Here are some statistics for the ride: Miles Cycled: 822 Average Miles a Day: 63.2 States/Provinces Traversed: 4 Cities Slept In: 13 Stays With Friends and Family Hosting Us: 2 Hotel Stays: 11 Total Riding Time: 2 days, 4 hours Total Ascent: 26,385 feet (5.0 miles) Estimated Calories Burned: 33,924 Longest Ride: 81 miles (Sarnia, ONT to Southfield, MI) Shortest Ride: 51.4 miles (Rome, NY to Baldwinsville, NY) Fastest Daily Average Speed: 17.2 mph (Rome, NY to Baldwinsville, NY) Slowest Daily Average Speed: 14.9 mph (Ashfiled, MA to Troy, NY) Number of Flat Tires: 1 Trips to Bike Shops: 0 Assists from the Spike Shadow: 1 Special thanks to our hosts along the way (Catherine and Doc in Brantford, Ontario) and brother Derek and his family (Sandhya and niece Sonett) for hosting us at the final stop. And again, special, super heart-felt thanks to spouse extraordinaire Kathy for making rides like these possible in the first place. Spike Bike will return!!!
0 Comments
The final day of the trip was, by design, the longest at 80+ miles from Sarnia to Southfield, plus an international border crossing. It went off without a hitch. It was another perfect, sunny, fall day. The wind behaved except for a few runs where it blew into my face, but really in some of the flattest portions of the trip, and I got to see some interesting sites. Plus, my adorable two-year-old niece. Let's dive in, shall we? The day started with a brisk morning ride through the refineries of Sarnia. Now I know a few of you are thinking that sounds like the exact opposite of interesting. But given my background as a chemist, and the fact that these huge, complex machines are basically glorified distillation apparatuses, how can you blame me for being fascinated? After refinery row, I got to the St.Clair River, a key waterway that connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie. I saw a few big ships bringing cargo up the river. But the St. Clair River isn't just for commerce. It is also a delightful and picturesque recreation area. And since I started the day with oil refineries, I felt I had to continue the energy theme and document these former and current coal-fired power plants. The Lambton facility is on the Canadian side, was decommissioned in 2012, and may eventually get converted to a natural gas powered plant. Across the river on the American side, the St. Clair Power Plant was once the world's largest coal-fired facility. It is scheduled for decommissioning in the early 2020's. After I was done with the corridor of power along the river, it was time to say farewell to Canada and cross over the river via the Bluewater Ferry (although the color of the water was definitely more green than blue). The crossing was quick and easy. On the other side, the custom's agent looked at me in my Spandex bike gear and asked, chuckling, if I had anything to declare. The next fifteen miles was through a rural part of Michigan (China Township, Anchorville, New Haven, Macomb, Waldenburg) that strongly resembled the previous day's experience in Ontario. Then I hit the border of the Detroit Metro Area, and farmland turned to exurbs turned to subdivisions. I rolled through Sterling Heights, the city where I spent the first six years of my life. I took a quick detour to snap a picture of our house, which we called "The old old house with the black garage" to distinguish it from a house we had to live in for a few months while our new house was being finished (too long a story to relate here). Anyway, as my brother remarked when he saw the photo, the garage is no longer black. Sometimes you really can never go back. . . All that remained was to go through another twenty miles of suburbia until I reached my brother's house in Southfield. I was greeted with this great welcome sign and a custom-decorated cake! What a great ending to an excellent two weeks of biking. I'll summarize a few trip statistics in the next few days. Thanks for tuning in!
Follow the link to view the ride:
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/11368869 Today was the last full day in Canada and the first day in this country where there was no rain at all. It was perfect fall biking weather, with a cool cross-breeze and a mix of sun and clouds that served to highlight and augment the rural landscapes of the day. Getting out of London was simple, affording the opportunity to cross the Thames River on the way out. The route today was to be dominated by two long, straight stretches of road, the first at around 10 miles, and the second at a whopping 42 miles (plus a four mile southward detour to get some food at the halfway point). This portion of Canada is relatively flat and sectioned off in a complex system with some roads making an East-West/North-South grid and others rotated 45 degrees, running on a Northwest-Southeast/Southwest-Northeast grid. This provided a challenge when I found that a large portion of the 10-mile stretch of road was closed starting today and the length of closed section was unknown to me at the time. I do a LOT of research on my routes for each day, including satellite and Google street views to ensure the roads look safe to bike on and are paved. But one thing I don't do is try to look up whether or not there are any road closures. Perhaps I'll start doing so on future trips, but with a smartphone equipped with GPS maps, it's pretty easy to route around any problems that come up. That's what I did today. As shown below, I just found paved roads (Melrose Drive is dirt) that went in the general direction of the closed road (which wasn't quite as easy as I had hoped because of the wacky diagonal grid system), and guessed where the road might open up, knowing that I could always re-route again if I guessed wrong. In this case, my guess was exactly right, and when I reached the intersection of Route 16 and Egremont Road, I saw the other side of the road closure sign. It added about four miles to the trip today, but I stayed on pavement and was ready for the next phase of today's ride. After a bit of maneuvering, I joined Route 33, the road that would take me due West, and with only a slight wobble where it joined Route 22, for 42 miles into Sarnia. To pass the time on this road, I took a photo of something that caught my eye every two miles. This collage is the result: The road passed through farm after farm with very little else. In fact, at mile 40, I had to dip South for two miles out of the way so I could get a bite for lunch. I wound up at Four Sisters Pizzeria in Watford, where I was promptly greeted at the door by the six- or seven-year-old grandson of one of the sisters. "What are you eating?", he asked immediately as I walked in the door. "Ummmm...I'm not sure. What do you have?" [he lists pizza, a few other items] "I think I'll go for the pizza." "One or two slices?" [This is all before I've gotten past the welcome mat, mind you, and the counter is about 50 feet into the store.] "Two, I think" "GRANDMA! THIS GUY WANTS TWO SLICES!" I proceeded to talk to grandma, who was very nice and let her grandson know that I was biking today. I was happy to share my story, and when I told him that I was going another 50 kilometers to Sarnia, he said "Oh! You must have to bike very fast!" "Not too fast", I said, "just slow and steady". So I slowly and steadily made my way to Sarnia. We had a great Irish pub dinner right next to the Port of Sarnia, where we watched the "Federal Mackinac" get loaded with grain from the Cargill terminal. Tomorrow is the last day! I'll be biking 80 miles from here to Southfield, where we'll be staying with my brother's family and hanging out in the D for a few days. Join us for the final push!
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/15125707 Follow the link to view the ride:
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/11356749 We woke up to a driving rain and forecast full of showers and thunderstorms all along the route today, so I knew it was shaping up to be a rough one. Luckily, today was a shorter 52 miles, so I had some time to figure out the best time to start. Watching the weather radar while eating breakfast with our hosts and their daughter and grandkids, I waited until a hole in the storm cell came around and took off. Playing the hole in the weather was appropriate given that their home is located at the edge of a golf course. The radar didn't lie. The conditions were wet, but it wasn't raining as I turned out of the course and onto the road. The weather held all the way to lunch. After some initial twisting to cross the Grand River and get out of town, I latched on to Brant County Road 2 and it was a straight shot to lunch in Woodstock. The sun even peeked out a few times. I had lunch at Fritzie's, the "French Fry King" of Woodstock. Burger, Poutine, Chocolate Shake. Yummmm. I observed the radar at lunch and saw that there were a few cells between me and London, but they were impossible to time. Turns out, it rained pretty much the entire second half, from five miles out of Woodstock up until the city limits of London. It was never a thunderstorm, thankfully, but between a sometimes driving rain, a moderate headwind, and a small but steady incline, it was slow going towards the city limits. And my butt was soaking, and not in a good way. The rain finally let up for good just inside the London city limits, as soon as I passed the pig at Trail's End Market. Continuing on the same road I turned onto earlier in the morning, I pulled up right to our hotel (the fabulous Hotel Metro) and took a nice hot bath, a much more acceptable way to soak one's butt. Tomorrow, we head for Sarnia, our last stop in Canada. The route features a mind-numbing 45 miles on a perfectly straight road. Maybe I'll take a picture every mile and make an animated gif out of it or something.
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/15125509 Follow the link to view the ride:
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/11341518 Today was the longest ride of the trip so far (75 miles), and the weather forecast called for rain all day. As a result, I was ready for a rough slog today. As it turned out, the distance wasn't too bad, and it only rained for the first 5 miles of the trip. Definitely better than what I thought it would be. The ride started out pretty messy leaving Niagara Falls. The rain was already starting to clear up when I reached the Welland Canal in Allanburg. I bet you thought we were done with canals when we left the Erie Canal behind, but the Welland Canal is the primary means for ships to get from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario without going over the falls. There was a great lift bridge at the Allanburg crossing. By the time I got into Effingham and North Pelham, the sun was even starting to peak out. The agriculture in the area started off as vineyards, then transitioned to farming corn and wind. I rode all day on a series of farm roads. Many of them were very straight. Eventually they led to Brantford, and once through town, I rode to our destination for the evening: a renovated farmhouse on the banks of the Grand River, home of some friends that we met on our eclipse tours. A family of bald eagles nests near their property. They frequently hang out on a tree branch right behind the house, looking down into the river for fish to scoop up and eat. Tomorrow, a slightly more normal (52 mile) day to London, Ontario. There's rain again in the forecast, but I'm hoping my luck holds and I'll be able to squeeze through the storm cells like I did today.
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/15125176 Follow the link to view the ride:
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/11323833 Today, Kathy and I took the opportunity to recharge our batteries (both literally and figuratively), do a little sight seeing, and prepare for the trip through Canada. Here are some pictures of our day at the falls: Tomorrow we start the trek across Canada, stopping in Brantford, Ontario
https://ridewithgps.com/users/122017/routes I have had unbelievably good weather for the first nine days of this trip - generally sunny, warm but not too hot, and no rain to speak of. That all changed today, with rain showers on and off all day. But the rain never really got so bad that it was more than an annoyance. It did make it a bit difficult to photograph my very last, swear to god final, photos of me crossing the Erie Canal. After I left Medina (and crossed the canal), I headed North to follow Lake Ontario. As soon as I turned West, I was pushed along by a 15 mph Easterly tailwind. That made riding through the occasional rain sprinkle considerably more bearable. There were two distinct agricultural segments of this portion of the trip. The first was the meat and dairy zone, punctuated by the strong septic scent of a mass of cows and my first view of veal pens. I think these constitute "free range" pens because the lambs have a little fenced-in outdoor area they can walk around in. I took the following picture to remind myself of the next agricultural segment of today's trip, which was the delicious smell of apples everywhere. They were being harvested, they were on trucks, they were being squeezed and processed into beverages. It went a long way towards erasing the smell of cow shit and the view of that veal-to-be. Also, apple trees amaze me because they are just so loaded with apples. I got to see Kathy multiple times today! We took almost the same route, so we met for lunch in Olcott. She also stopped by the road and took photos and video of me passing her like four or five times. I'm sure she'll end up posting those pictures at some point. So anyway, Alcott is a cute little beach community on the shore of Lake Ontario. We ate at the Park Place Diner, which would have been a singularly excellent experience if it weren't for the fact that across the street from the diner, in extreme Northern New York, some jerk decided to proudly display a Confederate flag. This is actually the second such flag I've seen in my tour of upstate New York (the first one was set up next to an American flag with Trump superimposed on it. Seriously). Something tells me this isn't about Southern pride. Yuk. Then, about seven miles West of the lunch stop, more drama! I got my first flat tire of the trip. I have all the gear to fix a flat on my own, but I still called on Kathy to bring the Spike Shadow around for extra pumping and to replace my spare tube and CO2 cartridge. I love having such great support on the trip! Kathy and I met up again at Fort Niagara, about 45 miles into the ride. We got to do the old "Kathy. Cannon." gag again. Never gets old. Here she is, contemplating blowing away the British garrison on the other side of the Niagara River. From the fort, I headed south down the river, past the New York Power Authority, and into Niagara Falls, NY. What remained to do was cross over the border into Canada and meet Kathy at the hotel. This was complicated by the fact that I originally tried to cross over the pedestrian walkway of the Rainbow Bridge. I was stymied in my attempt by large "NO BICYCLES ON WALKWAY" signs, as well as decidedly bike-unfriendly turnstiles. So I just drove up to the vehicle entrance, and that seemed to work out fine. I only had to pay 50 cents to get across (auto toll is $3.50)! On the way across, in traffic, I managed to get these pictures. The Canadian Customs agent was thorough in his questioning, but I was ultimately allowed into the country, where we'll stay for the next five days as we head West across Ontario into Michigan. Tomorrow is a rest day in Niagara Falls.
Follow the link to view the ride:
|
AuthorMy name is Scott, and together with my bicycle and my awesome spouse Kathy, I ride in 50-75 mile increments to travel relatively large distances. I also write about it, and that's what this blog is all about. ArchivesCategories |