Category: Cycling

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Start: Niagara Falls, New York
End: Rochester, New York
Mileage today/cumulative: 87 / 3,186
Elevation Ascended: 1,585′
Weather: Sunny, 66° at start; sunny, 83º at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

Q: When you’ve spent 42 days cycling across America (and part of Canada), eating in chain restaurants and hotel banquet rooms, where do you go when you get to civilization?

A. A wine bar.

And that’s how we began our 36 hours of freedom from a bike seat – with real food and a bottle of wine to celebrate arriving in Niagara Falls. The next morning, it was back to the glamorous rest day routine: Starbucks and the laundromat before sightseeing. This was our first visit to Niagara Falls, so we spent some time exploring the park and seeing each of the Falls. They’re awesome in the truest sense of the word. Unfortunately, the area around the Falls is touristy and trashy, a textbook case of mankind marring something beautiful in nature. Once we saw the Falls, we were anxious to get back on our bikes and continue eastward.

Today’s ride was pretty uneventful. The weather was nice, even if the air felt thicker than it has been. It was an easy 87 miles without much to write home about. New York State means more cars and more attitude but when we got out in the countryside, things settled down and we cruised along without much bother. The terrain will begin to change later in the week as we near the Vermont border and everyone gets challenged with the three Hs: heat, humidity, and hills. The end is in sight but we have a few more days of cool stuff to see and miles of road to conquer before we can dip our wheels in the Atlantic Ocean. At this time next week, we’ll be back in our house, cuddled up on our couch, reflecting on this great adventure, and thinking about our next one.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Start: Brantford, Ontario
End: Niagara Falls, New York
Mileage today/cumulative: 74 (119 kilometers) / 3,099
Elevation Ascended: 1,913′
Weather: Sunny, 67° at start; sunny, 80º at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

Wow – big day on the tour! Canada sent us out with lots of sunshine and perfect temperatures. That, and it being Sunday, means we saw local cycling groups, people out working in their gardens, and children playing. I always love how excited kids get when a pace line with six or seven us go flying by and they shout hello to us.

After riding through more beautiful Canadian farmland, things became more congested as we got closer to Niagara Falls. Once we hit the high density tourist area, we picked our way through the masses, took a few photos, then rode across the Rainbow Bridge, back into the U.S.A.. The views on this sunny day were spectacular and we breezed through the border crossing with no wait. The Welcome to New York State sign meant that we had officially entered our eighth state on the tour. Some of our riders have spouses and other family joining them here for the rest day. Lots of smiles at the daily “rap” this afternoon.

Neither of us have been to Niagara Falls, so we’re looking forward to spending our last rest day tomorrow doing a lot of exploring by foot. Lots of photos today in our new Canadian jerseys!

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Start: London, Ontario
End: Brantford, Ontario
Mileage today/cumulative: 69 (111 kilometers) / 3,025
Elevation Ascended: 1,965′
Weather: Sunny, 13cº / 55° at start; sunny, 25c° / 77fº at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

Well, we hit another milestone today by surpassing 3,000 total miles. We’ve been surprised at how well our bikes and bodies have held up, in spite of the punishment they’ve taken. Nine days remaining with eight rides to go.

Conversations with our new friends have shifted to what everyone will do after this. Most of them talk about proper recovery and figuring out how to maximize the incredible base we’ve got for endurance. Some wonder if they’ll be noticeably faster when they return to their regular bike shop rides. Others wonder what it will be like when they return home to their spouses and partners, who have not had this shared experience. We’re thankful that we won’t have that issue. When we do these group adventures we always manage to collect some friends for life and it’s always sad to say “see you later”. Tomorrow we say goodbye to our friend Jack Markell, who is splitting off from the rest of us and completing his coast-to-coast route (with support from friends along the way) in his home state of Delaware, where he will be greeted by a large group of family, friends, and probably a bunch of people who voted for him when he was twice elected as Governor. Early on, Jack had plenty of moments of self-doubt on the bike and some of those long days out West beat him down. While the rest of us were having fun on the bike, Jack looked pretty miserable. That seemed to change somewhere in the middle of the country and he’s overcome those early demons to become a different rider. We’ve grown fond of him as a friend and are looking forward to biking and hiking with him after the glow of this adventure wears off. After 3,000+ miles with Jack, it won’t be quite the same in Portsmouth NH without him.

One funny moment on today’s ride. Six of us stopped to look at ginseng plants and someone asked “what do they grow ginseng for?” Nobody could remember. We all shrugged our shoulders until Booze Alan said “I think it’s used for memory.” Oh yeah.

We complete our venture into Canada tomorrow when we return to the United States by riding over the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls. It’s going to be another epic day!

Friday, July 28, 2017

Start: Port Huron, Michigan
End: London, Ontario
Mileage today/cumulative: 83 (134 kilometers) / 2,956
Elevation Ascended: 2,260′
Weather: Cloudy, 64° at start; cloudy, 22c° / 71fº at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

Before today, I’d crossed international borders by plane, boat, and foot. Now Bev and I can both add “by bike” to the list. Day 40 of this constantly surprising adventure started with something crazy, even by our standards.

Our hotel in Port Huron, Michigan was located at the foot of the Blue Water Bridge, which connects the USA and Canada. At 6:30am, our entire group rode out of the hotel parking lot and onto the bridge, which was closed eastbound to all motor vehicles for our entire 1.2 mile crossing. When we reached the Canadian side, everyone dismounted their bikes and customs agents were waiting to process our passports. The entire process was very efficient and, when done, one of the customs agents took a group photo for posterity and, perhaps, identification purposes.

We took a quick “Welcome to Ontario” photo before hopping on our bikes and riding another 80+ miles into some very tough winds. The first thing we noticed in Canada, besides the metric system, was the improved quality of the roads. They’re generally smoother, better maintained, and cleaner. The US dollar goes pretty far here, they have good maple doughnuts at Tim Horton’s, they have high quality, affordable health care, and their government isn’t completely dysfunctional. We’re moving to Canada. Oh wait, there’s that little thing called winter. Oh well. So, instead, we bought a pair of cool Canadian bike jerseys to remind us of how nice it is here in late-July.

After the excitement of the border crossing, the ride was a bit of a slog with double-digit winds in our face for nearly the entire day. More of the same is predicted for tomorrow. No choice but to carry on and know that it’ll make us that much stronger before this thing ends in ten days. Also, with the end approaching, we expect that we’ll soon be getting the “start dialing back the food consumption” message. Things could get ugly.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Start: Birch Run, Michigan
End: Port Huron, Michigan
Mileage today/cumulative: 88 / 2,873
Elevation Ascended: 1,152′
Weather: Rain, 69° at start; rain, 75° at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

Here is the opening paragraph of the letter I want to send to the fine state we’ve spent the past three days in:

Dear Pure Michigan:

Enclosed is an invoice covering the full cost of two new bicycles, which will be necessary if my wife and I must ride one more mile on your terrible roads. I will also be forwarding all medical bills for physical therapy and massages required to restore feeling in our hands and buttocks. For your information, asphalt is not supposed to look like a cracked eggshell, nor should it have potholes that can swallow children and small pets. Also, no other state has turned its entire road system into a vehicle durability test track. And here’s an idea – if you weren’t paying your college head football coach nine million dollars a year, you could repair some roads.

I’m sure that Michigan has a great deal of stuff to see and experience, but we’ve been too busy trying to keep our bikes upright. This is not a place we will be returning to with our road bikes. Today, we rode through some nice towns and pretty countryside. As we entered Port Huron, it was clear that there is a concentration of wealth here. One of our SAG stops was in the town of Yale and, by chance, the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall was set up in the same park. This is a full replica of the Wall in Washington D.C. but on a slightly smaller scale. Just like the permanent version, the traveling one includes the names of all 55,000+ American service personnel who died in Vietnam. It was set up in Yale just this morning and will be there only through the weekend, so we were fortunate to see it.

We also stopped to see a unique 9/11 Memorial at the Brown City Fire Department. It included a beam recovered from the World Trade Center and honored the 343 firefighters who died in the terrorist attacks. We did not know that pieces of the WTC had been given to cities for memorials. In fact, the New York Port Authority had a nearly 10-year-old program to give out 9/11 artifacts to municipalities and nonprofits that requested them. Recipients of the relics must agree to display the items publicly. The Port Authority has given remnants to some 1,500 entities nationwide, including public-safety departments, first-aid squads and schools. Additionally, several went to Canada, England, Italy and Germany.

These two memorials seemed appropriate for a rainy, overcast day. Michigan has been a nice state to power through but now we grab our passports and head into Canada!