Erie, eerie, Erie

A couple of rest days sure helped. We left Niagara Falls feeling great. It would have cost us quite a few miles to get back to the maps the way we had planned, but there turned out to be a nice, easy alternative with good pavement and wide shoulders. We rode for twenty miles or so, then met a couple of guys from Quebec who were out for a four day trip. They told us a bit more about our choices from Lockport.

That's the town where we rejoined the Adventure Cycling map, and where the route began to follow the Eirie Canal. There's a trail alongside the canal, but most of it is crushed limestone or fine gravel, not pavement. It is ok to ride, but the guys agreed it would be slower than the road. Today was one of our longest days of the trip, and the start of a five day stretch that will remind us how to climb. It was also our first day unsupported in a while - that's how the rest of the ride will be. So we agreed we would stick to the road that runs parallel to the canal until lunch.

This is not Manhattan, not at all, but it is definitely New York. People have the accent. Towns are larger and more sophisticated. The culture is more diverse. Once again it is easy to find lunch. Not that we did anything exciting. We ate at Subway. It's just nice not to have to plan the day around where we can expect to find food & water.

Now we can pretty much count on lemonade. Which is what took me across from Subway to a Tim Hortons, a chain I saw for the first time in Ontario. It has frozen lemonade & today was warm & humid & made that sound awfully appealing. As I waited to order, a woman in front of me began to ask questions about our day. She & her husband had passed us earlier. Where were we headed? Where had we begun our day? And she eventually figured out how far we had come. She brought me over to meet her husband who had questions about the bikes & we got talking about where everyone came from & whether they talked lime New Yorkers - by the time we were done, Bruce had almost finished his sandwich & was beginnng to wonder what had become of me. A very pleasant lady who reminded me a bit of Granny. We could find Granny standing & chatting with someone & assume from what we overheard that she had found an old friend, but it always turned out she had just fallen into conversation with a stranger.

After lunch we went on through Albion, a very attractive old town with a silver dome on its town hall, and rode across a little drawbridge and found the trail. Riding was easy and reasonably quick. It was flat and we had minor tailwinds some of the time. The water is quite still and trees line the canal, so the scenery was not exciting. It was pretty, though, and just riding along that canal made me picture its history and compare it to the canals we have cruised in England and France. Very peaceful now.

We read that one trail section was quite rough, so headed back to the road for a few miles. That's when Bruce noticed his tire getting soft. It was a slow leak, so he pumped it up & we rode on. But whike he was pumping I gazed idly at my rear tire and realized it was about to wear through! Both of our rear tires wanted to quit at once. Mine would be ok for the rest of the day.

We had read that the trail was paved once it reached Rochester. We found our way back to it easily and finished up the trip on a well paved path. That's when it was a little eerie. Well, ok, more creepy than eerie. There was almost no one else on the trail for several miles, but it was obvious that others were there regularly. There was graffitti all over, and it didn't smell very good, and we were pretty much out of sight of the roads. I don't like that, especially in unfamiliar territory. The only people we passed in that section were one fairly tough looking guy who looked up and nodded hi, and one old, bearded, white haired guy who looked like maybe a birdwatcher from a distance. As we got closer we could see that the various camera and binocular bits I thought I had seen were just odds & ends he happened to have hung from parts of his outfit. He said hello & was very friendly looking. So no problems, and eventually other cyclists and runners began to appear and I was happy again.

Then Bruce managed to avert today's possible serious wrong turn. There's a river in Rochester that runs perpendicular to the canal & we were to be very cautious not to be led astray and follow its paths when it intersected our route. Well, if alone I would have gone astray, but somehow Bruce could figure it out. We stopped to pump his tire a couple of times, asked directions once, and suddenly found ourselves at our hotel. It is actually on the trail.

It is also quite a nice hotel. We were a bit worried about walking in in bike clothes carrying bikes & gear. We took it in stages: first, take the panniers to the room, then go back to the trail to do all the messy tire-changing we needed, then, finally, walk gingerly through the lobby carrying the bikes in our now very greasy hands.

We made it, but decided we should opt for room service rather than present ourselves - even once or hands were scrubbed - at this particular restaurant. It was a great dinner- we split chicken and crab cakes - and you know what's best about room service? If you happen to order dessert with ice cream in it, you just have to eat dessert first!

Thunder showers & plain old rain expected tomorrow.

Miles today: 91
Total miles so far: 3670