Saturday September 22, 2012

Binghamton to Scranton, PA   106 KM  640m Vertical climb  

 We       We left Binghamton NY at 9:45 and crossed into Pennsylvania 1 hour later.  We headed south against the wind all day.   I am driving a new bike today – a Specialized tri-Cross.   I guess it will be all right, but it is not my deVinci.  It’s sad to end a love affair after 6 years of passion. 

Bridge built by the Lackawana Railroad in 1915

  My new bike performed well as we climbed and descended all day.  Pennsylvania met my expectations, an industrial landscape with decaying industries.  The Lackawanna viaduct, despite being 100 years old, still is an impressive concrete memorial.    After the first16 km the highway we travelled became a nice, smooth, well-maintained road and we cycled through PA in safety. 

Friday September 21, 2012

  Binghamton Chenango Point Cycles

            There were a few cycle shops in the Yellow Pages but most of them were between 10 and 65 miles from our motel so we settled on the nearest. The taxi driver that fetched us from Greene had left us his number and he came straight round this morning to take us to the bike shop. It was with considerable relief that we found a bike of the right type and size and the shop owner had the time to transfer all the necessary parts from Tim’s old bike (luggage racks, mudguards, wheels) to the new one by mid-afternoon. Richard, the taxi driver, even waited while this was all agreed and then took us back to the motel. That was it then until we got the call that the bike was ready. Tim is now the proud (but poor) owner of a Specialized triCross bike and once we were mobile we set off to do a bit of shopping and get the laundry done. A trip to the cinema to see the new Clint Eastwood film (Trouble with the Curve) followed by supper at Applebee’s nicely rounded off this successful but expensive day. I think the enormous Glenlivet that the waitress served made it seem like a wonderful day but then that’s just me.

Thursday September 20, 2012

Hamilton to Binghamton 75Km 350m climbed.

We had a nice motel last night, a little more expensive than the budgeted but it was the only choice. At least breakfast was included. It was a beautiful day, a cool start but sunny blue skies. We set off through the middle of Hamilton and headed south for Binghamton. We had been told to look out for the Colgate University on the way out of town. Neither of us had heard of it before but it is an Ivy League university and well worth looking at. Beautiful buildings set on a forested hillside. We rode around the campus and took some pictures and shortly before we left a student came over to talk to us. He gave us some background on the university such as: 2800 students, they are the number 2 earners as a group among US graduates, fees $55000 a year (where did I go wrong). He is there on a scholarship so we figured he must be pretty clever to be there. He has hiked across Lebanon and the Golan heights and used public transport to get from Ethiopia to South Africa, which we found pretty impressive for somebody so young. He came to talk to us because he wants to cycle across the US from Maine to Seattle or, if he can get the money for the air fare, from France to Bulgaria and he does not have any experience of long bike tours hence there were many questions. After a long and fruitful chat we had to leave and make our way south. It was difficult because we were both very saddle sore. Insufficient training and averaging over 70 miles a day was taking its toll so we were thinking about taking a day off in Binghamton. As it turned out we did not have to think about it. We made our way through Sherburne (where we had lunch), bypassed New Berlin and headed for Norwich. Norwich looked promising for an overnight stop but we really had not done enough (50km) so we pressed on to Oxford. Oxford was just as big a splodge as Norwich on the map but there was next to nothing there so on we went. We stopped on the side of the road for a break and TimB complained about his bike wobbling so we checked the steering etc and couldn’t find any loose bits so we carried on. At Greene (75km) we had to stop at some road works and Tim said his bike was worse and then he found that the down tube, just below the steering tube, was cracked three quarters of the way round. Now that was a showstopper. I can deal with a lot of technical problems on the road but I must confess to not having packed the welding kit. We pushed our bikes over the road (works) to the petrol station where TimB phoned for a taxi for the remaining 19 miles to Binghamton while I tried to cadge a lift off pickup drivers on the forecourt. TimB was more successful than I so we ended up with a taxi ride into town. Once we had checked into the motel TimB got to work with the Yellow Pages and Internet to find a bike shop in town. It is too late to do anything until tomorrow so we get a days rest anyway. I get to write the blog because Tim is still traumatised from the loss of his bike and the expense of replacing it. We will be posting bank details for generous donations to this calamitous loss. 

Wednesday September 19, 2012

Old Forge, New York to Hamilton, New York 128 KM   750m Vertical climb

Downtown Old Forge - Deer

Old Forge is a picturesque small village in the Adirondacks and its most distinctive feature is the deer roaming through the city.  They were visible last night, and this morning, as we came out of our motel room, we had 4 deer feeding on our lawn.  Nice friendly animals. 

We had a slow start this morning as we had to do the laundry first.  There were a lot of soggy clothes from yesterday.  We left Old Forge at 10:45. The road was mostly downhill and we covered the first 50 km in 2 hours.  We had a better than expected lunch at a roadside pub and hit the road again.  In preparation for the trip I had mapped the route using Goggle Maps.  So far the road has been so straightforward I have ignored the maps. In the afternoon we had to navigate around Utica and goggle maps failed us.  Because the street signs do not always match the maps (ie. route 69 instead of Oriskaney road) we didn’t know if we were lost or not so we reverted to using major highways instead of scenic byways.  We ended up at a hotel that didn’t rent rooms and had to hop on our bikes and pedal 25km to the next town that had some motels.  We arrived just at sunset.  We are in Hamilton, New York where Colgate University is situated.

Lunch Time Pub - Barneveld

 

White Lake - Adirondacks

Tuesday September 18, 2012

 Tupper Lake to Old Forge  112Km, 1157m vertical climb
The forecast for today was for showers followed by continuous rain after midday with strong winds developing in the afternoon. When we started to leave the motel it had already started to rain so we went back and put on the rain jackets. It was just as well we did because the weather gods decided to skip the showers bit and give us continuous heavy rain for the whole of the 112km to Old Forge. The village with restaurants after only 30km was too soon so we carried on, only to find that, thereafter, restaurants and cafes were either derelict or only open at weekends. That meant we had to do the whole stage on an egg McMuffin and coffee plus a couple of granola bars, and we had run out of Gatorade so to say we were hungry and thirsty when we arrived in Old Forge is a bit of an understatement. This situation has, in the meantime, been suitably rectified. Despite the rainy weather we had, we were lucky in the end because, five minutes after checking into the motel, the serious bit of the storm hit.

Monday September 17, 2012

Malone, NY to Tupper Lake NY  97Km 750m vertical climb 

First on the to do list was a visit to a local store for phone cards and a memory card for TimB’s (wife’s) camera.  Despite being the tour IT expert he managed to make the card unrecognisable for the Notepad AND the camera. The weather was excellent and the clear sky forecast meant that I had to cream up a bright red face from the first stage. The stage started off tough and stayed that way. The first 15km were uphill and thereafter each decline was followed by a hill a bit higher than the last one. There were no opportunities to pull in for a tea break so we targeted a place call Paul Smith’s that was signposted about 35 miles away. It turned out that Paul Smith’s is a college and we stood outside the entrance with no apparent place to go for lunch. TimB stopped a motorist leaving the college and asked if there was a restaurant in the area and he was told that there was one a few miles towards Lake Placid. That would have meant a big detour that we did not want to do so we decided to try the college on the grounds that they must have a restaurant of some sort and we could only be rejected on the grounds of ineligibility. We followed road signs through the grounds and parked the bikes outside the St.Regis Café where many students were entering the building. Well, we went in and nobody batted an eyelid so our confidence rose and as the students queued to turn left we turned right into the St. Regis café. That is where we stopped for a second because the cloth covered tables, uniformed waitresses and panorama windows overlooking the terrace and Lower St. Regis Lake made us both think we would at least be turned away if not arrested. Far from it, an extremely attractive sophomore student took us to a table and gave us her utmost attention for the next hour. We had smoked pork and red bean soup, crayfish and shrimp pie and finished off with banana slices in a hot caramel sauce on a bed of vanilla ice cream all for ten dollars. Yep 10$!! TimB busied himself with his camera to take a picture of our waitress while I tried to figure how to tell him we should forget the tour and check into the college for a month. In the end he pointed out that his wife was only about 2 hours away by car so it was much safer to carry on the tour. Duly fortified were continued on to Tupper Lake where we found a lakeside motel and a restaurant (with the all important liquor licence) just down the road. Unfortunately, several bottles of 5.4% Blue Moon beer rendered us both unable to write the blog afterwards, hence the delay. 

Sunday September 16, 2012

            Pointe Claire to Malone, New York  130 km

We left Pointe Claire at 9 AM and headed west to Vaudreuil, the Soulange Canal and Valleyfield.  At the St Lawrence Seaway we waited for 20 minutes for a boat to go under the bridge.   We passed through the village of Huntington, under a covered bridge and then through the metropolis of Elgin, Quebec.   We tried crossing at Jamison Road, but we were refused entry because Euro Tim is an alien.  We trekked 15 km down the road to Trout River and entered the USA legally.  We then rode just 18 km to Malone but it was uphill all the way.

            We found the first day to be tough.  Somewhere around the 100km mark we both were wishing for a shower, supper and a beer.   This being Sunday we had to settle for a shower and supper.