Deacon Matt's Blog

Updated on Day 5 to include the details of Day 4…

Miles today: 29.62, Total miles: 160.46

After typing up a very lengthy blog entry on my tiny phone keyboard, WordPress crashed and I lost it all. So the story of our travels up to, and through downtown Syracuse will have to wait for tomorrow when my frustration level has recovered 🙂 and I can get to a full keyboard!

Here are a few pictures and a link to today’s route. Enjoy.
http://j.mp/aLKlo9
Peace!
Dc. Matt

UPDATE:

So, here’s the more complete story of our Day 4 adventures…

We began our day in Weedsport, NY, watching anxiously to see what the weather would hold for us.  The previous night, the weather channel was predicting rain and some possibly serious storm activity.  Fortunately, the meteorologists at the Weather Channel continue to live up to their reputation: we had great riding weather all day and only a couple of raindrops fell on us throughout the whole ride.  No storms, no damaging winds, just nice puffy clouds gliding gently over our heads.

Before the day’s ride even began, a seemingly minor event happened.  As we were getting on the bike to depart the hotel, I managed to crack my knee on the underside of the saddle when I was mounting the bike.  I hit the edge of the saddle right between my kneecap and knee.  It took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes.  After limping around the parking lot and sucking wind for a minute or two, I successfully remembered how to get on a bicycle.  We pulled the bike onto Route 31 and wound our way for about 1.5 miles of surface streets to the canal path.  We were on our way towards Syracuse.

Today’s journey took us through a wide variety of riding and landscape.  This part of the canal trail mostly follows the older Erie Canal.  Back in its heyday, the Erie Canal was so successful, that some major sections of it were replaced with the Barge Canal: a wider and deeper canal system to handle more traffic and bigger boats.  This canal system is largely still functional today. When the Barge Canal sections were put in, some parts of the Erie Canal were abandoned back to nature, some were filled, and some parts are still maintained for local recreation.  We saw examples of almost all of this during today’s ride, as the canal path mostly follows the old Erie Canal, even where it has been abandoned.

The first little town we encountered is Jordan, NY.  In Jordan, the canal no longer carries water.  The town center has made a park out of the canal-bed with a beautiful garden area.  The first two pictures below are in Jordan.  You can see how a creek still runs perpendicular to the canal bed, but the canal bed has been filled in with flowers and grass.

As we continued eastward, we soon found ourselves riding on a path that really resembled a narrow and smooth country road.  The path is still somewhat maintained, but doesn’t appear to get much attention or grooming.  Instead of a 4-to-5 foot wide path of crushed stone, we were often riding on a small ribbon of crushed stone with grass or mud around it.  The vegetation has started to reclaim this area – trees are growing a nice canopy over the trail and the wildlife is more visible.  We encountered cranes, groups of baby ducks, turtles, and jumping fish.  The riding was still pretty good, with small patches of bumps.

We soon encountered something we’d not seen yet: mosquitoes!  A couple of miles outside of Jordan, we saw a person far off in the distance.  As soon as she saw us, she began yelling to us.  We hurried towards her and found out that she was frantically asking for bug repellent.  We soon discovered why.  As soon as the bike was stopped, we were swarmed like it was happy hour at an open bar!  We broke out the deep-woods Cutter spray and loaned it to this poor lady.  She was hiking and we could see welts all over her body.  There must have been 10’s if not close to 100 bites on her.  We sprayed ourselves down, too.  I hadn’t seen that many mosquitoes in years.

With the bugs behind us, we pedaled on.  Eventually, the wooded path gave way to some rough surface streets, which then became the outskirts of Syracuse.  The trail no longer existed and we needed to navigate by maps.  By this time, my knee was starting to really bother me.  I couldn’t grind the hills too well, so my daughter had to produce quite a bit of pedal-power to get us through.  She was a real trooper!

We intentionally had planned our ride through Syracuse for early Sunday morning.  I am very happy we did.  In just a few short miles, we found ourselves amongst cars on city streets.  We wound through older industrial and urban areas looking for the major streets that took us straight to the heart of downtown.  This was a far cry from the peaceful path we’d left a few miles back.  I wouldn’t say we were in any really bad areas, but I am very glad that we made it through smoothly without needing to stop.  Once again, AMC was a great navigator.  And oh, did I mention, the maps I bought from the NY Canal authority were terrible for navigating through the city…. grrr…  Thank goodness for the spray-painted marks on the pavement that a bike tour group had left from their ride last week!

In downtown Syracuse, the original Erie Canal used to pass through an area called the Clinton Exchange.  This area is where cargo was bought/sold, taxes levied, banks financed loans, and so on.  When the Barge Canal bypassed downtown Syracuse, the town filled in the canal and created Erie Street.  A few years ago, the city dug out a small area of the original canal and put in a water-sculpture park to celebrate the canal’s roots.  You can see a picture of that below.  We stopped at this park for a little while to rest our bodies and catch out breaths before continuing on through Syracuse.

The last few miles took us directly down Erie Street.  Fortunately, on Sunday afternoon, there isn’t much traffic.  We didn’t really have any trouble, but this is a busy road, 3-lanes in each direction.  Surprisingly, drivers seemed amazingly courteous to us and gave us plenty of space.  A few more miles along Erie Street brought us safely to our destination, the Econo Lodge, at around 2:30 in the afternoon.  We arrived in great spirits, having successfully navigated what we think will be the most challenging (and dangerous?) part of our trip.

We also had more to celebrate: We’d crossed the 1/2-way mark!  WaHOO!

As luck would have it, there was a Friendly’s restaurant a block away from the hotel.  AM had been craving a milk shake – and she certainly deserved one.  She pedaled hard, navigated well, and kept me in good spirits despite my painful knee.

As we walked back from Friendly’s, we stopped at a quick-mart to buy some Gatorade, snacks, and chocolate.  We went back to the hotel, plopped on the beds, and relaxed all afternoon.  We watched TV, ate junk food, and took some time to enjoy how far we’ve come since our first training rides in March.  Our moods were great and it was nice to have some daddy-daughter time all to myself.

Unfortunately, one thing became clear: my knee injury was not going to be short lived.  I iced it down all evening, took some ibuprofen, and hoped for the best.  It was swelling and becoming painful.

Thanks for all the prayers for safety.  We certainly felt them today.
Peace!

– Dc. Matt

Miles today: 36.60, Total miles: 131.20

Today was a much easier ride than yesterday. We started by having a very nice home-cooked pancake breakfast at my parent’s house (thanks, mom!). We then loaded up the bike and went back to where we left off yesterday at the Interfaith Chapel of the University of Rochester.

We slept very well the night before and I let my daughter sleep in a long time to help make up for the tough going yesterday. We took a very leisurely time getting started.

With full bellies and a good rest, things were definitely looking up!

We had another nice surprise today. A high school friend, Randy, met us on the trail and rode a long way with us. It was really nice to talk with him and catch up.

The weather was much nicer today. Mid 80’s and sunny. The rain held off until we were done with our ride.

The ride today took us through some very nice countryside, and through several nice towns. We passed through two of the nicest canal-front towns we have seen so far: Pittsford and Fairport. Both of these towns have built up their canal areas with restaurants, parks, docks, and great “walking around” places. We didn’t spend too much time wandering today since we started so late.

Back when Stephanie and I were first married, we rented a small 1/2 house in Pittsford. We loved living there, partially because of the fun places you could walk to near the canal. So we rode the bike past our old home. You can see a picture of it below.

We continued on to Fairport, where we enjoyed a simple lunch and good conversation with Randy at a local restaurant. With the day starting to drift by, we picked up the pace and plugged on.

Nearly the entire path today was on the trails and away from cars. Some paved, some crushed stones. Most was in pretty good shape.

Our destination today was the town of Newark. We reached Newark around 4:10, just in time to catch 4:30 mass at St. Michael’s church, just a few blocks from the canal. We went in and tried to clean up a little bit, so as to try to minimize the stink that was surely hanging over me like a fog. I felt like Pigpen from the Peanuts as I tried to scope out a seat that was at least two pews from anyone else… I felt a bit sorry for the nice older lady who sat down right behind us.

Stephanie met us just before mass. After church, we packed up the bike on the back of the truck and drove a bit eastward to the town of Weedsport where we are spending the night. In my research for this ride, I found that the canal path ended at Newark and that there isn’t a really safe road path to Weedsport. So we elected to jump the miles by car and pick the trail back up in Weedsport.

Our ride tomorrow is the shortest planned ride for us, around 30 miles, taking us through downtown Syracuse, out to the east side so that we won’t have to deal with rush-hour traffic on Monday.

The weather forecast for tomorrow looks rainy again. Hopefully we can dodge most of the drops.

Here is a link to today’s ride:
http://j.mp/dovLl6

Peace!
– Dc. Matt

(Subtitle: Rain + ‘Stone Dust’ = ugh!)

Miles today: 46.6,  Total miles: 94.6

When we arrived last night in Medina, after dinner, one of my first concerns was to look over the weather forecast for today.  It didn’t look good, and today lived up to its expectations.

We had a nice breakfast at the B&B, then watched hoping that the rain would stop.  It did for a few minutes, just long enough for us to load up the bike and get out back to the canal trail.

Unfortunately, we don’t have many pictures of today’s ride.  The reason is: my camera is not waterproof.  We wound through about 47 miles of beautiful countryside from Medina to Rochester.  We saw fields of crops, apple orchards, flocks of ducks, geese, small towns, and many miles of trail.  We also saw a very cool bridge where the road tunnels *under* the Erie canal, built long before modern equipment.

The first 27-ish miles of our ride were mostly done in the rain.  We had periods of dry, but the rain kept catching us, and some of it was pretty heavy.  We were fortunate enough to avoid any thunderstorms.  We heard thunder far away, but none of it came close enough to cause us any difficulty.

The trail from Medina to the city of Rochester is made of what’s called “Stone Dust” – a very fine gravel that is packed down and mixed with some sort of powdered stone.  When it is dry, it is a reasonable surface to bike on.  It stays smooth (no potholes) and rides pretty well.  But when it gets wet… it is terrible.  Today, it was definitely wet with lots of puddles.  The consistency of the top layer was like riding on peanut butter.  We could feel the bike “dragging” through the trail, and the grit and mud kicked up all over us.  We were completely coated, from head-to-toe, in mud by the time we reached Brockport.  You can see a picture of how caked the bike was at the bottom of the posting.  Our average speed went down by about 5 miles-per-hour, making for a very long day.

From Brockport on, the ride went pretty well.  We had a few sprinkles of rain, but it was mostly sunny and warm.  The trail was still too wet, but at least we weren’t getting soaked as well.

One thing we didn’t see today were other bikers.  We only saw two other riders in the first 35 miles.  One was heading out of the rain – she was smart.  The other was a young guy who was on his way to New York City.  He had ridden all the way from Seattle!

All-in-all, it was a pretty hard ride, but we enjoyed the day.  It was really nice to see the Rochester skyline and know the end of today’s ride was coming along.  We rode through Genesee Valley park and turned off the path to approach the University of Rochester – our stopping point for today.  I used to ride the canal when I was a student at the UofR, so it seemed like a good stopping point for us together.

Tomorrow’s ride is a bit shorter, we’ll start at the UofR again, and go to Newark – about 35 miles or so.

Here is a link to today’s ride.

Peace & Blessings,

Dc. Matt

http://j.mp/c1Eljz

Today was our first day of cycling to cross New York along the length of the Erie Canal.

We were supposed to have a shorter day to get started in our journey, but things didn’t quite turn out that way…

We began at the mouth of the canal where it empties into the Niagara river on the border of Buffalo and Tonawanda. The trail here was pretty much nonexistent, so we used a series of surface streets that paralleled the canal.  We actually started on the wrong side of the canal (yes, Steph, you were right), but didn’t have any difficulty paralleling the canal and got ourselves to the correct side after a couple of miles.

The trail doesn’t exist as a bike-path until Lockport, so we had to navigate the first 15-or-so miles on streets, using maps to navigate.  We needed to track east for a few miles, then make a series of turns northbound to Lockport.  That’s where the “fun” began.

In the planning stages of this trip, I purchased a set of maps from the NY parks for the canal. Let’s just say that there was a bit of ambiguity on where to turn northbound to Lockport.

After what seemed like about the right distance, it was clear that we were not approaching Lockport.   We missed a turn someplace and there weren’t any street signs for miles to indicate the name of the road we were on.  Thank goodness for my trusty iPhone GPS! Instead of being near Lockport, we discovered that we were east by about 6-7 miles of the turn we missed, which caused us to need to backtrack along country roads until we found a road that would take us north into Lockport. That road turned out to be a major 4-lane road. Yikes. To make an already long story short, we safely navigated into town using the shoulders and sidewalks.

We rewarded ourselves with lunch at “Friendly’s” – a northeast ice cream chain that I remember from being a kid. Yum. Even in our struggles, we can usually find rewards at the end! Hmmm… Sounds like a homily for some day 🙂

After lunch, we went to the famous locks 34,35. In the old days, this was a flight of several locks to raise and lower boats the 70 feet of difference between the two sides of the canal. It was replaced with a set of two modern locks that are quite impressive to look at (especially if you are an engineering geek like me!).

We watched a boat “lock through”, then hung around for another 45 minutes or so before mounting the bike and heading eastbound.

For as difficult as the morning was, the afternoon was much easier. In Lockport, the canal trail is formalized and runs pretty much contiguous until east of Rochester.  The trail is well maintained and no motor vehicles travel on it. We found the trail and rode straight east through Gasport, Middleport, and into Medina. We were rewarded with a very comfortable place to stay at the Historic Inn B&B in Medina.

Dinner at a local Italian place, Avanti’s, provided fabulous home made pasta. I chose linguini with white clam sauce. A very yummy way to “carb up” for tomorrow! The kids ate well, and Steph was able to get a really nice salad with sauteed shrimp.

The weather today was splendid. Mid 80’s and a touch humid. Unfortunately, they are calling for storms all along our route tomorrow, so I am hoping and praying that we can get our ride done.

Tomorrow, our destination is the University of Rochester, my Alma mater. We need to go another 45ish miles… hopefully dry.

Thanks to all who have sent notes of support and prayers. You are in mine as well.

A link to our progress is here. I forgot to enable my GPS for about one mile near Middleport, but otherwise, it should be pretty accurate.

http://j.mp/cKtao7

Peace & Blessings,
Dc. Matt

We went out for a really nice ride today. After church, we loaded up the new panniers (aka saddle bags), mixed up some Gatorade, put sunblock on, and went out to see the local scenery in Webster, NY (“where life is worth living” according to the town motto).

I wanted to dry run blogging without my MacBook, too. Somehow, I forgot to take any pictures today, so I will have to try that later.

We rode a nice bike trail for about 12 miles, then decided to go north to Lake Ontario. The weather was beautiful and, as usual, the company was great. We took a pretty leisurely pace – we are not in training mode anymore. It is time to enjoy the scenery now!

Here is a map of our progress today.
http://j.mp/aHaMU6
Peace & Blessings,
Dc. Matt

Started packing tonight.  Seems like there is too much stuff going with me … and there is.  Sigh.  Isn’t that the way it always is in life – we try to over prepare instead of trusting in God.  Nevertheless, I think I still need to carry deodorant, even though it is heavy 🙂

This past week, I’ve been riding by myself because my daughter was visiting her grandparents in Colorado.  It has been a really nice week.  I’ve logged a bunch of miles, too.  I’ve been riding my circa 1990 Trek 420 road bike.  Even at 20 years old, it’s a sweet ride!  Well under 20 lbs., and fast.  Makes me remember why I used to love riding so much.

In some ways, it seems like we’ve been preparing for this trip for a long time, but on the other hand, this summer has flown by.  Looking back, I’ve had a great time getting ready for this ride.  My daughter has changed even over the last few months as she is getting more and more mature.  I’ve truly enjoyed spending this time with her.  Getting her up in the morning … well, that’s another story.  I’ve decided that she has the gift of tongues since I usually can’t understand what she’s saying when I first wake her up.

We leave on Saturday to go up to New York in preparation for the ride.  We will have about 4 more days of training once we arrive.  Then, it’s the real thing.  We will begin next Thursday (July 22) at the western most edge of the Erie canal where it meets the Niagara river.  Watch for pictures and more blog entries soon.

Peace!

– Dc. Matt

It’s starting to feel pretty real now.  I’ve got all of our itinerary planned out pretty well – or at least as well as I can hope for.  Every day’s journey, night accommodations, food, hydration plan.  Sheesh, I thought this would be about biking, not planning 🙂  But if it doesn’t get planned out well, we may find ourselves out of food, water, or housing.

I have to be honest, it’s starting to be a bit intimidating thinking about starting out on this journey.  I am really praying for good weather.  We don’t really have the choice of skipping a day or two, so if it pours, well, we’ll just have to slug on through the rain.

If you’re interested in seeing the route we’ll be taking, you can see the following maps:

http://www.eriecanal.org/maps/NYSCanalSystem-1987.jpg  (a traditional map)

http://www.opengeohost.com/maps/cyclingtheeriecanal/ (an interactive map that you can mouse-around on)

Peace & Blessings,

Dc. Matt

Less than 3 weeks to go!  We’re getting ready to leave.

My daughter and I have been training since May to ride along the Erie canal from Buffalo to Albany, NY.  We’ve never undertaken a long bike trip before, so wish us luck!

The trip will take us about 300+ miles along the old tow-paths that were used to pull barges along the canal.  We will leave from Buffalo on/about July 22 and spend about 8 days journeying eastward.

To prepare for this ride, we’ve been training on a tandem bike.  If you’ve never tried one before, I highly recommend it.  We’ve had a lot of fun and good daddy/daughter time.

So, if you’d like, feel free to subscribe to our posts.  I will be putting together some modest posts along the trail – no computer, so whatever I can type up with my trusty iPhone 🙂  I hope to update each evening with a couple of pictures and thoughts.

Peace!

– Matt