May 19 – Ohio to New York

Today’s ride went from Niles, Ohio to Dunkirk, NY at distance of 134 miles. The route went North in eastern Ohio and then along Lake Eire through Pennsylvania to Dunkirk. It was the second time we went through a state in a day. Today was cold, upper 30’s with frost at 6 AM and never got above 65. But the winds were from the west and they literally blew us through PA and NY. I missed our hotel, the Ramada Inn has become a Clarion, this required me to bike back 2 blocks, it was the hardest cycling of the day. I rode alone for the last 110 miles, largely by choice as the route had a number of places where I felt it would be unsafe to ride in a paceline, lots of places where problems with the shoulder would appear too fast to be avoided when riding with others at 24 mph. Riding alone I managed 20 mph for much of the ride. I may have felt like I was superman but in reality if I had spread my wings I could have gone 15 mph without any pedaling. Dave Thompson and his riding partners took pity on me this morning and I rode with them for the first 25 miles. I let them go and continued on alone, but I must have been doing OK because I got to both SAG stops today before they had left. At the end there were only six riders who finished before me today. Like I have always said, “Give me a relatively flat road and a big tail wind and I can do pretty well”. That is what happened today.

We rode through a few Amish villages in OH today. We have seen Amish people in every state we have been in since Missouri. They are far more common than we city folks would think. Even if you don’t see the Amish, or their horse drawn carriages you can recognize their presence by the horse shit on the road. I recall a 60’s song by Tom Lear who bemoans the pollution being produced by cars but concludes that the pollution produced by horses would be worse. With what we now know about global warming I am not sure that he was right. However, what I do know is that as cyclists, at least those who wish to avoid flats and brush their tires with their gloved hands, do not like riding through horse shit. In addition both cyclists and Amish carriages tend to ride on the left hand side of the road so it is often hard to avoid the byproducts of equine locomotion.

We passed several wineries today. A few cyclists went in to taste. As it is my firm belief that wine tasting and cycling should not be mixed, I did not partake. Consequently I can not report back on the quality of the wine produced on the shores of Lake Eire. I can report that as of today the wines are just starting to show any signs of new growth. I wonder what this says about the length of the growing season and what this means to the wine that is produced. In general, Western New York and Pennsylvania seem to have the latest spring of any place we have visited on this trip. I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

On a lighter note about 15 riders went to a family restaurant before checking into our rooms. As we left a 30 something black woman can up to us and said that we had the nicest asses she had seen in along time. That is one way to make the day for a bunch of 40 and 50 year old men. We also had a small problem at breakfast. Our restaurant, a Perkins, was 0.8 miles into today’s route two of the slower riders turned the wrong way and went back on yesterday’s route for 7.0 miles before finding a Perkins restaurant for breakfast. They were surprised that no one else was there and they added 15 miles to already long day. One of them, Andy, has had a history of making wrong turns on this trip. I am not sure why he has gone wrong so often, he is a very smart guy from England, maybe it has something to do with his having to ride on the right side of the road.