June 16
"today, we expected a fairly short distance... but the weather forecast
promised rain with some scattered thunderstorms. expecting the worst, we
took off, all waterproofed, and found that riding in the overcast
conditions was a big improvement from the past several days. the
threatening skies never actually let loose, and as i sit here typing this,
the sun is out!
we're staying in a motel tonight... yeah... we wimped out again! we're
looking forward to having access to some "wheels" tonight as my oldest son
lives here in rochester and is stopping by to take us out to dinner and
perhaps a movie!
the ride was short (53 miles) as expected... plus we got to ride on about
25 miles of new york's canal way trail system. we passed thru palmyra, ny
which is the hometown of joseph smith... the founder of the mormon
church. as a student in the area some years ago, i had an opportunity to
witness the mormon pageant that they hold here annually... quite an
impressive sight and sound spectacular!
the roads charted out by adventure cycling were paved... but were "chip
sealed", which means that they are somewhat rough. as gary, our riding
comanion said... the road simulates doing a trans-america ride with
knobbies...;) regarding the canal trail... as a route, it is good because
it is flat, scenic, and has no motor traffic... but it is bad because it
is mostly gravel which limits me to a max speed of about 10 mph. tomorrow
we have an opportunity to ride on an additional 50-60 miles of this trail,
but i think we've had enough, and will take a route to buffalo that i used
to ride often as a graduate student at the university of rochester. it
should be a moderate day of about 75 miles, and i'm looking forward to
taking a rest day on monday before making the great leap into the balance
of this adventure. so it goes..." --ez
June 17
"today is father's day. as a treat, last night i got to see a movie with
two of my sons in rochester. the movie was "o brother, where art thou?"
an excellent and entertaining film based on homer's odyssey. i highly
recommend it! in a way, the routine of biking across the continent is
sort of like a struggle to find one's way back home. though the goal for
me is the journey itself seen to completion, how can i separate that from
what comes after?... namely returning to connecticut and reinserting
myself into the routine from which i have stepped away?
today we completed the "scheduled" part of the ride. tomorrow is a rest
day! however we already have a list of jobs to do tomorrow that will keep
us busy. we said goodbye to gary, our short-term riding companion today,
who needs to be back home tomorrow, we'll miss his companionship, humor
and advice, but he seems to feel that steve and i are ready to tackle the
rest of the trip on our own... i like to believe he's right. thanks,
gary!
we traveled 70 flat miles today into a stiff wind out of the west... a
taste of things to come? so it goes..." --ez
June 18
"today was a "rest" day. we got to overhaul and lubricate our bikes.
steve's seat on his stealth was listing to one side. we spent a lot of
time working to get it back on an even keel. hopefully it will be stable
for the duration... and no catastrophic failures! we scouted out the
route to the peace bridge from my mom's house, and crossed into canada to
get some money exchanged... as well as talk with the canadian custom's
people about what procedures we should follow when we pull up with our
bikes tomorrow. i got some extra bungi cords and nylon straps for
insurance... due to a couple of events that happened in the first nine
days that i haven't reported yet.
for one thing, i use a plastic rubbermaid 'rough-neck' tub on the top of
my bike rack. this is what i have used as a commuter for the last decade
or more. it is attached to the rack by passing a couple of 18" bungis
under the rack and hooking them on the lip of the tub's lid. this system
gives me a waterproof, crush-proof storage compartment that allows easy
access at stops along the way. one thing that i have a major mental block
about, though, is to remember to re-attach the bungis before starting to
ride again. i have chewed up a large number of bungis in my rear axle
because of my forgetfullness over the years, and i chewed up another a
couple of days ago... hence the spares!
a more serious incident prompted the need to get some nylon straps: our
tent had been stowed in transit on the top of steve's rack, held down by
sandwiching it between his raised panniers and topped off with his crazy
creek foam chair-pad held in place by a couple of bungis. well, we pulled
into a lunch stop recently and heard a woman's voice say, "you dropped
something". sure enough, the tent had worked its way loose from its slot
due to road vibrations, and took that lucky moment to fall off, and was
lying in the middle of the parking lot... none of us had noticed! had it
happened on the road at a time when steve was in the back of our
group,... you can imagine! we borrowed a nylon strap from gary to
secure it better, and got a couple more for the balance of the trip. the
weather is expected to be hot and humid in the near term, with some rain
over the next couple of days after that.... it sure is lucky that we're
crossing out of the usa tomorrow, because watching the weather channel
we're never shown anything happening or predicted to happen for canada...
they must not have weather up there... ;) so it goes..." --ez
June 19
"i'm sitting in selkirk provincial park in my crazy creek chair atop a
picnic table atop a small hill looking out at lake erie. it's 5:30pm and
the sun is behind a tree to my right, but the reflection coming off the
water is making me squint. however, more formidable than the sun today
was, and is, the wind. it is blowing out of the southwest at a steady 25
mph, with gusts to over 30. this is what we had to contend with
today.
we left cheektowaga this morning at 6am and had an easy ride to the peace
bridge, enjoying some bike trails and views in lasalle park on buffalo's
waterfront. the peace bridge itself was smaller and shorter than i
remember it as a child when crossing it was an exciting moment each summer
as we ventured to our favorite fishing camp up on georgian bay. customs
was uneventful and after casting about for our route in fort erie, we got
on the trail and headed west along the lake shore. the air was cool and
calm as we started out. the character of the canadian lake shore changed
from a haven for wealth, with huge mansions on the waterfront, to small
hamlets with seasonal cottages along the way. i pointed out to steve what
was to me a very odd use of prime lake shore real estate, namely the
presence of cemeteries right on the shore... in almost every town or
village that we passed thru. perhaps the people who settled here were
principally engaged in working the lake waters and it was considered
fitting to be laid to rest with the sound of the waves and wind at
hand.
that sound and feel of the wind was something that we experienced for most
of the day. southern ontario is largely agricultural, and with the
combination of large areas of cleared farmland on one side, vast expanses
of open water on the other side, and the advance of a fast approaching
storm front, steve and i had little respite. in spite of the conditions,
we traveled 85 miles today, averaging 12.1 mph... all in all a good
day's performance. i hope that the storm passes in the night, and that
tomorrow is clear and calm... but i won't hold my breath. this is good
practice for the expected windy conditions of the northern plains states.
so it goes..." --ez
June 20
"spiders, squirrels and storms. did you know that there are so many
spiders in southern ontario that property owners occasionally hire pest
control people to spray their outdoor property? did you know that black
squirrels living in this part of canada occasionally make noisy war upon
each other in the middle of the night? did you know that the southern
ontario peninsula is known to some as "tornado alley", and that even if
you don't experience a tornado, you will probably see enough lightning and
hear enough thunder during a summer storm to last a year in some other
regions, such as connecticut?
last night in the campground we learned these things. first of all, it
seems to me that instead of spraying to kill the spiders, let them eat the
hordes of mosquitos that also abound here, limiting their food supply and
thus cause their population decline naturally... but, then again i'm no
expert, what do i know about it? :)
the squirrels were really ferocious-sounding! they woke us up around 1am
in a tree about 10 feet from our tent... such squealing and hissing and
snorting amazed me! nothing in my years of camping experience as a
scoutmaster could come close... even my experience with crazed raccoons.
i realized a few minutes later that the squirrels were probably fighting
over shelter from the oncoming storm which was rolling in with almost
constant flashes of lightning... enough illumination to read by. the
storm got close... but didn't land on top of us, and we had chosen a site
with enough wind block to help keep the tent standing. in the morning, we
found ourselves dry and intact, and after brushing off all the spider webs
that had formed on our bikes and tent, we took off in beuatiful, clear
cool conditions! today's ride was by far the easiest... yesterday's wind
was just a bad memory, and we sailed along. we clocked over 95 miles
today... probably helped along by the dozen or so dogs that chased us off
their farms. steve was chased by a couple of german shepherds and he
clocked one at twenty mph keeping up with the bike as he made his escape.
luckily we weren't riding uphill at the time or the dogs might have buried
him out behind the corn crib ;)
we spend tonight in a bed and breakfast in shedden, ontario. luckily we
were pointed in this direction at an information booth in one of the
"port" towns several miles back. it allowed us to extend the riding day
so that we are now poised to finish our canadian ride and re-enter the usa
tomorrow...so it goes" --ez
June 21
"here's a pop quiz for all you readers out there...
1. what does it
mean when "the hydro goes out"?
2. what does "diggin' for a tooney"
mean?
[answers at the end of the journal entry]
the phrase for
today has to be "the best laid plans o' mice an' men gang oft agley"
we started out later than usual... at about 7am after spending some time
talking with our b&b hostess ... and enjoying a fine breakfast complete
with homemade bread! ... in fact she packed several large buttered
slices for us to take on the road... which we eventually had for lunch.
but to get back to plans gone awry: once we were on the road, we were
making outstanding time doing about 17 to 18 mph with little wind
resistance on the flat ontario roads. we hoped to cross into michigan
today on the ferry from sombra to marine city. however after having gone
15 miles fate struck. steve's rear derailler cable broke. no problem, i
thought, since i had planned for such an eventuality, and had packed two
spare cables. well, the first problem i encountered was not knowing how
to open a "grip-shift" twist control in order to remove the old and insert
the new cable. this was the first time i had to do that kind of job on a
grip shift. after some investigation, which included taking apart much
more than i needed, i managed to figure it out (without breaking
anything!). next problem was how to clip off the unnecessary end of the
cable...(for those who don't know, derailler cables come with a different
retainer soldered to each end so that you can use the correct retainer for
your shifters and clip off the one you don't need). clipping the end
shouldn't have been a big problem, except that to save weight i had packed
a really cheap and therefore useless set of cable cutters. after spending
about twenty minutes trying to get a clean cut, i gave up and steve went
to a nearby homeowner to borrow a better pair. now with a cleanly cut
cable properly threaded, i learned that rear deraillers for recumbent
bikes need an extra long cable, and the normal-sized ones that i had
packed were not going to do the job. :(
we cobbled together a temporary solution for steve whereby we put a small
piece of cable in the derailler and locked it into a mid range gear by
clamping it onto the frame with one of the bolt heads screwed into the
right rear dropout. this in effect turned steve's bike from a 24-speed to
a 3-speed. the one thing that was going right for us was the flat ontario
terrain. once we got moving we continued to make excellent time... i
stopped to pick up a better set of cable cutters in a hardware store,
together with some nuts, bolts and washers that i could use, if necessary,
to splice two cables together.
to avoid splicing, however, we were going to need a tandem-length cable
from a bike shop, and the only bike shop we knew of was in sarnia, nearly
90 miles away. ... to make a long story short, we made it to sarnia, the
shop had the cable (plus a spare!) that we needed, and when all was said
and done, we had traveled our longest distance: 108.97 miles, averaging
14.4 mph to get to sarnia. luck further balanced out misfortune (thereby
giving further empirical evidence to my "conservation of goodness law")
and gave us a fine motel right across from the bike shop, where we are
relaxing at this moment :)
answers to pop quiz:
1. it means the electricity was knocked out...
as when a strong storm brings the power lines down... Ontario
Hydro-electric is the provider.
2. it means that you're searching
your pockets for a two-dollar canadian coin... which is something as a
cyclist you do to get rid of excess weight!
so it goes..." --ez
June 22
"i've come to the conclusion that subconsciously i am segmenting this trek
so as to make it manageable for my mind to fathom and not be overwhelmed.
the first segment was from the start to manchester... leaving manchester
was difficult, because i was starting a new segment, and in a sense, i was
back at "a" beginning, if not "the" beginning. the second segment was to
buffalo, and it was again hard to leave and start the third segment,
crossing ontario. today we began a new segment, crossing michigan, and as
before, it was an effort to get started. we left the motel late... after
8am! the sky was cloudy and threatening... there had been a downpour
overnight. a stiff wind was coming out of the northwest... exactly where
we were to head! every day i find myself needing to renew my committment
to this journey, and today given the situation and conditions it was more
challenging than most days. nevertheless, we got underway and rode to the
bluestone (?) bridge connecting sarnia ,ont with port huron, mi. after
having been assured by a number of people that pedestrians were allowed
across, imagine our thoughts when a customs attendant saw us and came
running over to explain that neither bikes nor pedestrians were allowed to
cross the bridge! we went to see the manager, who asked how far we were
biking. when we explained that we were crossing the continent, she
offered to transport ourselves and our bikes across the bridge in her
truck! the day was turning out ok! as we drove over the bridge, she
explained that they don't provide this service for "day trippers", but
they usually will not thwart an extended trek... one last act of kindness
from the people of canada before we re-entered the usa!
i have to say that i never did stop at a tim horton's [note:a donut chain
named after a hockey player] in canada... perhaps there will be one in
alberta, near glacier national park?
it was immediately obvious that the pace of life was quicker on the usa
side... drivers were less willing to slow down as they passed us, and
traffic was the heaviest we've seen since albany. so our plans to bike up
the coast of lake huron before turning to the west were quickly changed,
and we left the heavy traffic rte 25 asap. michigan is mostly flat
where we were riding today, but there were a few hills "to keep us
honest". however, there don't seem to be many diagonal roads in this part
of the state, so we weren't any less efficient in moving towards our
destination for the night by choosing secondary (and tertiary) roads. we
traveled about 79 miles today, into a sometimes daunting headwind. we
still managed to average over 12 mph largely because of the flat terrain.
some of the smaller towns that we went through, such as brown city and
north branch and mayville were very appealing, with flags out either from
flag day, or in anticipation of independence day... or both.
we made it to a campground in vassar, mi. and i sit here watching the
hordes of kids playing and enjoying what may be their first weekend of
summer vacation. it's 8pm and the sun is still high in the sky... we are
so far in the western part of the eastern time zone, that it probably
won't set till 9:30. it will be interesting crossing into the next time
zone as we cross lake michigan in three or four days. that will be the
start of the next segment! by the way, today we passed 1000 miles of
accumulated distance on the trip, which, distance-wise, puts us at about 25%
into the trek :) so it goes..." --ez
This week's photos
Week 1 journal
Week 3 journal
|
