets. All the houses are old, wooden, and nice. Plus, I reminded myself often, I won't be here for the culture. So I called up and met with one landlord, a quirky fellow who had been described to me as the "slumlord" of Ada. And his apartments were exactly that. After a very brief tour through his properties I headed over to the law school and got a tour, met a couple of professors and chatted with the secretaries. Small, but nice. I'm really hoping to do well my first year and transfer, but if that doesn't happen it won't be all bad. Tha campus is nice, with huge sprawling lawns separating everything and punctuated frequently by small ponds. Scout was in squirrel heaven.
It was drawing late by this point and my other landlords hadn't called me back, so I decided to go set up camp for the evening on Indian Lake a few miles to the south of Ada. Again, a nice drive through literally miles of unbroken croplands. Well I arrived at the large lake to find it surrounded by homes, with only a small beach for swimming. (See photo - "flotation devices prohibited" ? Why in hell would you prohibit flotation devices at a public beach!?) The official campsites were all expensive and I discovered after only a few minutes parked beside the water that the mosquitos were taking over Ohio with a deep vengeance. The sunset was nice, and Scout and I took a dip to cool off before heading back to Ada to camp in the truck again. I wanted to be up early to see as many houses in the morning as possible. As I drove through the dark fields the full moon rose like it was on fire, huge and blood-red, slowly cooling off and paling into the sky. It got so bright I drove for a while without lights, hurtling through a blue landscape.
Next morning I got lucky. As soon as I woke one Mr. Music called and said to come on over to the house he was working on, just a few hundred yards away. A nice fellow, he'd been living in Ada for twenty years and had property all over the place. He showed me around a couple of houses and I told him I'd take the first place he showed me, a nice two-story, two bedroom house with a huge backyard. Most everything else had been rented, but the girls who had been in this one had up and left, leaving behind a lot of furniture. Score. I signed the lease on the spot and headed back out of town.
Ada is no cultural mecca, but it is interesting. I'll have to trade my mountain bike for a road bike, but I've been wanting to do that for a year now. There's no kayaking water to speak of either, but I'll be studying anyhow. Onward and upward.
