The (Un) Spoke (en) Truth

Off on a ride with mark and therese today. After the obligatory fudge stop (therese has a fudge problem...), and the usual hammering by therese of the boys, we're slowly winding down the ride and an unusual blue streak comes out of mark's mouth. Well, unusual because it was preceded by "what the hell.." instead of just spewing out the profanities right out of the gate!

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well, turns out that mark's spoke broke, tacoing the wheel, and preventing him from moving forward period. Luckily, "Mr Mechanic" himself was there to tie off the spoke, release the brakes, and push mark's sorry butt home.

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Therese just went back for more fudge....

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"Mr Mechanic" Lumpy out

Rachael Ray's a Woose

I've been trying to learn how to cook, and for the most part doing a fairly mediocre job at it. But today, I hit the freakin' jackpot with my beef barley soup. It was a killer, super thick, really tasty, and totally filled you up.

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That is until if totally drained you out, if you get my drift. Apparently garlic, onions, and barley are not a human-digestible combination!

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"Hope to be off the pot soon" Lumpy out

Holy Crap, Now THAT'S a Hill!

TOP: Therese pulling my fat butt up the last of the hills...on a dirt road...straight up...
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Went out for a pounding ride today with Mark and Therese, up to the Springwater Hills. We did 5 "big" hills, all 1-3 miles long, with serious grades...as in granny gear, big cog, standing up, praying to allah for a miracle kinda big hills.
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Mark broke his bike on the 4th one, and took the valley road home, while Therese and I slugged it up the last "new to me" hill....which turned out to be a really bad idea, as it was 8 MILES long, dirt and stone, dogs-a-chasin', exposed to the sun, and VERTICAL in spots. Totally destroyed me.
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But, it still beat even a good day at work!
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"Gonna ride the flats for a week now" Lumpy out

What the Helena!

TOP: Yup, it's May...In Helena...And there a blizzard going on...

BOTTOM: An 8 foot bear in the airport, to scare off urbanites like myself

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Up to Helena Montana today for some work meetings. I love that area of the world, having been there twice last summer (Bike trip, and road trip), but it's painful to get there and back. Took me 20 clock hours to get home, including (yawn) a 5 hour layover in salt lake, and a (bigger yawn) 4 hour layover in NYC. Luckily, I brought my Red Sox hat, so I made LOTS of friend in the NYC airport.

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Oh, and did I mention the night I arrived it snow 2 FEET!!!!

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"Damn cold up here" Lumpy out

Afterstory

TOP: John slamming his first Abbotts frozen custard. He would later have 7 more in the next 2 hours.

2nd: The Anchor Bar, home of chicken wings.

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We packed up the bikes for the drive home, folded up Carl into the back of the van, and started the drive back to Rochester. Somebody came up with the idea of lunch first, which then became "how bad can we eat", which then became "let's have a gross of wings at the Anchor Bar". So, that's what we did. We ordered a huge bucket of wings, and proceeded to bury every last one of them, along with a couple of buckets of beer to wash them down.

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Then we headed back to Rochester, and John had to stop for more ice cream along the way. Carl stayed in the back of the van so nobody would accuse him of pulling. And Theresa did girly things in the suicide seat. All in all, a heck of a good trip.

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"Another Day, Anothe Adventure" Lumpy out

Wonder Why They Call it Lockport?

TOP: The "Finish Line" at Lake Erie. Another adventure in the books.

2nd: The Lockport Locks, albeit drained for the winter

3rd: Tom's Diner closed right after we left. It took them hours to clean up the water I heard.

4th: The actual locks are very impressive, and a cool sight when dry

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We headed out for our last leg this morning. To simplify logistics, I drove to lake erie and started biking backwards until I met up with the crew in Lockport. Lockport is (surprisingly) home to two of the biggest locks on the canal, basically taking boats off the Niagara escarpment (ie. niagara falls) down to the level of rochester. There's a "port" every 8 miles or so, middleport, lockport, spencerport, brockport...reminiscent of how far you could pull a barge each day with the muletrain. Mark, Theresa, John, and Carl, had a great ride into lockport, with a strong tailwind on a great section of trail. Me meanwhile, fought a headwind for miles on end, was almost entirely on roads, and the weather was probably ten degrees colder near lake erie. Basically, a miserable ride for me. We rendezvoused in Lockport, grabbing lunch at a local diner.

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The lunch was uneventful, except for (a) Theresa proceeding to pour an entire large glass of ice water into carl's crotch, (b) the waitress walking in on carl in the rest room (thank god it wasn't mark or she'd still be recovering!), (c) emptying their entire foodstock, and (d) john buying every last piece of chocolate that some girl scouts were selling and proceed to down them all. Then he wanted to know where Baldwinsville was.

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After what seemed like an eternity (at least to the waitresses I suspect), we finally left the diner and headed out for the last stretch. This was a mixture, some trail, some singletrack, some roads, a tailwind, and basically downhill to Lake Erie. In short, a course made for the Lumpster, and I had a great finish. I'm just a bowling ball rolling downhill.

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"Mission Accomplished" Lumpy out

Rochester Bound

The day started nicely, with Mark bringing Gary breakfast in bed. What a lovely gesture. We looked forward to today, as we were going to skirt the canal a bit to save on some distance and traffic, and head into the foothills near Cross Lake. Well, as luck would have it, the foothills were more like mountains, at least after being on a totally flat trail for 2 days. Lots of huffing and puffing to get up the hills, before we finally landed in Clyde. Yes, Clyde, metropolis of Upstate.
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We stopped in Clyde for carl to change yet another tire, and while he's changing and we're reloading, a couple of Menonites (like amish, but they use electricity) come up to us and start chatting. Yup, nothing more humorous than 3 atheists talking to 2 menonites about the world. They were great guys, surprisingly both name amos. They couldn't get over the fact that we were biking this, as neither had ever been outside his county.
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Also while in Clyde we had planned to rendezvous with another rider, peter. He had ridden out to newark the night prior, then was to meet us in clyde. Of course, he totally missed the rendezvous point, and as he's a total luddite without a cell phone, we had no way to contact him. I figured that the menonites had taken him hostage and were making him build fences, or milk cows, or something like that....clearly, activities that a city-bread jewish kid was just built to do. We never found him, and he only resurfaced two days later, mumbling something about slot machines and gaming tables.
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We did however track down Theresa in Clyde, who joined us for the rest of the weekend, and a bit later on Annie, who for whatever reason does charity work and lives with carl. Not only didn't carl take any pulls for annie, but she promptly proceeded to kick his butt, taking pulls at about 25mph, while screaming out "I want dennis"... Lovely gal.
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Also along one of the backroads, a basset hound/dachsund mix dog came out and chased carl and john for about 2, no, make that 20 miles. This dog was relentless, and mark and I could only sit back and laugh. Every time john and carl slowed a bit, the dog would take off again at full speed. Nothing funnier than seeing something with 4 inch legs motoring at 25mph.
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We made our stretch goal of Greece by nightfall, theresa biked back the 20 miles to fairport, annie headed back home, and everyone bedded down for a nice rest in our own beds. With one day to go, and the winds shifting, we knew that it would be an easier day tomorrow.
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"On the road again" Lumpy out

Baldwinsville, Retain a Thought

TOP: John taking the last drop of water from Theresa's bottle, then leaving her to die trailside. What an act of chivalry...NOT!

2nd: A common site on the ride, Carl taking another non-pull

3rd: A lock detour. Carl and I had to portage the bike over the fence, through the girders, and through strands of rope. Mark and John took the detour 20 yards away, and rode right by.

4th: John climbing the biggest hill on the trail

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Our 2nd day out was most eventful. After a masterful breakfast at Denny's, we left Herkimer for a day of mostly road segments, interspersed with some nice trail. The winds were in our face, but we were sheltered quite a bit for the sections that we were "on canal". The road segments however were a different story. We made Rome late morning, and started our next leg to skirt Oneida Lake. While we turned Southwest, the trip turned south in a hurry. First, carl had a flat on his Hummer-like tires. He could have used one of those auto garage tire changing machines, as it took a while to change it. Then, while Carl was changing, John (AKA Marco Polo...see earlier postings) took what was to be his first of two wrong turns for the day. Mind you, this is on a totally straight road, next to a canal, heading in one direction. He's amazing. We found him about an hour later, riding around in a state of confusion. Then, mark's bike rack broke in two. Thankfully, he was not at full speed when it broke, as it basically just collapsed off his seatpost and fell into his wheel. He would have trashed the bike and himself, but as luck would have it, he was able to come to a stop before it wove itself into his spokes. And even luckier, I was the only one with pack space, so I got to carry ALL of mark's gear in addition to my own. Sure, give it to fat kid, he won't notice the extra weight.

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Then the day got real interesting. We got off in Oriskany (site of the famous Battle of Oriskany in the Revolutionary war), and about 1/2 mile down the detour, John (now leading, stupid idea number 42 for the day) turned down what he thought was the path. Of course, it wasn't, and after about an hour of stone trail (read: bounce, bounce, bounce), fording streams with bikes overhead, more flats, and a bungee cord breakage jammed into mark's cassette, we finally decided that we were on the wrong path. So, we got to do it all in reverse. That was fun....

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We finally found the correct trail, which turned out to be an incredible section set adjacent to the original canal (much smaller). We tooled there for an hour or two, with such incredible sights as turtle families, deer, and an old lady walking her two poodles with big plastic rings around their necks. Somehow I don't think those were natural.

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We stopped near Verona Beach for lunch at a little honky-tonk that Carl knew, loaded up on the calories, and headed out on what we expected to be a pretty tough stretch..RTE 31 along the entire base of Oneida Lake, with a brutal 20-25mph headwind, a cold chill coming off the lake, and not much of interest to look at. Well, it was far worse than that! We averaged about 9mph for several hours, swapping pulls every 1/2 mile so the leader could get a break (except for Carl, who, of course, never pulled, not once...is this a recurring theme or what?). My highlight of the stretch was when mark got off to pee (every hour, on the hour) around the back of a baptist church. I think his line was "god's pissing on me, I'm just returning the favor".

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As we're headed towards Baldwinsville, John must have asked 50 times "what town are we heading towards". I think he was delirious from the winds and cold, which only became more apparent as he sprinted to a roadside ice cream stand, and ordered a huge cone. I thought he had lost his mind. After a verrrry long afternoon in the saddle, we finally got to Baldwinsville, and found a diner to reload. And then, in an unusual circumstance, Mark found a 12 pack to bed down with. I've never seen him drink before. We talked about the mile-long Budweiser plant, which John had somehow missed in his sprint to the ice cream.

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"Baldwinsville, like the damned piano" Lumpy out