Taste Testing the Erie Canal Tour
Two of my cousins and I rode along with my aunt and my grandpa and the 568 other riders doing the NY Parks and Trails’ annual Erie Canal Bicycle Tour on Tuesday. The route took us 62 miles from Pittsford to Seneca Falls. That’s big for me. It’s the farthest I’ve ever ridden in one day. My aunt and my grandpa are riding the whole 400 miles from Buffalo to Albany. I was just riding with them for a day since I only have so much vacation to go around.
I only did one day of course, but it seems like a great trip. Based on what I saw it’s really well organized and looks like a lot of fun. I would absolutely recommend it. I’m not just writing that to make up for the slice of watermelon that an unnamed tour group member slipped me at one of the rest stops. I brought all my own stuff because I didn’t pay anyone for anything… but that watermelon looked really good and carrying watermelon in your pannier is really not all that practical.
Every little town we passed through had a chamber of commerce table with lots of fruit & drinks and of course some pamphlets about the town. At the first lock they had a big sprinkler spraying off the lock so we could cool down. I would recommend that every town do this. That was fairly early in the morning, before it got really hot.
My cousins had to take off after about 20 miles. They both had things to do in the afternoon so they just rode back to Newark at a much faster pace.
My grandpa had two flat tires that day. The first one happened just before Newark and was caused by a failed patch. Grandpa’s bike doesn’t have a quick release on the rear tire and his flat tire kit didn’t have a tool the right size to get the wheel off. Luckily a retired minister named Eli was riding along with him at the time of the flat. He knew how to patch a tube without removing the wheel. After a lot of messing around with it we got it back in working order and were riding again. Grandma was meeting us in Newark and was starting to wonder where we were.
Riding into town I saw the white hair and giant camera of the Finger Lakes Times photographer. I’m crossing my fingers that my photo didn’t get in the paper. I don’t think I was looking svelte. They were doing a story on my grandpa, since he’s the oldest guy on the trip. I did get quoted in the story and luckily it was nothing extraordinarily lame.
Grandpa got his next flat about 3 miles out of Newark. This time a volunteer stopped that happened to have the right tool to get the wheel off so I gave him my spare tube. That seemed to do the trick and we were set for the rest of the day.
We sort of forgot to eat a real lunch. It was so hot that I didn’t have much of an appetite. We ended up stopping for ice cream in Lyons and calling that and some cliff bars lunch. Lyons to Clyde was pretty hot. We took quite a long break in Clyde before embarking on the last 20 mile leg of the trip.
Clyde to Seneca Falls was really really really hot. It was all on roads without much shade. I was getting a headache possibly from dehydration. I was drinking a lot of water but it was 93 degrees out. About 10 miles from our final destination I pulled off the side of the road to apply my 3rd or 4th coating of sunscreen and saw people standing in the sun on the other side of the road. I thought maybe they were experiencing some mental defect brought on by heat stroke. They were waving me over and it took me a minute to make sense of the scene. Someone had put a sign in their front yard that said “free showers for bikers” and left a hose out with the sprinkler on.
That was the most wonderful gift anyone could have given me at that moment. After soaking my head and everything else I could feel my core temperature drop dramatically. I could go on. I really can’t express how great that was. The only thing that would have been better would have been a pool, an innertube, and an icy gimlet. After that we passed a couple of refreshment stands being run by Amish kids. I couldn’t stop… they were halfway up a hill.
The last 12 miles were pretty tough. I knew we were getting close when I saw the landfill. I’ve never been so happy to see a landfill. The lady in the sag wagon told us we were no more than 3 miles away and I think she was dead wrong. It had to be another 8 miles before we made it to the tent city in Seneca Falls. I can’t prove it though, my odometer died somewhere around mile 51.
We made it to the blazing hot tent city that was free of any kind of shade. Rachel (my aunt) and Grandpa decided to catch a ride back to the farm and stay at Grandma’s B&B for the night. Grandpa rested in the shadow of a utility pole while we waited for Brian to come rescue us from the sun.
We went to my grandma’s house and ate pizza, carrot jello, potato salad, and spinach salad. Then I went home and tried to watch the time trials in the TdF but mostly slept on the couch while occasionally waking up to laugh at some random weird Bobke monologue or eat sherbet.
The end. Did you make it all the way to the end? I’m impressed. That was long. I need to hire an editor. It all feels important to me because I was there… but to you? You must be reading this at work.
Here are all the photos as a reward for all your hard work.