45 miles, no ice cream

We headed into Macedonia for breakfast and possible laundry.
Sorry to be so negative, but how can they mess up a vegetable omlette? Put a really gross sauce on it with no herbs.
There was a beautiful empty cobblestone house. I am not sure I would call it abandoned, but the grass was two feet tall. Hard to believe that house would not sell.
Returning to the closed bridge, Bill suggested we use two people to lift each bike over the cable barrier and this worked fine.

The day was cool and overcast and probably never made the predicted 77. We met a few other touring cyclists, including one from Wisconsin. He had crossed Superior on the ferry and never had heard of Adv. Cycling.
Lunch was in Spencerport.




They could have gotten more money out of us, but offered poor service and uninspired food choices. The Ac directions through Rochester confusing and I was busy second guessing myself though I have been through there at least 5 times. I don't usually go in that direction.





Holley has a beautiful canalside with a camping area, but there was no bridge attendant to help with the access code for the shower and bathrooms. Going into town for ice cream, Bill talked to the town clerk, who called the bridge attendant to get the code!
Although there was no grocery store per se, there was a huge "mini-mart", from which we procured cheese, crackers and Mike's hard lemonade. The evening was completed by visiting a lovely falls in the nearby park. Loads of poison ivy deters leisurely strolls through the woods however.
Second note to self: too cold without sleeping bag. I put on every item of clothing, collapsed the tent's vestibules and put my panniers under my feet. Absurd in the end of June. A surprisingly restful night fraught with waking to make sure my full back or front was against the sleeping pad to maximize its warmth potential. But I didn't have to admit defeat by getting into Bill's tent!
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Contrasts 50 miles

A lovely start to the day, with moderate fog over Lake Ontario looking out from FairHaven State Park. It rapidly cleared while we breakfasted in town. There we met a couple from Montreal a few days into an extensive tour. They are going to be doing a Lonely Planet Guide to inexpensive bicycle touring.
The cafe had wireless, but some fool IT person told the owner that the name of the wireless network and password could not be changed. As a result, the network was generically named C390 and the password was about 25 characters long, including 15 zeros at the end. If she had had the password to get into the router, I would have fixed it for her.
We toodled up to Sodus Bay, ate local cherries and strawberry rhubarb pie



and got caught in a warm thundershower.







Unable to find a decent lunch stop in Williamstown, we grabbed sandwiches from a grocery. Bill picked up wine and local cheese and we got crackers for the evening.




Hopping on the Erie Canal towpath at Palmyra we headed towards Macedon to camp. Passing by the hiker/ biker campsite at lock 30, we tried out the marina, but there was no one in attendance. The bridge to it was barricaded, but I took off my two panniers and lifted the bike over the barricades. Instead of the marina, there was a huge set of ballfields and after a little searching and help from some soccer players, I located him and got permission for us to camp out. No showers, but clean flush toilets. The caretaker, Lorb Miller, managed to locate the person who locks up and the toilets were left open for us. So sweet.
Washing, wine and cheese and bed. Frogs serenaded us.

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Tiny Tour

Gave Amtrak another try. I haven't ridden a train in twenty years. The cost has been too high and I have memories of being unable to get a seat. But $27 for a single person to go 120 miles with the folding bike was too good to resist. No other bikes are allowed on trains without baggage cars and most trains lack those cars.
I would have had to make two trips to put the two panniers, the handlebar bag and bike on the train, because the angle of the steps and my inability to lift the bike one handed over my head would have made it impossible. Instead a porter at the top of the steps grabbed it and moved it to a stow area for me.
The train was 1:15 late to Syracuse, but otherwise it was a pleasant trip.
Bill picked me up there. He and Linda had arrived There after finishing an Atlantic tour.




50 miles from Syracuse we landed in Fair Haven on the shores of Lake Ontario. Beautiful sunset.



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Temp drop

This past Saturday I rode from Buffalo to Wilson on the shore of Lake Ontario. Leaving Buffalo, the temperature was cool and expected to rise to 80. In Wilson, 40 miles away, the temp never topped 68. Brrrr. On the way, I performed my smallest rescue yet. Any smaller and I would have thought it a rock.



That is my bracelet encompassing this tiny turtle. I passed it by, sighed and went back for it.

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Talking to strangers

Riding home from work, I passed a woman on a fully loaded bike stopped and on a cell phone. I just asked her if she needed a place to stay and she indicated that she needed a bike shipping box, so my family helped her obtain one, fed her and listened to her stories while telling some of our own.
I am always astonished how many touring cyclists don't know about warmshowers, similar to couchsurfing. If you tour and need places to stay, I would strongly encourage you to sign up. If you just love cyclists, you can host. In some way this allows you to live vicariously when not on tour. There is even a smartphone app for it.
In addition to shelter, warmshowers hosts often have the resources and or knowledge to help you figure things out.


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Festival time in Buffalo

Many visitors to our area comment on the joie de vivre of Buffalo's population in good weather. Festivals abound and the streets tend to be filled with people.
The Allentown art Festival draws thousands of people from the Upstate NY area. I was surprised at the lack of bicycles locked around the festival area. Maybe we just entered from the wrong direction. We had little trouble finding a place to lock up.
Here is a totally open rack with nifty adornments.


There is also a "locally owned" section of the festival. One vendor had bright green T's with "share the road" on them. Bought one, of course.

More cyclists than ever

This just in from the Center for Unintended consequences:
As Buffalo sees a surge in cyclists, it is beginning to be more dangerous to skimp on following rules. In the olden days (a couple years ago), slowing for a stop sign was always adequate. Now there is rapidly increasing chance that you will suffer from a collision, not with a car but another cyclist. The same things which make cyclists invisible to motorists are what makes bike collisions so likely. We roll up to a stop sign, don't see any large obsticles coming, so we keep going.
My daughter was broadsided by someone going the wrong way down a street. He assumed that since he saw no cars, he was okay as he cruised into a blind intersection.
The next day I was surprised by a cyclist when we ran through an intersection at a 90 degree angle from each other without stopping.
The day after that there was another similar incident.
Awareness needs to increase for all parties, but it is kind of a nice problem to experience, since it shows the vast increase in cycling traffic.


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Green Options

Like many cities, Buffalo has a number of reuse organizations and a few which concentrate on alternative forms of transportation; alternatives to driving, that is.
Green Options is the main one of which I am aware and it includes kind of a sub organization called Buffalo Blue Bikes. BBB's function is to take donated bikes and place them in densely populated areas where members can borrow them.
Today was a beer centered fundraiser. I volunteered to pour beer, which is maybe like putting me in charge of the M&Ms. But I don't really drink much; it just makes me less efficient. Here is a picture of the bike valet parking, which was increasingly popular as the day progressed. Yummy beer: Flying Bison.




Here is an image from a nearby commercial area called Elmwood Village. Note the mostly full bike racks.




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Training 3

It is always refreshing to discuss bicycling with other cyclists. As much as I enjoy telling non-cyclist, roadies and commuters about the joys of touring, it is simply unusual for me to find other touring cyclists.
The knot challenge. Don't let go of someone's hands, but untie the group.



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Training Day 2

Even though this is is an Adventure cycling training, since it focuses on leadership there is very little cycling involved, of course.
We did go out for a quick jaunt in late afternoon. The purpose was to model what a group shopping trip might be like. Not quite an accurate picture, since there are 24 of us and a normal tour usually maxes out at around 12. In addition, since there is a fridge and we don't have to carry the extra, we shopped for the rest of the week as well and sent it all back to camp in a car. Normally there would be just 2 people in the store, but we all went in, because all are responsible for the cooking.
All ranges of bikes were represented, from folders, to old school to mountain and carbon fibre racing.







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Adventure Cycling Leadership Training

Six months ago I decided to sign up for this leadership training and that is pretty much what it takes to reserve a spot. The motivation comes from an epiphany I had after coming back from Portland last year. The best way to advocate for cyclists is to get more cyclists on the road. Currently commuting is my basic advocacy. I took an online survey last week for a cycling advocacy group and one of the questions was: to about how many curious people do you talk about beginning cycling (in other words, "how do you handle the logistics of cycling"? After some thought, the math astonished me: about 300 people a year. I end up advocating almost once a day. And these are people asking me for information, I didn't necessarily bring it up.
So how did I handle the logistics of this trip?
I bought the trailer conversion kit for the suitcase my Bike Friday packs into, put it together and gave the whole deal a 20 mile test run. This suitcase is able to be checked as regular luggage. My gear went into a duffle and I used my handlebar bag as a purse. It was imperative to remember to pack my first aid scissors and nail clippers in the suicase.
This training takes place 57 miles from Richmond, VA. I met up with friends from the Trans Am trip from last summer and one of them rode to the training me, while the other drove the car.



You know you have cool cycling friends when the driver wishes she could ride instead of driving the car.
A beauttiful day to ride, especially since the spring has been so long in coming and great company to boot.
We relied on printed directions from Google Maps for bikes. Pretty excellent until the last 10 miles when the directions became confusing and were reduced to "turn right in 365ft" and there was a bend in the road, but nothing else. Google maps on the phone was also not useful,since there was no signal. A VA map might not have helped either, since we were off the beaten path. 57 miles turned into 77 miles and we got to the training with 15 sqeeky minutes to spare.
We crossed the James River,







saw hog farms, a Cyprus swamp and generally enjoyed the day.
















The evening was consumed by the training meet and great and initial scheduling.
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Google Maps, cycling directions and MyMaps

Missing from Google Maps cycling directions is a way to save those directions to the MyMaps application (available if you have a Google account only).  A save option is available if you use the driving directions, but not if you want to route using no tolls, walking or cycling.
This site does a pretty good job of hinting at the fix for saving cycling directions to MyMaps. The missing piece is this:

Paste the "link" email results in the address bar of a new tab, then add &output=kml part to the end of the address; hit return- this will cause google to ask if you want to save the file, which can be imported.

One warning- the directions format differently after you import them to MyMaps.  If you like them the original way, you should print or convert them to a pdf.

Becoming more normal

Doing most things, including errands, shopping and commuting has been mostly my domain in Buffalo, especially in the winter.
Things are changing, however. There were more cyclists out this winter than ever before, some even pretty hard core. Shopping has continued to be where I stand alone. Some people do run for small things or emergency items, but doing a family's shopping is unusual.



Today I parked next to this very unusual bike and thought "Wow".
It made my little trailer and milk bottles look wimpy. In addition to the huge box on the back, there was a small hard case box on the front. Both the yellow rear box and front had padlocks on them.

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