Foolish Mansion

• Took a rest day yesterday. Played in the salmon river all day. Best day yet. #
• Stopping for groceries. Ice cream! #
• Wow a corn field. Havent seen one of those since idiana #
• Stopped at the library in adams to upload pictures and eat lunch. #

• Just got started today. Had to Go to church. Yesterday we rode 40 miles. #
• Stopped at wendys for an obnoxious amount of time to upload pictures. Back on the road. #
• Lost my biking gloves back at camp somewhere. #
• Almost out of the new york marshes. #
• Oh look another hill. Better get used to it. #
• Stopping for ice cream cones #
• Just got to camp. 39.8 miles today. The camp site is 7.5 miles out of the way. Great. This place is creepy when it is deserted. #
• The guy who owns this place is really nice. He gave us wood for a campfire! #

 

Fulton, NY - After spending two days at camp while I rested and the kids went stir crazy, we were ready to hit the road yesterday morning (July 9).

 

Chris had sent a package for me to Fulton, NY, forty miles away. This was our destination for the night.

At 9 that morning, I realized that the post office would close at noon and there was no way I could reach Fulton in time to pick it up. I dispatched Joseph with instructions to make Fulton by noon, not realizing how many hills we would be encountering along the way.

 

After Joseph left, the rest of us packed up and headed off for a more leisurely trip. With the decision made regarding our changed route and decreased daily mileage, I felt incredibly free and relaxed for the first time in days. The weather was in the eighties with cool breezes off the lake. For every up hill, there was a delicious down hill. Since I was no longer worried about mileage, the ride itself seemed easier. My leg felt much better now that I was walking up the hills at my own pace, not that of an overly ambitious schedule.

 

As we left Sodus Point we passed multiple marinas and a bay with a strong wind, just right for sailing. I know Chris would have loved it.

 

After Sodus Point we went up and down over miles of apple and cherry orchards, the cherry trees heavy with bright red fruit. We found a little country kitch store for our mid-morning (11am) snack and had biscuits with maple syrup. There were flowers every where . I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the ubiquitous hot dog stand in the parking lot but I was.

 

New Yorkers must love their hot dogs. They are almost as prevalent as gas stations. I am going to have to try one. They have a half a dozen or more different kinds of meat with as many toppings as an ice cream store.

 

 When we were leaving, out of habit I told Patrick, “Get to the car.”

 

He grinned and said, “I’ll have to go a very long way to do that.”

 

After our snack we rode on to Fair Haven, NY, which consisted of one steep hill down and one steep hill up. There was one gas station going down and one gas station going up.

 

After Fair Haven, we realized that Joseph was without food, since I had sent him off without any money or a lunch. We kept trying to call him to no avail. I called Chris, who confirmed with the campground that Joseph had forgotten his phone. Fortunately, the camp ground send someone to meet us along our route so that we did not have to back track.

 

In Hannibal, NY, I began to get worried that Joseph would not realize that he could get my package by knocking on the back door, if he arrived after noon. (I had learned this by calling the post office at noon to see if he had arrived yet.)

 

Mary Elizabeth volunteered to ride on alone to Fulton while I waited with Patrick and Jenny for the man bringing the phone. He had said it would take an hour.

 

We sat in the shade of an abandoned restaurant beside a state highway, reading and glad for an excuse to get out of the sun.

 

After we got the phone, we rode on to Fulton. We were on a state highway with a wide shoulder but the mack trucks were still unnerving. I made the kids keep in a straight line as far from the road as possible. The hills were much gentler but after so many miles of country roads I felt as if I were riding on a freeway. It was a relief to get to Fulton. I was more than ready to put the family back together. This was the first time on the trip that we had split up.

 

I had not realized how large a town Fulton is. It even has a Walmart, something we had not seen since Canada, ironically.

 

So, how to find two kids without a cell phone in a town?

 

We scanned the antique car show but they were not there. We looked in the Dunkin Donuts, but they were not there. We rode to the post office, our original meeting place, and still they were not there.

 

Then Patrick pointed out a hand made sign,”Art Show by the River- 2 to 7” .

 

“What time is it?” Patrick asked. “There’s an art show.”

 

Patrick and Mary Elizabeth love art. I suddenly knew right where to look.

 

In case I was wrong, I stationed Jennifer and Patrick at the post office. I sternly warned Patrick not to climb on any architectural features, of which there were many.

 

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said.

 

“Yes, but after sitting here a while, you would have,” I replied.

 

I found Mary Elizabeth and Joseph at the art show, as anticipated, and we all headed to camp. Joseph had eaten only one can of tuna and one can of baked beans that he had found in his bike trailer. He was starving, exhausted and glad that I had brought him a bag of trail mix to hold him over.

 

Mary Elizabeth made dinner for all of us while I did the laundry in the shower.

 

The shower was on the other side of the campground. We had to walk past all the seasonal campers to get there.

 

I love looking at seasonal campgrounds. They are so eccentric. It’s like pink flamingo city.

 

One guy had a pavilion tent with a deck under it in front of his camper. He had a grill, shelves of grilling tools and two chairs beside the grill. For the Fourth of July he had put up a big “Happy Fourth of July” sign on the front of the foundation board of his deck. He had red, white and blue hanging lights on a string of wire hanging at the edge of his camper awning, a red, white and blue table cloth with stars and stripes on his picnic table out front, flags stuck all around the little circular garden he had made in his miniature “yard” and another flag flying from his trailer.

 

On the way back to the campsite, I saw that there was a lively Bingo game going on at the picnic tables set up in rows by the camp office. The caller  could be heard all over the campground. “B Twenteeeeeeeeeee” she would call out. “I Thirty niiiiiiiiiiine.” Every once in a while someone would call out “Bingo!” and the little greying crowd would roar with excitement. The bingo players were all smoking like chimnies, sitting right in front of the camp’s “No Smoking” sign.

 

Unfortunately, Patrick also noticed this game. We were camped across a field from the office but his voice carries. While I was washing clothes, Patrick stood up and yelled, “BINGO!” across the field. Then he dove behind the picnic table.

 

The bingo game came to an abrupt halt. Everyone started asking, “Who won?” There was a bit of an uproar and a lot of confusion. Then the game resumed, no doubt in an atmosphere of suspicion.

 

Even slow days have their drama.

 

 

 

 

Sodus Point, NY - For the moment I have decided to delay writing “catch up” posts, although we will return to the excellent hospitality of Dave and, later, Gretchen, at another time.

 

We spent Thursday and Friday, (July 7th and 8th) resting up at a campground, giving my leg some more time to heal. The previous day (Wednesday) had been our longest day yet, over 73 miles, and it had not helped the situation. I was also worn out from simply trying to do too many miles a day.

 

When we arrived at the campground to rest, I was seriously debating whether or not to continue the trip. Our family does not exactly fit the typical “bike touring” profile. I have found that there are many people older than I am out on the trail, but they are in much better shape and most of them have had years of experience. I haven’t met anyone my age who was making his first trip.

 

Secondly, EVERYONE, whom I had met prior to arriving at the campground, rides a lot more miles per day than I am capable of doing. We kept hearing things like, “I ride 100 miles a day,” “We ride 65 to 75 miles a day,” “We just rode from Bar Harbor, Maine to Ohio in 18 days,” “We’ll be across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine in two weeks.” While, theoretically, it shouldn’t matter to me what other riders do, it was very depressing to encounter so much cycling machismo.

 

Lastly, I had been hearing harrowing accounts of the mountains in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. I had never imagined myself riding up mountains.  A) I am overweight and B) We don’t have mountains in Rushville, IN. Thus I have never trained on mountains. My plan had been to ride as much as I could and then walk when I could not ride. Since I was having trouble walking (but not riding), I knew that I was no longer capable of walking the bike up the mountains.  I was already having trouble with the hills we had found in the hills of rural western New York.

 

After hearing all that, and being in pain from my fall, I was ready to throw in the towel.

 

Finally, on Friday evening, a Canadian couple, Natalie and Mario, rode into camp with three kids. They had only ridden 17 miles that day, a distance they said was a “half day” for them. Their children were 13 and 9 (I think) with a 13 year old friend.

 

Natalie and Mario are every experienced cyclists. They have been taking their children on bike trips since they were very small. They also have a very different attitude towards bike touring.

 

“We are traveling on a bike.” Mario said. “We are not racing to see how far we can get each day.”

 

Natalie said (and I paraphrase), “If we find something fun to do along the way, we stop and do it. If you have to ride so many miles a day, there is no time for that.”

 

They had just spent the night at a campground with an unexpected and wonderful swimming pool. Half their day had been devoted to letting the kids swim.

 

I explained my problems to Natalie and Mario, who were very good and caring listeners. They agreed that I should ride shorter days. They also suggested a radical change in route that would allow us to avoid the mountains almost entirely.

 

Their plan would take us up the coast of Lake Ontario on New York’s Seaway Trail ( a scenic driving route). At Kingston, Ontario, we would continue up the St Lawrence River, either on a bike path on the Canadian side or on the Seaway Trail on the American side. Once in Quebec we would ride through Montreal and Quebec, later descending into Maine above most of the mountains as we headed for Bar Harbor.

 

I was thrilled to meet Natalie and Mario. They showed me of a very different way to approach cycling. (All my previous knowledge had been gleaned from the single male cyclists at the bike shop, or from the cycling magazines.) They told me that relaxed family touring is much more common in Quebec and along the west coast of the US. They shared their maps with me and gave me directions to more information on the internet. They told me how to take the ferries to Kingston and which cycle route books to buy there.  They even offered to allow us to spend a night in their home near Montreal (compliments of a sister with a key, as they would still be on their tour around Lake Ontario.)

 

So, until Chris decides to give up bachelorhood, we are headed to Canada. Chris looked up the new route and he said that the bike paths in Quebec rate in the top ten most beautiful bike routes in the world, according to National Geographic.

 

Now I have one more reason to be thankful for all those years of French that I took way back when.  (Not that I don’t appreciate Mario and Natalie’s English. My French is not THAT good.)

 

I also have one more reason to believe that God truly watches out for us in unforeseen ways.

 

In conclusion, I will admit that I should have been able to intuit much of what Natalie and Mario had to say. In my defense, when one is doing something for the first time, one tries to learn from those who have gone before. I knew a week ago that what I was doing wasn’t working, but I did not know what would work. And to be fair, without a mountain free route (or a close proximity), shorter days would not have done the trick.

 

Thank you Natalie and Mario. Quebec, here we come.