The Ends of the Earth

Niagara Falls, New York. Friday, April 30, 2021

Breakfast at the Anchor Bar again, the service was spotty but well-intentioned. I asked if the maple syrup was real, and the waitress said sure, it’s real maple-flavored syrup. Oh well. The pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, blueberries, and home fries were hearty and filling, would be good for the rest of the day. Her name was Lindsay, like my cousin, and I almost asked if she spelled it with an “a” or the less-classy “e”. When the check came, her name was printed out: Lynnsi.

I gave her a big tip anyway.

Winter refuses to vacate the premises. Mid 40s, with wind gusts in the 40s also. Maybe a better day to walk than ride. I dug out my trail shoes and fanny pack for the first time, and set out on a mission: seeing the falls without spending a penny. No easy task.

Niagara Falls, dazzling though it is, is one of the nation’s biggest tourist traps. And not just our nation. It straddles the border with Canada, and for once, Canada got the better of the deal. A bend in the river turns the falls facing away from the US and towards Canada. An island, Goats Island, splits the falls into the stupendous Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side, and the much less impressive American Falls, which get a tenth of the water, falling onto a visible pile of boulders. Whenever we’ve gone in the past, we always go to the Canadian side, and the tourist facilities are much more developed there. Casinos, three observation towers, a huge Ferris wheel, and a strip packed with schlocky traps: Hard Rock Cafe, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, wax museums, laser mazes, gloppy food as far as the eye can see—in other words, America. By contrast, the American side has older hotels and a much more subdued feel. It’s like the roles of the two countries were reversed.

Figuring the border was still closed during the pandemic, I decided to walk as many of the trails here as I could. Lindsay likes the American side better. Sure enough, Goats Island is in the US, and was landscaped by the great Frederick Law Olmsted. Here is the route I took.

The southern tip of the route took you to the Three Sisters Islands, with the pre-fall rapids swirling all around. You felt like you were in a small boat about to be swept over.

Next is Terrapin Point, the American edge of Horseshoe Falls, the main event, the most powerful waterfall in North America. It’s only 167 feet, but that’s four of the five Great Lakes going over the edge.

It brought back my physics lectures about power (watts) being a product of pressure (voltage, or in this case the height of the falls) and current (amperes, the volume of water going over). Thus Angel Falls, 2000 feet high but with much less water, might have as much power as Niagara. Or a static electricity spark (20,000 volts but minimal current) might equal a car battery, 12 volts but enough amps to crank a cold engine. Or a time exposure with a narrow aperture letting in the same light as a fast shuttter speed with a wide open lens.

All very interesting, but better just to stand silently and feel the energy thrumming in front of you, and marvel that the mist below makes its own rainbows.

Speaking of power, it was Nikola Tesla who first harnessed the power of Niagara into electricity. A vivid statue commemorates the achievement.

If only Elon Musk could be so humble.

On to the other side of Goat Island, where American Falls is actually split by Luna Island into Bridal Veil Falls, plunging down to the tourist trap Cave of the Winds, where you take a elevator down to be buffeted by the spray, protected by these dry-cleaning-bag ponchos they give you.

On the other side of Luna Island is American Falls proper, poor cousin to Horseshoe but no slouch, you can see how the US side only gets a sidelong view, although that weird observation tower looked promising. Or maybe the Rainbow Bridge to Canada behind it.

I tried to get up there but no, the cantilevered platform is closed, and the bridge is only for customers going to the elevator down to the Maid of the Mist boats, still running in this frigid weather.

OK, maybe the Rainbow Bridge, could I sneak across the border? Um no.

I hiked another mile or so downstream, looking for a better vantage point, but this was the best I could do. You can see the cluster of development in Canada, with their superior view.

Back to the Rainbow Bridge, could I get through legitimately?

What have I got to lose? The pedestrian gate was not exactly welcoming.

I tested those subway gates, and to my surprise they turned. They would let me through, but not back. Nobody at the window, but I pushed the buzzer and the customs lady said they couldn’t stop me from going through, but I’d have to go through customs to get back in. Thank heavens I got that enhanced driver’s license a few years back.

I went halfway across the bridge, where flags ands a sign marked the actual border. I sneaked just a toe across to Canada—it occurred to me that on this whole huge trip this was as close as I planned to get to another country—and finally got the picture I was looking for.

By now I’d been at it for almost four hours; The Hawk (our childhood name for an icy wind) was unrelenting. Time to end my Niagara-on-the-cheap tour. Went to the 7-11 for groceries for dinner and breakfast, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.

Lindsay was right, the American side is pretty cool. Sure glad I didn’t try to bike today.

Distance 6.6 miles, (walking only, not added to total) Time 3 3/4 hours with stops. Elevation gain 833 feet.

Brockport to Niagara Falls, NY Thursday, April 29, 2021

The title of today’s blog is a medical pun. The substantia nigra is a pigmented part of the basal ganglia of the brain that plays a prominent role in Parkinson Disease. A number of family and friends, some of whom I hope to visit on this trip, suffer from PD, along with celebrities such as Michael J Fox and Muhammad Ali. It’s a devastating and progressive condition of tremor, rigidity, and dementia that is difficult to treat. One of the most promising methods is to place electrodes into the substantia nigra.

The Niagara escarpment is a substantial step, or shelf, that arches for many hundreds of miles through New York, Ontario, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Niagara River drops 167 ft over it between Lakes Erie and Ontario at the famous falls, and the Erie Canal climbs it at Lockport, NY.

Ever since Little Falls a week ago, my canal route has been basically flat. There was the occasional small lock, but any elevation gained each day has been from forays to the side. This would change at Lockport.

Getting there was interesting. Rain was forecast all day, but hadn’t yet started when I left Brockport. I wanted to do as much of the stone dust towpath as I could before it got soft from the rain. There was a gentle tail wind, so cruising along was fairly easy, and I surprised myself by riding over 40 miles without stopping. I’d never done that before. The rain started very gradually, more as a heavy mist, and I resisted putting on my rain shell until the last 5 miles. The escarpment gradually materialized from the mist and looked substantial indeed.

It was hard to get a good photo in the rain. The road rises steeply, right next to the original “flight of five locks” that was quite the technical wonder when built in 1825. To the left are the modern locks, which scale the escarpment in two stages. I started to pedal up using my lowest gear, but was afraid my drive belt might slip in the rain so I walked up the rest of it. I was pretty soaked and tired at the top after 43 miles and 167 feet of climbing. Thankfully, there was and espresso shop right there, and when they saw my bedraggled state they made an exception to the “no indoor dining” rule.

Well I’d climbed the escarpment, might as well watch the Niagara River go over it. The falls were only 25 miles from the canal, and although it was raining steadily I still had that gentle tail wind. While drying out and having a nutritious meal of espresso and the most icing-laden cinnamon bun I’ve ever had, I managed to score a three star hotel by the falls for $56. Also had fun talking to Mary, who lost her long-standing job at Barnes and Noble and went back to school at age 50, becoming an optician.

The ride over wasn’t so bad, except for my right upper quadrant. My biliary tract was taking exception to my food choices.

I remembered that Sharon, one of my besties from college, grew up near the infamous Love Canal superfund site near Niagara Falls, NY. She’d moved to the west coast early on, is now a veterinarian in San Diego, I hope to visit her on this trip. But one of my many goals is to witness America’s dark side, so I figured, let’s see how close she was to that massive environmental disaster. It was on my way.

There was nothing to see, of course. The superfund cleanup was deemed complete in 2004, it’s just a fenced in grassland that’s still being monitored. Sharon’s home was about 30 blocks away, and although she tried to help me find it by texting, I was unsuccessful. So much for my attempt at stalking.

It was cool to bike the last miles along the Niagara River, and watch it slowly become roiled into the rapids leading into the falls. The hotel was two blocks away from the cataract itself, it was still raining, sightseeing can wait until tomorrow. I could hear the roar and see the mist from my hotel room. The hotel had a branch of the famous Anchor Bar, whose flagship restaurant was where Buffalo Wings were invented. I’ve been to the original, there is always a long line, so I decided to eat here. My culinary tour of New York was supposed to include local specialties tomato pie, a “garbage plate”in Rochester (Lindsay balked at that one) and Beef on Weck. At least I got the wings, which went well with the earlier cinnamon bun (not).

I passed 500 miles today, and sang the wistful Peter Paul and Mary song. The Proclaimers will have to wait, that song is really about 1000 miles anyway.

Distance 69.1 miles, 564 total. Time 8 3/4 hours with stops. Elevation gain 420 feet.

Rochester to Brockport New York Wednesday, April 28, 2021

This is a case of one picture being worth 1000 words. Here is the track of my route today, recorded by my Apple Watch. The big green dot is the starting point, Lindsay‘s house, and the red dot is my destination, a motel in Brockport.

The obvious thing would be to just make a beeline from point A to point B. This is what we did 14 years ago, we had left the canal just beyond Fairport, went directly to Lindsay‘s house, and we rejoined the canal on the Genesee River south of Rochester Center, near the airport on the map.

In doing this, though, we bypassed 12 miles on the canal, miles I heard were beautiful and quite unique. I had not intended to make a fetish of doing the entire Canalway this trip, but except for that short difficult stretch of soft stone dust before Little Falls, it worked out that I had done exactly that. Now that the canal was 3/4 complete, it was hard to break the streak. Smell the roses. How difficult could it be to return to the point where I had left the canal yesterday?

Pretty bloody difficult, it turned out. The Google maps lady tried to take me back via Route 31, but she didn’t know that two bridges were out, necessitating large detours. That’s why my track looks kind of like a bowtie, as I thrashed around trying to get to that starting point at far right. Long story short, I wound up going 48 miles instead of 22. I passed a sign that said “Canal Trail” where somebody had a erased the C. Yeah, that’s about right.

People often ask me why I don’t travel with someone else. Any further questions?

Those “missing” Canal miles were very nice, but nothing particularly special. I waited out a thunderstorm in a Tim Horton’s (thank you, Canada) and the weather got nicer—sunny, warmer, but still with a 10 mph headwind. I had been looking forward to this last stretch between Rochester and Buffalo. The Erie Canal has been revised four times over the years, and up until now you never knew which iteration of the canal you were following. Beyond Rochester, however, all four revisions used the same route, it was cool to think that the original Clinton’s Ditch was the same as the current active canal. In the summer, there would be lots of boats. Now, however, Canal had been partially drained for repairs, so it wasn’t that scenic. It was wide, though, so they were less trees to break that headwind. I had hoped to go father, but wound up stopping at Brockport.

Overall, a nice day, but also kind of whack. Supposed to rain for the next two days. Might as well go see Niagara Falls.

Distance 48 miles, 493.9 total. Time 9 1/2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,121 feet.

Lyons to Rochester NY Tuesday, April 27, 2021

When you get a day like this, where everything goes right and there is such a a surplus of fun experiences, you almost wish you could save them up and distribute them to the more challenging days.

For the first time in eight days, I had an actual tailwind. Just a mild one, but what a difference, the miles just seemed to fly by. I had to be careful I didn’t arrive at my destinations too early. The sun was out, in the mid-60s, I was able to strip down to short sleeves and sandals, and everything was right in the world. Boring to read about, but wonderful to experience.

Anne served me duck eggs and a multigrain oatmeal to die for, topped with raw milk and maple syrup from their own trees; she even gave me a sample to cook up on the road. Carl was quite intrigued with my fancy bicycle, and we geeked out on bike tales for quite a while.

The stone dust towpath was in great shape, always within sight of the canal, whose waters seemed a placid river to draw me along. I was too blissed out to stop to take a picture.

I managed to connect with Beth, the sister of Pam from my first warmshowers night, who had biked across the country and also up the entire East Coast. Over cappuccino and croissants, we talked for over an hour about our experiences and the joys of bike touring, and I gained some valuable tips.

Then the pièce de résistance: seeing my dear cousin Lindsay, the first familiar face for seven days. Lindsay is a professor of theater arts at Nazareth College, herself an actor and renowned director; her husband Bill just retired as a paleontologist specializing in fossilized mouse teeth, he has a desk at the Rochester Museum, where he continues to do his research. Bill made a great chicken dinner, and we stayed up as late as we could talking about our families, many of whom I will be visiting in the coming months, if lucky. Lindsay is president of the faculty senate, and is up to her ears in end-of-the-academic-year stuff. Nazareth, like many independent small colleges, is profoundly challenged by the pandemic and the national reconsideration of the return-on-investment role of a college education. This was not the best timing for me to visit, but Bill and Lindsay opened up their home (and washing machine) and made me feel so pampered.

It will be weeks, perhaps months, before I see a familiar face again. All along, I have been blessed to meet such interesting and kind people who have shared a bit of their lives with me, but in the end, there’s nothing like family.

Distance 38.5 miles, 445.9 total. Time 6 1/2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 594 feet.

Syracuse to Lyons NY. Monday April 26, 2021

I knew I would have to pay the piper. Cutting yesterday short meant having to cycle 56 miles into a bitter headwind today to make up for lost time. I left my sinfully sumptuous hotel by 8 AM, and was a bit startled to find myself in big city Monday morning rush hour traffic, it’d been awhile since I’d dealt with that. Luckily, I have a crazy bright rear flasher to use in such situations.

This time I followed the Erie Canalway route out of town, or tried to. I was happy to thread my way through a series of bike paths, protected lanes, even a beautiful stretch along the rapids of Onondaga Creek, tucked into the cityscape, until the marker signs abruptly stopped and I hit a dead end. Had I missed a turn? I backtracked half a mile to the last Canalway sign and confirmed that nope, the signs just stopped. Maybe they’d been vandalized. Having to search around in that traffic, in 25 degree windchill, wearing so many layers of gloves it was hard to peel them off and mess with the cell phone—well, chalk it up to paying the piper. I eventually found the signs again, excited that the route was going to take me by the city’s restored Onondaga lakefront when I got shut down again by a Trail Closed sign. Rats! I could see a spanking-new bikeway arching ahead over a graceful bridge, but I knew better than to skirt around the sign. Probably lead to another dead end.

So here I was, marooned in the same tangle of industrial highways I followed yesterday to the Destiny USA center, complete with the sewage treatment fumes. Muttering, I peeled off my sweaty/icy gloves and got Google Maps to show me the way out of there. It took me on a wide loop through miles of shoulderless, broken glass-strewn congested thoroughfares. I could glimpse the lake between warehouses, and took comfort that if I’d been able to get to the lakeshore, the headwinds would have been brutal. The Canalway is promising, but not quite ready for prime time.

After an hour of this I was thankfully back on the stone dust towpath, with trees mitigating the wind, and things slowly started looking up. At 25 miles I passed the Weedsport motel, if I’d pushed on last night I would have gotten there at 9 PM. Despite my morning ordeal, I was glad I’d opted for the Crown Plaza.

The watered canal and towpath went on for 25 miles, really quite beautiful. I only passed occasional walkers/bikers on this chilly Monday. The sweaty/icy gloves thing prevented me from getting any pictures, but they wouldn’t really have captured the bucolic serenity of the scene. Next came the longest stretch of road miles on the Canalway, 15 moderately hilly miles with expansive views of farmland, then back on the canal for the home stretch.

Anne and Carl have opened up their lovely home to Warmshowers, and what a gift it is. Retired engineers from the EPA in DC, they have restored an 1840s farmhouse to tasteful elegance, a working farm with cattle, chickens, pigs, geese, and sustainable agriculture. Anne estimates they grow/raise 80% of what they consume. They have a solar array that overflows into the grid and gives them free power year round. I was so impressed: after years of talking the talk in DC, they are walking the walk. They served me a farm-to-table feast, and our conversation lasted well past sunset. They are active cyclists and have 3 tandems.

I write this snuggled down in a four poster bed. What a finish!

Distance 57.7 miles, 407.8 total. Time 9 hours with stops. Elevation gain 964 feet.

Canastota to Syracuse, New York Sunday, April 25, 2021

It was raining in the morning, and I had to Loctite all 44 screws on my Ortlieb panniers, so I didn’t get out of the motel until noon.

A number of friends have told me I shouldn’t focus on the goal so much, just enjoy the journey, and be sure to smell the roses. Seven miles into today’s trip, I saw I was only a couple of miles north of L. Frank Baum’s birthplace in Chittenango and decided that rose was worth sniffing. I have fond memories from the 60s of the family gathering around the TV when “The Wizard of Oz“ was aired every year. My daughter Hope feels a particular connection to the musical “Wicked”, her first Broadway show, centered around the wicked witch of the west, given the name Elphaba, derived from Baum’s name. But most poignantly, it evokes my father’s final message to us, saying “we’re off to see the wizard.” More about that later.

The little museum was closed on this Sunday, but it was fun to look in the windows and see that all the sidewalks in the town center were paved with yellow bricks.

The stone dust was in great shape, and I passed many Sunday walkers and bikers along the placid canal. Rather abruptly I saw some skyscrapers in the distance, I was approaching Syracuse. The route shifted to a clever bike path in the median strip of an arterial road, I have only seen this technique once before, on Pennsylvania Avenue in my hometown of Washington DC. It got me safely into the center of town, it was weird to be in a city. Hope’s best friend went to Syracuse University, and mentioned that the must-see was, wait for it, Dinosaur Barbecue. This was the original, the flagship, how could I resist?

Even at 3 PM on a Sunday it was a half hour wait to get in, I sat at the bar and told them I was on a research project, to see how their Big Ass Pork compared to the one in Troy. Syracuse won by a nose.

I needed a specialty shop you could only find in a big city, and Google maps directed me to the Destiny USA Center, reached through a maze of industrial highways clustered around a sewage treatment plant. The center turned out to be a massive shopping mall, I have not been in one of those for decades. Like most malls, it had partially gone to seed, a lot of the storefronts were vacant. It was almost comical, took me forever to find the shop I was looking for, most of the touchscreen directory kiosks were broken, and nobody seemed to know where my store was. It was just as bewildering finding my way back out again. I felt like such a hick.

By then it was 5:30, and I still had 25 miles to go to my next Thruway-side motel in Weedsport. Just for fun I checked Priceline to see what was available in Syracuse, and found that the swanky Crowne Plaza Hotel was actually cheaper than the Weedsport motel. Time to sniff the roses once again. I sweet-talked my way at the front desk into a room on the 19th floor, and even though the windows were partially fogged up it was a spectacular way to end the day, the sunset was amazing. I watched it as I talked with my good buddy Steve Shepard, who is devoting one his Natural Curiosity Project podcasts to this trip.

Even better, I found a Warmshowers for tomorrow, the roses are saving me some serious scratch. It will be 54 miles into a chilly headwind, but worth it.

Distance 30.1 miles, 350.1 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 162 feet.

Little Falls to Canastota, New York Saturday, April 24, 2021

This is from the Springsteen version of the old Erie Canal song.

And today, Spring had finally arrived! Sunny, highs in the upper 60s, and only a 13 mph headwind! Like Bruce, I felt sprung from cages. The Mohawk had broken free from the gorge it was in, the land opened up, and I no longer had to climb a wall if I wanted to deviate from the route.

Time to make tracks. Rain was forecast for tomorrow, so it made sense to put in some serious miles today. When I say serious, I mean 65 miles. Pretty lame, compared to what I used to be able to do, but this journey is all about adjusting expectations, aging gracefully, making a passage. Hopefully, I’ll get stronger as I go.

A word on the topography. The last few days were all about the Mohawk dropping down to the Hudson, going over serious rapids at Cohoes and Little Falls, carving that gorge. The most dramatic defile was at the Noses, right before Canajoharie, where the River cut through a prominent ridge of the Adirondacks, and passed between the headlands Big Nose and Little Nose. Eagles were said to soar there, but I was too tucked down into that headwind to see or get a picture. I’ve brought along a GoPro, my birthday present, but haven’t had the time to figure out how to use it. Or maybe I don’t want to look dorkier than I already do, with a camera mounted on my helmet.

Little Falls has one of the highest-lift locks in the world, with unique “Guillotine gates”. Yikes.

But now I was up at the Rome Level, a long stretch of relative flatness with few locks, centered on the town of Rome NY. Here’s where the work on the Canal started back in 1817. They dug in both directions over this easy terrain, trying to make fast progress to satisfy their investors.

Rome itself is a cool town, not just for the Springsteen shout-out or the controversial Woodstock 99 concert, but for a little known chapter of the Revolutionary War. Fort Stanwix and the nearby Oriskany Battlefield were where heroic Nicolas Herkimer held off British general Barry St Leger’s attempt to unite with Johnny Burgoyne and cut the colonies in two. In what was considered to be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution, Herkimer was mortally wounded but continued to direct the battle as he sat dying under a tree. St Leger didn’t get through, Burgoyne was later defeated at Saratoga, the French were convinced that these ragtag Colonials had a chance and joined the cause, and we got ourselves a country.

I’d say Fort Stanwix was worth a picture. Good thing, too, ’cause it made me look down and see another “for want of a nail” screw had shaken loose on the stone dust trail, and my pannier was hanging by a thread. Steve from my first warmshowers home had commented on the blog I should get some Loctite compound to secure these screws, and like magic there was an Ace Hardware adjacent to the Fort, and a very helpful clerk who directed me to the Loctite and a proper Torx driver to tighten them all properly. Like Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Making the repair burned up an hour, so the sun was setting as I pulled into the motel at Canastota. At least the wind had died down, so I was making good time. I met the first long distance bike tourists of the trip, they were heading east from Buffalo to Albany. That was the smart choice, they had the wind at their backs. One of them had done the southern tier route across the country in February, which is part of my plan as well, and we talked about the effect of the wind on that.

Did I mention that it’s all about the wind? 🌬

Distance 65.3 miles, 319.1 total. Time 9 1/2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 694 feet.

Amsterdam to Little Falls, New York Friday, April 23, 2021

Well I needn’t have worried. It was cold but the sun was shining, and my gear was adequate to keep me fairly warm. I was delighted to make 10 mph, which doesn’t sound like much on a flat surface, but the headwind was significant, mitigated only somewhat by the trees. Stopped for breakfast at the Berean Bean in Canajoharie, it was lovely to talk to the owner Carol and her friends Matt and Teresa. Matt is a pastor in the local church, and they both are recovering from Covid, although only Teresa got sick. Fortunately, she did not need to be hospitalized.

When I tried to pay up, they said it was by donation only, and they only took cash. I tried to go out to the bike to fetch it, but they would have none of it, insisted on treating me, despite my protests. Just another demonstration that while bike touring, it’s the people who are the highpoints.

I had to get to the motel by 1:30 for a zoom call, but was on pace and feeling pretty great. 8 miles away, however, the path changed from paved to stone dust. This is commonly used on bike paths, and is usually easy to negotiate, but in this case it was treacherous. Maybe because it rained yesterday, or that it had not yet been packed down by regular usage, but it was like cycling through sand. My speed dropped to 4 mph, and I had to struggle to keep from wiping out in the loose ruts. My bike has big tires, 700 x 40 C, which can usually handle off-road surfaces just fine. I suppose I could’ve let air out of the tires for better flotation, but it’s awkward to pump them back up again.

After 2 miles of this, despairing of reaching the motel on time, I bailed out and got on the adjacent highway. It wasn’t too traffic-y, the shoulders were adequate, and the hills not too bad. However the trees were wide open, so the effect of the headwind was dramatic.

I did make it to the motel just in time, but with more of a struggle that I had hoped for. One of my favorite comediennes was Gilda Radner, of the early Saturday Night Live. She had a great routine as Roseanne Rosannadanna, where she would launch in tirades invariably ending with an exasperated “it’s always something”.

Gilda died too young of ovarian cancer, but not before she wrote a memoir entitled “It’s Always Something”😔

Distance 43.5 miles, 253.8 total. Time 4 1/2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 682 feet.

Amsterdam, New York. Wednesday and Thursday, April 21-22, 2021

The weather only worsened after yesterday’s chilly encounter with a headwind. The WNW winds increased to 20-30 mph with gusts up to 50, a couple of inches of snow were predicted, with temperatures in the low 30s and wind chills in the low 20s. This wouldn’t have stopped me on my bicycle commutes, but I did not plan for weather this cold.

Appalachian Trail hikers refer to “taking a zero”, when they go into town and spend a day recuperating, not putting in any trail miles at all. My motel is nothing special, but it’s cheap and clean and a decent place to hunker down.

I got a tear in my bike shorts, and nobody wants to see that. I didn’t bring a sewing kit, which wouldn’t have worked on Lycra anyway, so I decided to ask the “experts” at Joann’s Fabrics across town. Just three miles away, but it meant dropping down the 200 feet back to the Canal, and back up 600 feet on the other side. Not exactly going rim to rim on the Grand Canyon, but still daunting in the wind and rain.

There was an “easter egg” at the canal I hadn’t noticed yesterday. Amsterdam is one of those once–glorious towns that has gone to seed, its riverfront almost lost in a tangle of highway off ramps, but they recently added a pedestrian bridge with interpretive signs and sculptures that were really kind of touching.

Cranking up the other side I passed from the sublime to the ridiculous. Joann’s was in one of those strips with endless big box stores and pedestrian-unfriendly highways, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. The ladies helped me with tips about back-to-back iron on patches, though. I was hoping to build up a head of momentum dropping back into the gorge that would get me up the other side, but got diverted to a maze of construction detours. Meanwhile the rain had turned to snow and the crosswinds intensified, I was glad to have stayed put.

The motel clerk David was very helpful with an ironing board and iron, and I chatted with him as I made the repair (sandwiched between pillowcase sheets) in the lobby and did my laundry. Also there was a cross-country truck driver, Michael, who was marooned here, just like me, waiting for a part for his 18-wheeler. I have always been fascinated by long haul truckers, who seem to me to be the cowboys of the modern age. He was remarkably erudite and well informed, and it emerged he had lost custody of his son, and resolved to end his “poor choices” and educate himself about a career in hydroponics. The three of us talked for almost an hour. Human connections like these are one of the highlights of the trip.

While remounting my panniers back in the room, I made a horrifying discovery. A critical screw had come loose and couldn’t be found after scouring the whole room. These Ortlieb waterproof panniers from Germany are fantastic, but their hardware is specialized and has to be ordered. The “for want of a nail…the kingdom was lost” proverb echoed in my head as I searched around. Jane says I tend to catastrophize things. I calmed down, cannibalized a screw from a less-critical spot on the pannier, and tightened it and all the other screws in the set with my Swiss Army knife. Good thing, many of them had started to loosen.

I ordered replacement screws to come to my cousin Lindsay in Rochester, where I had originally planned to be in two days. Not bloody likely, it’s still 200 miles away. As I informed her of the delay, I couldn’t resist paraphrasing Dylan.

Oh, Lindsay, could this really be the end / To be stuck inside of Amsterdam with those Rochester blues again?

Distance 9.6 miles, 210.4 total. Time 1 1/2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 805 feet.

Addendum: the second day was just as bad, with winds that actually did hit 50 mph. I took a second “zero” day, and didn’t even leave the motel. I caught up on my sleep, worked on the blog, and read the newspapers. It was great to have a truly “down” day, ironic that it happened to be Earth Day.

I write this contemporaneously, early on the morning of 4/23/21, it’s still windy but the temperature is moderating. I am going to try to make a break for it. The next motel is 43 miles away and I’ve been warned it’s “pretty shabby”. Hopefully I won’t get turned around by the wind, and have to take a third zero here.

Troy to Amsterdam, New York. Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Up till now, I have been heading south, to get to Ground Zero. Now it’s time to head west, hopefully all the way to the Pacific. And what better way to start that on the legendary Erie Canal?

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the canal. Although seen as a backwater in this day and age, when it was built it represented the epitome of human innovation. The farsighted New York governor, Dewitt Clinton, saw this was an opportunity to make his state gain national prominence.

He took advantage of a happy accident of geography. As I mentioned earlier, the Appalachian mountains, though low compared to the Rockies, formed a natural barrier against westward migration. Traversing them was hazardous, the roads were poor if even existent, the indigenous people not always friendly, and there was no easy way to haul any cargo.

Clinton saw that the Hudson River, and its tributary the Mohawk, carved a natural valley through these mountains, with only a few rapids (none below Troy). Where the Mohawk petered out, it was fairly flat all the way to Lake Erie, with only the Niagara escarpment to contend with. He had the audacious idea to dig a canal, with locks around the rapids and up the escarpment, 360 miles from Albany to Buffalo. The project, derided by skeptics as “Clinton’s Ditch,” was completed in 1825, and almost immediately became an international sensation.

It changed everything. Now it was fairly easy and cheap to break through to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi riverine system. New York City became the gateway to the west, and the state became the Empire State. Towns like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady sprung up along the canal, and soon became a major cities. The route became the innovative equivalent of the Silicon Valley of the 1800s, attracting companies like General Electric, and later Kodak and Xerox. Rockefeller’s family got its start near the canal. The flood of innovation attracted people from all over the world, and many religions were started there, it was often referred to as the “burned over district.” Some of these were prominent, like the Oneida community, but most died out, with the exception of the Mormon church, which started with Joseph Smith’s vision on Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, outside of Rochester.

I could go on and on, but time has not been kind to the Erie Canal. The original ditch has been revised four times, the thoroughfare is now the New York State Barge Canal system, and only parts of it follow the original route. Canal shipping has fallen off over the years, of course. The rush of innovation has moved elsewhere, and many of the cities have fallen on comparatively hard times, and are mere shadows of their former glory. There has been something of a comeback in recent years, however, fueled in part by historical tourism. Much of the original Canal it has been restored, at least in the form of the Canalway Trail, which is almost complete, anticipating the Ditch’s bicentennial in 2025.

For me, the canal was as attractive as it must’ve been to the early settlers. What’s not to like? An almost-flat pathway to the west, scenically and historically significant, with a fair number of tourists support facilities along the way. I couldn’t wait to get started.

It did start out great. There was a sharp climb at the beginning corresponding to the Cohoes Falls of the Mohawk River, but after that it was quite flat and beautiful. In most cases, the pavement was in good shape, there were occasional sections with stone dust and scattered areas undergoing construction. I was in bliss, just like yesterday. The route took me through the historic and beautiful stockade district in Schenectady.

Alas, reality intervened. The wind shifted to the west, right in my face. I had to tuck down deep into my drops, or my aero bars. That’s fine for a few minutes. After a while the need to crane your neck got oppressive, and in my case tweaked some cervical nerves, leading do a heavy feeling in my left arm I had to repeatedly shake out (don’t worry, this was not cardiac).

The temperature was 51 and still somewhat sunny, but the relentless wind was chilling and I had to zip up my parka, which led to sweating and even more chilling. I had hoped to go 50 miles that day, but I realized I was lucky to make 40. I had an important phone call at 3 PM, so I took it at the table of an outdoor café that was somewhat out of the wind. Afterwards, a very nice man had spied my bike and had lots of questions, and I am always happy to talk about myself. However, the whole process had me sitting for an hour in damp clothes, and I was thoroughly chilled.

The thing about the Canalway Trail is, as long as you stay on the canal you are fine. However the walls of the valley are close by. My motel was up by the Thruway, and a 200 foot climb. Typically, not much but in my chilled state it was quite arduous. I collapsed in my room and striped my clothes, desperate to take a long hot shower. I was grateful for a good Chinese restaurant nearby that delivered.

So overall, a good day, but not quite the blue ribbon day I had before. I am going to have to figure out a way to deal with headwinds, fully aware that the predominant winds will be out of the west.

Distance 41.5 miles, 200.9 total. Time 5 1/2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,124 feet.