The Northern Tier: Days 43-46

Day 43: Warmshowers in Buffalo

     Just as I was leaving the campground at the New York state line I met a guy named Jeff.  He was also touring on a bicycle, although he was maing his own tour up the fly as he made his way from Virginia to Ontario, visiting friends and stealth camping the entire way.  He was an interesting fellow as I discovered while riding alongside him for the day.  For the uninitiated, stealth camping is when you camp in a way least likely to arouse suspicion or people’s attention of you.  This typicaly comes into play when camping on someone’s property without them knowing, camping without paying for a campsite and more generally camping anywhere illegally, all of which I have done numerous times, as it happens to be the cheapest (and therefore one of the best) forms of camping around.  Jeff is a pro at this style, having stealthed his way from Virginia all the way to Lake Erie using a hammock and his wits.

We swapped trail stories over beers in Dunkirk for lunch and generally enjoyed the day together.  He stopped a bit before me in the town of Hamburg before I continued on to a warmshowers host in Buffalo.  That night I was staying with the Dugglebys, whom that night were comprised of Dwight and his son Elliot.  Dwight’s wife Leslie was definitely the most enthused about cyclotouring although she wasn’t there at the time because she was on a bike tour in China.  Luckily for me her husband was still willing to host me and he did an incredible job making me feel welcome.

Dwight took Elliot and I out for Sushi down the street from their abode.  That meal was by far the best meal that I’ve had on this tour, or in the last few months for that matter.  The sushi was great with a beer and some great conversation to go with it.  Elliot is a computer science major at NYU if I remember correctly and it was nice having someone around my age to talk to.  Their dog Lena was also an inferno of energy capped by a tail of surprising destructive force.  She had a great time licking the salt off my limbs and I enjoyed the attention.  Dogs are the best.

My stay in the Duggleby home was excellent and I spent a lot of the morning writing and feeling thankful for such generous people.  Both Elliot and Dwight were off to work early in the morning, leaving me to the dog and two cats who made excellent diversions from the blog post I was writing.  Unfortunately my jackass self never got a photo of Dwight and Elliot, but imagine them as you would awesome and hospitable hosts to be, as the were.

Mileage: 90

Day 44: Niagara

      I got on the road very late at around 2:30, making stops in Buffalo to mail a book and to pick up a new one at a fantastic used book store called Rustbelt Books.  The feel of wandering around the city on my bicycle reminded me of home in San Francisco and I almost felt a pang of homesickness.

I eventually got on the road and crossed into Canada.  Going through a highway customs booth on a bicycle is an interesting experience, although the traffic directors and customs agents are usually pretty friendly and are intrigued by my style of travel.  Once in Canada there were about 20 miles of excellent bike paths until I hit Niagara Falls.

One thing I was not prepared for was how immense the falls are.  The sheer volume of water is mind bogglingly large.  On average the falls dump four million cubic feet of water each minute into the Niagara Gorge as Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario.  Horshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America and has the highest flow rate of any waterfall in the world.  They are huge.  Not particularly tall, but massive.  This massiveness can be felt in the air and the even in the ground as the thunder rumbles up through your feet.  There is also a weather system formed by all the spray the falls create, which causes a light but persistant rain when the wind is blowing it towards you.  The falls are also beautiful to watch (if you can manage to break through the wall of tourists to the railing) and I spent a good half hour just taking things in.

After crossing back into the US I ate some ice cream (a daily ritual at this point) and headed to Lockport.  Interestingly, one of the bike paths along the Niagara River/Gorge was an old highway which had been cut in half from four lanes to two, the two closest to the gorge becoming the widest bike “path” I have ever ridden on. Later on I noticed some smoke rising in the distance.  I wasn’t too worried as it was far, but once I realized it was coming form Lockport I began to get a bit worried.

I arrived in town and started asking questions.  Apparently the town is home to a rubber processing plant that, among other things, shreds tires before turning them into reoconstituted rubber.  The shredded tires had caught fire.  I rode as close as I dared, which was about a block away and the townspeople seemed unperturbed but the thick black smoke roiling into the sky.  As a Southern-California native I have an ingrained fear of fire and smoke, knowing it is a prelude to terrible destruction, misery and death in my home town.  The nochalance of Lockport in the midst of such an ominous collumn of smoke was flabbergasting.

During a chat with a woman who lives not two blocks from the burning rubber plant, I discovered that these fires are fairly regular in Lockport, the last one having occured about three years before.  Before that they were almost a yearly occurance.  She mentioned in awed tones one fire had caused $80,000 in damages and I chuckled internally comparing that figure to the millions that the Cedar and Witch Fires cost San Diego County in 2003 and 2007.  I don’t mean to trivialize the burning of homes and one-upping New Yorkers on their fire cred is a silly thing to do but I couldn’t help myself.  Once I had had my fill of the spectacle I sped out of the town trying not to crash as I rubbernecked the violent collumn of soot still sending plumes into the air.

I camped at the Niagara County Camping Resort and thankfully the temperatures were bearable. I even used my sleeping bag for about an hour that night.

Mileage: 54

Day 45: The Erie Canal Trail Begins

      The Erie Canal Trail is a wonderful gift to cyclists in New York State.  It is a combination of dirt and paved bike paths and roads that follows the Erie Canal all the way from Lockport to Albany.  There is some route finding involved as the Canalway Trail is not continuous, being broken up by cities and towns along the way, but it is more of less a single giant bike path.  It’s also flat and relatively straight, meaning cycling has been cake for the last few days.  Or it would be cake if the humidity wasn’t trying to kill me.

I cruised on the trail past several small towns, stopping for beer and ice cream, talking to the locals and enjoying myself immensly.  I was racing the boats in the canal, they being restricted to “no wake” speed.  The trail led me through Medina and Rochester and eventually to Fairport and then Macedon. Rochester was beautiful, and seeing the canals intersecting in the middle of the city filled me with wonder.  So much concrete and water serving the city, like arteries for trade and commerce and enjoyment.

 

I camped next to Lock 30 that night, with a sixer of Yeungling Lager.  It’s a shame we don’t get this beer on the west coast because it’s delicious.

Mileage: 79

Day 46: New York Weather 

     I slept in late this morning, dreading the full realisation of my hangover from the Yeunglings the night before.  I had two left though, and they allowed for a nice transition with breakfast.  I ended up spending all of the morning writing, procrastinating on the ride, but also just taking some serious time to gather my thoughts and meditate into my journal for a bit.  Slowly but surely the day was heating up and so was my temper.  I had run out of coffee/tea and in my haste forgot to get more.  The beer was not heling things at all but instead of wallowing I decided to hit the road and cycle it off.  Into the fugue state I went, down wooded bike paths along the canal, sweating out the beer and my anger.

It started raining in the afternoon.  I thought for a few seconds about throwing on my rain shell before realizing that in this heat I would be just as wet wearing it as without.  Waterproofing works both ways, and in the immense heat and hummidity I would rather be wet with rainwater than swimming in my own juices.  So I rode, feeling the cool drops splash onto my back and arms.  The rain came down hard and at times it was difficult to see through so many droplets in the air.  It was the first shower I’d had since Buffalo and thankfully it wasn’t a warm one, but a refreshing cool.

Riding with wet socks is awful though and  by 5:00pm I was done with the whole day and got some ice cream and sat.  I was in Port Byron and couldn’t find a place to stay so I called the church and asked if I could camp in the backyard.  They thankfully obliged and I spent the next several hours reading in the library, letting my feet dry and the day cool off before I made my way there for the night.

Mileage: 42