ride for africycle day six (part one)

sodus point to hamlin beach state park 110 km (part one)

awake in the middle of the night
to see the moon
floating
like a piece of blood orange rind
caught between two branches
of a pine tree



really i did!

i thought of taking a photograph but i wanted nothing to come between me and that moment.

i can carry it in my head for as long as i wish.

the lake was huge and still.

little snoring and sleepy breathing sounds hovered over the campsite.

~

we woke very early and packed in silence.

breakfast was over as quickly as it had begun.
we walked our bikes out of the campsite to avoid wipeouts - there had been several on the way in including me.

the road is made up of dirt and gravel and of course the superfine sandy bits

that catch a skinny tire and stop it cold.

the rider doesn't stop quite as quickly - there's some law of physics that covers that i'm sure.

so leaving the vineyard was a half walk half ride affair until we made it back out onto the blacktop and pointed the bicycles east.

the roads were super smooth and wound in and out of cool shaded little valleys past many super massive houses that had to be worth millions. these homes had what i figured were guest houses that you could easily slide my home inside!

after many beautiful miles we started to approach the outskirts of rochester.
rochester spreads far and wide and has as much big city ugliness as it does beauty.

skirting the lake at times

and then at others passing through derelict neighbourhoods,

we fought the heat, the traffic, and even one monster hill that was packed with morning rush hour traffic.

you need a wakeup call?

try flying down a hill at sixty kph on what is nominally the shoulder/bike lane when the bike lane is littered with glass, gravel, pieces of truck (!),

we even saw the leaf off a truck suspension -

who knows how that would come loose?!!

then of course there's the climb up the other side, but wonder of wonders the other side had been freshly paved, had the bike lane you could dream about but never expect to see in all your life and all through leafy avenues of beautifully kept little homes.

oh wow!

eventually we worked our way towards a coffee shop that had been visited last year.

voted rochester's best coffee shop - and i can't say if that's true or not but the americano i ordered was close to superb and the pastries excellent.

lots of ice water and a clean bathroom.

rochester rick if you're reading this then i'll meet you here next summer!

or maybe you'll be riding with us!!

the coffee shop is located in a small plaza and really you'd blow by it if you didn't know.

here are some of my bike buddies hoovering back tasties.

oh did i mention the temperature that day was over a hundred fahrenheit?

again!!!!

(i translated the celsius for my american friends!)

here's big dave barber blissing out on something special.

i was so chilling out, i ordered a second americano.

we were there for about an hour and a half relaxing and mellowing out.

lunch that day was made by bike buddy mike who prepared a superb sandwich for each of us.

times like that i could cry!

ride for africycle day five (part two)

selkirk shores state park to sodus 120 km (part two)

cycling is filled with metaphor.

i guess anything is if you see it as a sort of surface manifestation of what lies underneath.

this particular night was probably the most challenging of the ride because the team was exhausted, we had no facilities, no running water, it was really really hot and humid, the bugs were merciless, and people were upset.

but through it all there was the magic of the process of riding as a group,

the amazing and often beautiful scenery, and this particular spot was no exception.




i thought of the lives of the people we are riding for.

i thought of how fortunate i am to have a bike of my own.

to be able to ride for ten days.

to know i have food.

to know i have water.

to know i am with really good people.

the shortcomings of the site - inconsequential really.

tomorrow we are getting up at five a.m. to try to get our riding in before the deep heat sets in.

here's the google map to get you from selkirk shores state park to sodus point.

ride for africycle day five (part one)

selkirk shores state park to sodus 120 km (part one)

i woke several times through the night to hear

the amazing snoring machine roaring impossibly loudly thirty feet away.

waking for the day the heat and humidity were there right from the start.

happily we never checked weather forecasts or asked what the temperature was.

later we found out that we rode through the hottest weather in nine years with

the humidex rising into the mid-forties, smog advisories, and so on.

i'm glad we didn't know because a big part of cycling distances in difficult weather is psychological.

it's enough to know that it's difficult, that it hurts, that there's a long way to go.

then you can focus on the amazing journey itself.

we got on the road at 7:30 a.m. and pushed the pace.

i drank lots of water and felt really good.

the only problem was that the water warmed up to luke warm before i could drink it all.

i drank it anyway but warm water on a super hot day is really gross.

we stopped in oswego for mid-morning coffee and pastries.

the coffee shop was air-conditioned, had a washroom, had an ice machine for our bottles. bliss!

starting out again - refueled and recharged.

the roads were pretty good this day - busy, so busy at times - but there was one sweet stretch that had just been paved. when we got to the beginning of the construction zone they were working on we had to wait for a while but then the road crew let us go through without any vehicles either way -

a couple of kilometres - how amazing is that!!

i heard later that a couple of riders who were a kilometre or so back of me got chased by a wild dog that came piling out of the woods and ran after them!

that's one of a cyclist's worst fears.

the hills on this day were really long. i checked one out of curiousity and it was 1.2 km long - uphill the whole way. of course there are two sides to a hill's story so the other side usually made up for the massive effort.

this is what the very best roads look like. smooth, no junk all over the shoulder. lots of room.

after 80 km of riding, we stopped in wolcott for lunch where we were photographed and inteviewed by the local press. a river ran near where we ate - we could hear it but couldn't get near it.

it would've been so nice to dabble our hot bodies in it!

the next twenty km were really hard. the heat was intense and there was very little shade.
the town we were staying near was sodus, ny. a lovely little town with a gorgeous harbour

that made me think of jigsaw puzzle pictures.

it's got a pretty old and well-known yacht club. have a look here for more about that.

the little group i was riding with rode through and out of town as we figured we were headed for our destination - a small vineyard on the outskirts of town where we were to camp that night.

unfortunately we overshot the turnoff a fair bit and added a handful of kilometres to our distance. half those kilometres were up steep hills of course!!!

we decided to turn back and see if the other groups had stopped in sodus at a bar to watch the world cup soccer game and sure enough, we found them, air conditioning, cold beer on tap and a world cup soccer game on big screen hd!!!

nirvana at the almost end of a super-hot day!!!

when the game finished we headed back out toward the vineyard which in fact was a small cleared spot of land on a bluff overlooking the lake. very beautiful views. the downside - no running water, no showers, no washroom facilities. there was a palpable plummet in the team's morale. the kicker - we had to get cleaned up and prepped for a dinner with the local rotary club who had invited us to dinner.

the journey to the dinner was fun. big dave barber, our support driver, most cool boy, and treat finder par exellence must have sensed the need so we all piled in the

back of the bus with the soundtrack provided by daft punk.

bike buddy ben started up the office chair race competition.

how's this done?

put a human in an office chair at the back of a gutted schoolbus.

half way down a steep hill you hammer on the brakes and off goes the chair rider!!!

here goes ben.

keep your legs in folks! (speaking of legs, check out lisa's scraped up knees!)