For most people a barrier across the road with a "Road closed" sign would logically imply that you could not go past that point. But not for us.
For us these Road Closed signs are an announcement that unknown challenges are coming up. Often the ABB staff catch a lot of the construction and re-route us. But not always, or there is not another option. So we've navigated around moving bulldozers, construction workers, torn out sections of highway, rough grade and lifted bikes over and crawled under numerous barriers. But even with all these bike gymnastics behind us, our road closed surprise for Youngstown to Erie was a doozie.
The west end of the road was pretty straight forward - walk down dirt grade, lift the bike a couple of feet onto a cement wall, walk across the wall and then climb up a small incline out. No big deal. But then half a mile down the road were two ditch diggers blocking the road with shovels down (luckily it was Sunday so no work or we would have had a big detour on an already long day and our 4th century ride in a row - no one wanted more miles).
In between the ditch diggers was a 10 foot wide and 6 foot deep gap in the road with re bar sticking out, huge loose broken chunks of road and mud. A deep, wide ditch with shoe sucking mud and water was on either side. Hmmm ... 8 or 10 of us collected and stood and discussed and pondered. Finally we send a couple of sacrificial cyclists into the ditch and had a third climb out the other side. We pass the bikes one by one across and stack them against the bulldozer. Then we make our way through the safest looking trail across and climbed out. One thing this trip has done has made me much less tentative to take my bike anywhere.
The Youngstown to Erie route went through farms and small towns in Northeast Ohio. Rolling hills, wildflowers, lots of birds and time through the woods which I hadn't realized I missed so much.
Close the Pennsylvania border I was pedaling along and saw a beautiful covered bridge hiding down curve in a hill. I pull a u turn and head down and ride through the bridge. It was the Root Road Bridge, painted with a simple v shaped roof. The sides were latticed with beautiful woodwork. And the floor were long thin vertical boards with tire grooves worn in through the middle of the bridge.
I wasn't the only one with that idea ... On the other side of the old timbered bridge the Pattons from Pennsylvania were on their driving vacation and taking a tour of the covered bridges - 21 in this county alone. They were heading on to Indianapolis and I told them about the Overbeck sisters and encouraged them visit since they are interested in art.
Shortly after we came to Richardson's White Turkey Root Beer Stand which I think may qualify as one of the best burger stands ever. First off, I don't like root beer, but they made their own in a barrel and I loved their root beer - especially with a bunch of ice cream on top for one heck of a good root beer float. Yum!
Finally properly fueled for the rest of our 100 mile ride we start approaching Lake Erie. We swung through a community park by lake and ... This is one big lake. You can't see across it. The only Great Lake I'd seen before is Lake Michigan from Chicago. It really brought home the huge size of these lakes ... Impressive. I'm psyched to be in this part of the country and the end of the trip .... It's all new country to me.
The next day was a rest day in Erie. Erie is a town that has seen better times. We stayed in a hotel downtown that has seen better days and the city had the feel of a struggling town, a little grungy but with some working class routes that still ran strong.
But rather than stay in Erie and explore, Steve from Florida organized 5 of us into a car load and we headed up the see Niagara Falls. As we were driving along the interstate north it was remarkable how this interstate could be a stretch of road almost anywhere in the country ... Unremarkable in any way. I hope when I drive in the future I will always remember to take a little extra time and get off the interstate and go through the back roads. That's where all the action is.
I must be one of only a handful of Americans who had never been to Niagara Falls. We went to the Canadian side - it was packed on a Monday. After admiring the falls, and being suitably amused and appalled by all the tacky tourist stuff (Ripleys, 2 wax museums - one featuring Britney Spears in wax, hershey chocolate store, a space needle type observatory, helicopter rides, gondola rides, haunted house, pet the animals) ... It was non-stop kitsch. And this was Canada ... Can't imagine what was on the American side.
After admiring the falls and getting very wet in the spray we headed north to Niagara by the Lake, a small town on Lake Ontario that Steve went to with his wife on their second honeymoon. He took us all to lunch at the Prince of Wales hotel - very nice, very tasty. My inner food snob was satisfied. Then we went wine tasting to a couple of wineries recommended by our waitress. First was to her husbands families vineyard ... It was OK for wine though Sean was mighty happy with the ice wine milk shake. And it was good.
Then to Hillebrand Winery - which made a Reisling I liked for lunch and wonderful Ice Wines.
Finally back in Erie after a grand day Jack, Sean (Brit) and I went to the baseball game - Erie Seawolves versus Akron Aeros. AA baseball - the Seawolves feed up to the Detroit Tigers. The stadium was packed - sanding room only and a few box seats left. It was Buck night - beer, popcorn, dogs and pizza for $1. Big draw for Monday night. Tons of fun. Erie won. One of my favorite things about minor league ball is all the crowd participation games they do in between innings - kid sack race, fans doing a hula hoop relay, hundreds of kids turned loose to run the field, men in tutus. Great community fun. Love it.
Blame the game for no blog up yesterday ...
Today
We rode from Erie 82 miles to Hamburg, New York. Claims to be the originator of the Hamburger ... I bet that's disputed.
But for me the claim to fame will be that it's the wettest, longest ride I've ever ridden. However I did keep a sense of humor ... Maybe helped by the 9AM wine tasting just before the rain really started. When I say wet, I mean foggy glasses, torrents of rain that would accumulate somewhere in my clothes and then gush in torrents down my legs. Drenched for hours, feet prunes in the water sloshing in my shoes. Every time I stood up on the saddle and then sat down again, the water would audibly squish out of the padded shorts. So much mud and road grit up my back and on my butt and thrown all the way into my hair that I stood in the bathtub to pull off the layers of clothes to collect all the dirty. Well - you get the picture. It probably would have been a beautiful ride if we could see anything ... The first few miles were lovely with all the vineyards.
Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016!!
10 years ago
