August 23 - to rochester

it started out as such a glorious day.  paul was a little tired from his long dive and little sore from sleeping on the ground.  but the weather was beautiful and the canal path was lovely.  along the way we stopped in some wonderful small towns.  we met a lovely retired couple, mike, 78 yr old wife, and bill, 85 yr old husband, in medina.  they used to own the jewelry store.  they ended up inviting us to their group's table where they've eaten breakfast every morning for the last 45 years.  during the next hour, they told us about medina; we told them about the bike trip.  they ended up treating us.
we had lunch in brockport, sitting outside next to the canal.  A sail boat came by and we watched as the bridge closed down and, then, lifted to allow the boat through.  it was on it's way to the far end of lake erie.
then there was the major screw.  i had made plans for us to spend the nigh with deb welsh's step mother, d, in rochester.  yours truly had failed to call d the night before to confirm we were on time and would be there for dinner and the night.  we showed up and waited outside till 7:15.  when she still hadn't shown, we felt it best to head on and find some place to camp down the trail.  D called at 8:00 to tell me she was home, but it was too late, we had gone too far.
we ended up riding as fast as possible, 15 miles through clouds of gnats.  we found a pretty nice place to camp at one of the locks in the canal.  we scrounged a little food, drank a bottle of wine with some fig newtons, and  disappointedly went to bed.

August 22 - paulie arrives

Quickly:
after eating another filling meal, breakfast, i hit the road again.  one more time, linda and bill stated their amzement at how little i carry with me.  btw, there is only one thing i wish i had brought that i hadn't, and that's a pair of binoculars.  otherwise, what i carried was perfect for this trip.

i rode back to niagara falls and crossed over back to the usa.  when i rode up to the customs toll both, the officer asked me, quite seriously, where my vehicle was.  i looked at him, and he rep3ated the question.  i pointed to the bike i was sitting on and said ' this is it.'  he acted amazed that i had riden it across canada, let alone from the est coast.  oh, well.

since thre was no coffee house on the us side of niagara, i had to fight off the urge to go to starbucks.  i did.  i have still yet to go to one since i left knoxville.  i patiently waited for paul while watching the weather.  40% - 60% chance of rain never matrialized.  paul finally showed up around 2:30.  we took a tour of the falls and goat island from the us side, then headed up river.  15 miles later, we were at the start of the erie canal. 

we had a late lunch, then rode 20 miles up to lockport.  at lockport we found a place to camp at a public marina/park for the night.

August 21 - niagara

the east is comfortable and familiar to me; it doesn't bring the awe of the new and spectactular to me.  niagara is a little different.  though i've been to upstate new york before, i've never been to the falls.  i came in along the north shore of lake erie to fort erie, then down along the canadian side of the niagara river.  buffalo sits on the lake across the mouth of the river from fort erie. 

the niagara escarpment is about a 330 ft drop.  it runs from around hamilton, ont. to near lockport, ny.  so lake ontario sits alot lower than lake erie.  when you reach the river, you can feel the pull on the water, wanting to head down river.  like a drain on a bathtub.  as the water narrows down into the river channel there's some surge and white water, but it quickly settles down to a calm but rapidly moving river.  it's hard to remember that all the water of the great lakes is heading down this river (discounting the amount being diverted down the chicago river).

15 miles down the river.  the canadian side is mostly parkland with houses on the opposite of the road.  plus one battlefield site at chippewa river from the war of 1812.  you all remember the war of 1812?  well they actually fought part of it here.  the silly canadians put all this land along the river under park control even to the extent that it has it's own police authority.  the american side, on the other hand, has industry along.  befitting of the leaddr of the free world and capitalism, new york state sold all the land along the river.  so there are oil storage facilities, mills, etc. for those canadians living in those nice houses to look at.  of course there are always those silly environmentalists who whine, so new york had to buy back some of the land around the falls, tear down some mills, and create a state park.

the falls, of course, are awesome.  powerful to say the least.  the canadian side has the best views of the falls and there are loads of tourists -  oops, that's me. but i took my time as well as photographs to soak it in.

but the falls paled to the experience when i turned inland away from the gardens, parks and vistas, into the downtown.  Imagine pigeon forge squeezed into about three blocks, running up a hill.  centre street makes up for everything the canadians did right on the waterfront.  just incredible.

i had to fight, but i pulled myself away to go find my warmshower, knowing i would be back tomorrow to meet paul and head up the american side of the river to the erie canal.  my warmshower was about 3 miles or so to the north in a nice quiet subdivision.  linda and bill had never hosted a cyclist before, so i was the guinea pig.  boy was i lucky. 

linda is an avid cyclist; bill more of a part time enthusiast.  they are both around 70 years old and don't look a touch over 60.  every year for the last few years they've been going with a small group on a cycling and boat tour.  vietnam, croatia, this year their heading to the greek islands and turkey.  a german company puts the tours on, usually about 20 people on a sail boat.  it takes them to a place, drops them off, then picks them up down the road later that day.  sounds fantastic.  we sat around and talked, linda made a wonderful dinner and desert, and just had a wonderful time telling rales, sharing stories, and telling anecdotes.

August 20 & 21 - getting to the falls

we were up and out by 7.  jacob isn't used to getting up that early, but he wanted to ride with me.  we stopped briefly at the corner coffee shop to say goodbye to michelle.  she gave us breakfast on the house.

heading out of port stanley is an immediate short, steep hill, then it's flat again.  soy bean fields, corn, and hay mixed with occassional woodlands.  there're are also sporadic apple orchards, blueberry farms, and even rarer, a peach grove.  fruit is in season and roadside vegetable stands are common.

first stop is the sleepy hamlet of port burwell.  a two block commercial district.  there is a small park with a view to a small inlet into the lake erie, a couple of boats out in the water, a lighthouse that seems kind of far from the water, and a submarine.  the submarine is sitting in blocks out of the water, behind a couple of small restaurants.  this is not a model, it is a full blown, modern submarine on display just sitting there like the tide went out and left it stranded.

just before port rowan we stop at a fruit and vegetable stand.  we talk with the owner for awhile and he gives us each a couple of peaches; jacob buys a couple of ears of corn to eat raw later.  then we pass the etude d'oiseaux canada.  chris, we probably wouldn't have got you passed that, but we didn't stop.  a little later we pass the candian raptor conservacy , but it was closed to the public.  my eagle eyes have seen a bunch of hawks, alot of gulls, and the canadian geese heading south

in port rowan, we stop at a small bistro for a sandwich.  a tuna wrap is surprisingly cheap, while the ice tea is ridiculously expensive.  port rowan is a pleasant little summer town with a nice, small downtown of two or three blocks.

down the road we hit port dover, a full blown tourist town.  it's afternoon and the main street is crowded.  it leads directly down a small hill to the lake, boats, and beach.  we stopped at the obligatory coffee house.  the owner and jacob discuss gaming on ps3.  a game called 'dark souls', i think.  jacob is a master, the owner can't get past the elementary levels.  another customer comes in with his wife, and he joins in the discussion about other games.  he's in his fifties, i'd say, and shouldn't be so knowledgeable about gaming.  i felt dissasociated.

i discussed money with him.  turns out that the merchants don't really make the .03 on the dollar, because the banks take it in conversion fee. unless they can hold on to it till they go into the states.  which is a double win, then, because things are cheaper in the states, as well.  problem is that it's just not that easy to get to the u.s., a couple of hour drive in either direction.  they definitely liked it better when the candian dollar was worth more than us, which it briefly was a couple of years ago.  on the other hand, several years ago the dollar was almost worth 1.50 canadian.  that was good, too, because they could take their goods to the u.s. and sell them cheaper.

we rode the lakeshore road, which became a little, unstriped lane with cottages along it.  little things on little lots.  on the lake front, they're crammed in every which way.  worse than sections of the little river road in walland.  stretches had houses on both sides of the road, other stretches the road separated the houses from the water and there were little sitting areas between the road and water.  it varried by community, sometimes the houses were nicer with larger lots, sometimes crammed in.  sometimes there are small beaches with brown sand and rock, other times no beach at all.  a very pleasant bike ride.  the wind was mild coming in off the lake.

things are more expensive in canada.  camping is one of them.  tent camp spots at the provincial parks are around $38.  that's ridiculous for a touring cyclist.  imagine paying that for 60 nights.  in washington state, the campsites had $8-10 special rates for cyclists.  in montana, the communities let you sleep in town parks for free.  here, when we finally found a private campground at the end of a 100 mile day, the manager wanted $30.  she said that was a deal; they normally charge $42, and you're only allowed one tent per site.   we complained a little, noting that we were just spending the night and would be up and gone by 7:30.  she said she'd take $20.  we didn't tell her that we had two tents.

in the morning, we were up at dawn and on the road.  35 miles into port colborne.  i could tell jacob was pretty tired from yesterday, he wasn't used to that kind of mileage.  he'd been averaging more in the 50-60 range.  after riding a bit, i decided it was probably best if i went on ahead.  i told him i'd be in a coffee shop in port colborne for an hour or so and we could meet up there.  which we did, but that would prove to be the end of our travelling together.  he admitted to being worn out and needed to stop and eat.  since we were going to split up at fort erie anyway, i went on ahead.

Canadian issues

two minor logistical issues i'm working around:
  1)  money.  the u.s. dollar is worth 1.03 canadian dollars.  essentially the same. the canadians gladly take u.s. money, but they only give you canadian for change.  this is not a problem, except that i would like to leave canada without canadian money.  the banks charge you a conversion fee.  no big deal, but something to juggle.  i got caught with only a u.s. 50 to change, which means i now have almost $20 to spend by tomorrow. 
  2)  apparently there are roaming charges for phone and data while in canada.  when necessary, i'll eat those additional costs, but in general i'm trying to avoid using my phone.  so no contact with family, no uploading photos, and contacting warmshowers only when i can get to wi-fi.  i am currently in my second coffe house in a row that does not have wi-fi.  i'm going to have to go to a tim horton's just to post a few messages.  contact with my warm shower host and with paul tarricone will be email when i get wi-fi.

8/18 - 8/19, eh?

as it turned out, it took an extra 15 minutes getting out of the driveway.  i had my first mechanical failure.  fortunately, between greg and i, we found the cause of the noise i started hearing a day or two back.  i had lost one of the bolts holding the back rack on.  greg got to work and 15 minutes later we were on the road again.  'we' because greg decided to pull out his bike, blow the dust off it, put some air in the tires, and ride the first 10 miles with me.

i rode the rest of the way into romeo solo.  i stopped there and had a chai and panini.  inexplained to the young women working the counter that i had first been jn romeo some 20 years earlier.  she smiled and nodded.  i told her that both my brother and sister had lived there at that time.  she continued to smile.  oh, well, so much for trying to stimulate some curiosity.

i remember that first visit very well, because i wanted the girls to experience northern winter weather and snow.  the timing was great, cause it snowed the day before, it snowed again the day after we got there, and it was around 20 deg with a hard wind blowing.  the downtown seems to have grown a little since then.

i made the 60 miles to marine city and the ferry across the st. claire river to canada faster than i anticipated. i was there by 6pm.  so i grabbed the ferry across, $1.  a steal.  and after a short wait, they let me through customs and into canada.  the last time i tried to do that was hitchiking in the winter of 71-72, or 72-73.  they wouldn't let me in and sent me back across the border.  they said i had to have $10 for every day i was going to spend in canada and i didn't.  this time, no problem.  see what a difference 40 years, a war, and a few gray hajrs make?

one of the big questions was where i was going to spend the night.  i had planned to ride 10-20 miles down the road and find some place to slip into and camp.  i was a little concerned that i didn't do anything to get arrested on my first night in canada.   the customs official suggested a campground i might want to go to. which i did.  turns out there was a public campground a mile down the road.  there was no attendant when i got there, so i went back to the tent camping area with no sevices. i was the only one.  i cooked dinner, ramen noodles and a cookie, and went to sleep.  i woke to the sunrise, a big red sun smack on the horizon.  last time i saw that it was in montana and the sunrise was at 5:00 pm.  this time it was 6:30 and all the tent equipment was soaked from a really strong dew.  but i packed up, fed the mosquitos, showered, and hit the road by a little after 7:00.

i followed google maps' recommendations and for the next 50 miles i rode gravel country roads.  i really enjoyed the quiet and not having to deal with the trzffic.  the roads were gravel, but they weren't bad.  they weren't filled with potholes.  matter of fact, i made pretty good time, i covered the 50 miles by before noon.  now this area of ontario is pancake flat.  mostly farmland, corn, soy beans, and hay.  the weird thing is that i never saw more than two people:  a man driving a pick up and a postman driving his car.  otherwise, for 5 hours and 50 miles, i never saw another person.  not a farmer on a tractor, not a person on a lawnmower, not a woman putting out the laundry or working a garden.  no one.  i was starting to get a little nervous that if i had a tire burst on the grave that i wouldn't be able to find help.  so i abandoned google and got back onthe pavement.

except for one divergence.  there was a stretch that showed a bike trail typical of a rails to trails.  turns out it was a snow mobile path that was a two track dirt trail.  it wasn't bad to start, but it quickly added some potholes and pits.  and then a mud pit.  i had to carry the bike through parts of it, wheel it through others.  by the time i made it past the pit, the bike had a layer of mud collected around brakes, deraileur, and panniers.  what a mess.  but i made it trough, scraped most of the mud off, and made it the final miles into port stanley.

ontario is flat.  really flat.  except along the coast.  it's flat till you reach the towns located on streams or rivers.  there you drop down to the water line and immediately climb up afterward.  like riding along kodak road, except the ups and downs are spaced much further apart, usually several miles apart.

all the towns along lake erie are called ports and they do indeed have marinas and boats for the most part, but not what we would normally call a port.  port stanley has a population around 3,000 +/-, based primarily around tourist trade.  it's buiult on either side of a river, with a lift bridge connecting the two sides and allowing the sail boats to get back to the marinas.  immediately across the bridge, on the main corner is the coffee shop owned by michelle.  michelle posted on warmshowers, not as a host, but offering to help find someone to host.  i had emailed her asking for help but hadn't heard back.  when i got in the shop and finally got connected again, i had a message from her offering to let me stay in a little 2 bed room cottage that she had.  bingo.

it was also in her coffee shop that i met another cyclist touring coast to coast.  jacob is a 20 something.  back in june, he sold all his misc. belongings, cancelled his lease, quit his job parking cars, and left seattle heading for the east coast.  he detoured to iowa to ride in ragbrai (bike ride across iowa).  he met a young woman from new york during his ride and has now adjusted his end point to new york to go stay with her.  anyway, since jacob needed a place to stay for the night, i invited him to share the cottage and ride together the following day.

8/18 - oh, canada

today i start the final two weeks of the trip.  as usual, i'm anxious about it.  i almost always feel better once i get going, but until then i worry.
i'm planning on leaving around noon today.  i'd like to make it to the border, the st. claire river, which flows from lake huron to lake st. claire on the north side of detroit.  60 mi. ride.  my plan is to take the ferry at marine city.  this should be a much simpler crossing than the heavily travelled bridges in detroit or sarina.  the ride there is partly on bike trails, which will help with these god awful michigan roads.  don't know weather i'll cross this evening or wait till the morning.
from there, i'll ride to port stanley (90 mi.) on the north shore of lake erie. 
two options are in my head from that point:  1) ride along the north shore to buffalo, then along the river to niagara falls, or 2) ride partly along the coast, then cut inland to brantford, and from there to niagara below the falls.  i'll decide after i get to port stanley and see what the coast is like.  it will take two days, either way.  i have no idea what ontario will look like, but i'm thinking it won't be too much different than michigan.
i tried to arrange a warmshower at marine city, but i've gotten no response.  i've also had no luck at port stanley, where both options are not available on monday night.  i have been able to make arrangements in niagara, ontario for wed night.  that's good.  I'm also hopeful about brantford, if i go that way.  but it looks like the first two nights i'm going to have wing it and see what fate sends my way.
weather looks good for the week, though it's going to start getting warmer.  my luck appears to be continuing to hold on that front.
this will be the last 4 days of riding solo.  on thursday, i will meet paul in niagara.