Today: Canadaigua, NY to Saracuse, NY - 68 miles. A nice change of pace from yesterday's near-century.
Gil's Cliff Notes (written at 4 pm):
A beautiful day of bike riding. Got to start an hour later due to the shorter mileage (67 miles). Some hills. Tail wind and marvelous weather. Crisp, blue sky. Fields of green, trees, pasture land and finger lakes. Starting to definitely feel like New England in the small towns we pass through. They are sooooo nice. Stopped in this one small town where there were some gentlemen standing outside a gift shop and struck up a conversation. Video taped. One of these men led us around to the back of this building where there was a huge mural of the women's rights movement and the town's history. It must have been 20 x 100 ft!! Just amazing. Enjoyed a short stop at the Erie Canal where we crossed over it, about 15 miles out of Syracuse. Felt very good today. Just pushed up the hills and ran flat out on the downhills and straight aways. Arrived at Hampton Inn 1:30 PM. Hey, it is a great hotel. Microwave, fridge, computer, etc. and a great eating place just down the street (Tulles). A group of us went there immediately before showering. [I bet the other patrons appreciated that.] The Fire Burger, apple pie (a huge impressive thing) and root beer were the best!First - Thanks for letting us know that the extra 30-60 minutes doing this every night isn't just for ourselves! (Again, this blog is largely just for Dad's records, but...if not for people reading it in real-time, we could always get behind and put together our notes, his notes, and his pictures when it's more convenient - ie not at bedtime every night.) So it's nice to know we're losing some sleep for a good cause! (Also, thanks to Dad for honestly not minding when I got a day behind. "Oh, that's ok! You've been involved in a lot of weddings this month, haven't you?")
He said that today was a great day - a very good ride and quite enjoyable. "All went well." Enjoyed that extra hour of sleep. He thought that everybody felt a little more at ease and less stressed today knowing that it was a short ride without a lot of elevation gain - there were "certainly some hills, but not anything everyone hasn't easily done before." Took a fair number of pictures today, but not too much video - "I'll probably take more as we get into Vermont and New England."A number of people - "or at least a couple of people" - have said that at this point in the tour, they're just putting in the miles to get it done. Everybody's anxious to "get to the barn" (like the cows coming home; apparently Boston is the barn, a metaphor I'm sure Boston would appreciate); the novelty has, in large part, worn off. His dream at this point is kind of to get back home and enjoy sitting out on the porch, reading, and napping. Since he's apparently getting home on the first but not going back to work until the NINTH (that's news to Mom and I, and since I forgot to mention it to her tonight she'll probably learn of it while reading this from work tomorrow), he'll have plenty of time to do all that porching and reading and napping! (And since his computer room is currently my TV room and bedroom, he'll have some real incentive to get up on that ladder and make my room inhabitable again if he's going to be home and wanting to use his computer all week.) But he "thinks" people are still looking forward to riding, and he's looking forward to seeing Vermont, New Hampshire, and New England in general. (He even admitted that, while it's close, he likes New England even more than out west. Yay!) While they still have a mountain range to get over, it's at least supposed to be very pretty. (Well gee, that makes the mountain range no big deal. Sign me up!)
He said that the last two "real" days of riding - Wednesday and Thursday - will be quite difficult: a "ton" of climbing to do, including a seven-mile climb on the "Vermont day" (either Wed or Thurs) and something like 7,000' or more of elevation gain. Someone on a previous tour said that it was one of the trip's hardest days, and "there are two of those days in a row." On the upside, it should be very scenic, and "certainly being near the end should help us pull it off."Today really brought a sense of "that New England feel," especially as they rode through farms and saw steeple churches. "There are an awful lot of really neat little towns in America, kind of like out of a storybook." Tomorrow's a relatively easy day; 78 miles after today's 68.
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