Written by Dave

Day 72 – August 8 – 65 Miles,  1,264 feet climbing (Red Whispering Winds RV, near Newark to Syracuse)

We spent the day trying to dodge tropical storm Debbie and her rain showers. It worked just about perfect until noon when the rains arrived in earnest. It was supposed to stay dry until this evening but Debbie is impatient and she arrived early. So far it’s not been torrential but there was no way we were going to camp in this mess so we stopped short of our campground and got a hotel on the eastern edge of Syracuse.

We were originally scheduled to spend one more night camping with Jim, Karyl and Jacob. They made it to the campground, then turned around and came back to meet us at our hotel. Chris had given them some bags to carry. We had ridden with all of ours. They also decided to pull the plug on camping and head more westward, naturally this is easier for them in the camper (days like this make you very envious of people in campers!). That means that our time with them has come to an end about 12 hours early. THANKS AGAIN GUYS for making the journey up here, spending time with us and cooking all the great food. You will be missed a lot!

This morning we rode the Erie Canal path for most of the morning. Today, however, the path shared a good deal of its route with small country roads and highways. A few times when the path came back, we stayed on the road, simply because we could see ahead on our GPS devices that we’d be back on the road again in a mile or so. The roads had nice big shoulders and little traffic and we were trying to beat the rains. The path is about 2-3 MPH slower when you add in the need to stop for roads that it crosses and the slowness of the crushed rock surface.

Getting across Syracuse today was not as easy as Rochester yesterday. We had to ride more roads, less path. This actually worded out ok as we stumbled on a nice cafe where we could get some lunch, just as Debbie’s rains arrived in earnest. Around when we were stopping, my seat started making a funny noise. I spent the first half hour of lunch trying to figure out what happened. Well, to make a long story short, the bolt that tensions my Brooks saddle broke. While I was working on the bike, in the rain, Nancy knocked on the cafe window – my lunch and cortado were getting cold. Just as well, I could have spent the afternoon on the bolt without success – it was kaput. Inside, out of the rain we did some searching and discovered that the Mello Velo bike shop was only 1.9 miles ahead and only 2 blocks off our route. We rode there after lunch – my seat was rideable, but definitely broken. I called Mello, they didn’t have the part but they had some ideas and told us to stop by.

The guys at Mello were great. They made a serious try at getting my broken bolt fixed. I think that they would have been successful if I not found an acceptable replacement saddle and I called time on the fix project. Their fix would have been temporary, probably not a good idea when you consider that we have 7 days riding left. When the bicycle gods put a perfectly good replacement part only 1.9 miles from the discovery of a broken part, along with a professional mechanic to install it, well, pass that up and you are tempting fate. For sure, the saddle would not break the next time in such a convenient location.

While we were at the bike shop, Nancy and Chris sussed out the hotel options. Chris had spoken to Jim and there were no covered places at the campground. We might have huddled under Jim’s camper awning but leaving the awning out with a tropical storm going through was not a good idea.

Debbi is supposed to deliver more rain tomorrow here but we are hoping to have the advantage of a dry start by staying indoors tonight and right now heavy rains are not supposed to come until the arvo (though the forecasts are all over at this point). We may be slogging it out tomorrow (literally) but we’ve already booked a room so all we have to is make it there. The forecast for the rest of our ride is looking pretty good, it’s just tomorrow that we have to manage. I’ll stop there now and get to work on routing tomorrow with a bit less canal path – to avoid the mud and to see if we can’t get out of the weather sooner.