Day 94: Pittsford, NY

We had to cover about 70 miles yesterday, so we split the mileage.  Alea took the first shift, riding 38 miles.  Then I took over for the remainder of the ride, which should have been about 32 miles.  Of course I missed the last turn of the day, in the end adding nearly another 5 miles.  So it was about a 75 mile day for us. 

Lana at the shore of Lake Ontario in Pultneyville, NY.

The tail end of our route took me along the Erie Canal.  I've always been fascinated by canals, as my family had lived in Maidenhead, England along the Thames River not far from a canal lock, and in Houdeng-Goegnies, Belgium along the old Canal Du Centre.  On the former, not far from where we lived, was a swing bridge and farther down the canal was a series of three hydraulic lift locks.  I used to love watching the coal barges going up and down the canal every day.  And I was fascinated by the lift lock, which operated completely on hydraulic pressure.  When a barge would enter the lower lock, the upper lock would be flooded with water until it weighed more than the lower lock.  Then the hydraulic pressure would cause the upper lock to lower and the lower lock to rise.  Newer locks of this type today are typically diesel powered, as they can be raised or lowered much faster.

It would be nice to know what all I was looking at as I rode along the Erie Canal, as there were plenty of ruins: sections of abandoned canal, stone abutments that likely carried an old aqueduct, etc.  But it was interesting all the same.

An abandoned section of old canal.

One of the earliest iron bridges, designed by Squire Whipple.

Bridge abutments that were abandoned after a newer canal was built.

Lock #30.

Ditto.

The canal path.

A restored canal barge and floating B&B.

As I had mentioned a few weeks back, our Adventure Cycling maps noted a dearth of campgrounds along this stretch of the route, so it was fortunate for us that, back in Vermont, Mike and Gloria Vacanti had invited us to stay the night at their place.  That has greatly simplified our route planning, and led to us revising our plans for passing through this part of New York.

I had wanted to stop a couple of hours drive south of here to do some family history research.  Our original plan was to get to Rochester, pile the bike in the van and drive to a campground near the county seat of either Steuben County (Bath, NY) or Allegany County (Belmont, NY), and then return to Rochester to continue on (both are possible places where a third great grandfather of mine had died).  But that would put us in Niagara Falls for the Fourth of July weekend (not something we were looking forward to), so we've altered our route so that we will do less driving and avoid a lot of urban areas.  We will discuss that change in later blog posts, but the revised route is now shown on our Summer 2016 route map (currently shown at the top of the blog).

We rolled up to Mike and Gloria's house just after 3 pm, where Mike was there to greet us.  Gloria didn't get home until 8 pm, but Mike did a sterling job as our host.  We started out with some awesome homemade hummus and veggies while we were cooling off after our ride and doing a load of laundry.  For dinner we had our choice of Italian sausage or turkey burgers, a few types of chopped vegetable salads and baked french fries.  He topped that off later with brownie sundaes, complete with nuts and blueberries.

We were also treated to a game of Farkle, a simple, fun dice game and something that we could be easily add to our road game repertoire.  Mike ungraciously won the game (edging me out at the last second), but with the sort of spread he laid out for us, we'd be happy to stop by and lose as often as he likes. ;-)

Our host preparing breakfast for us.

Alea, Gloria & Mike.