What a great ride today gave us! We went 78 miles and it was virtually all along the Lake Erie coastline. It was beautiful. We had perfect weather today. The sky was sunny, but it was never really hot. Great road quality, with a nicely wide shoulder, and effectively no wind. Traffic was unimpressive.
What else is there to life?
I am, once again, now in new state also. As the photos above help to confirm, I am now beyond Pennsylvania and in the state of New York! Neat!
As something rather unusual and entirely unexpected, we had a police escort out of town today! I am honestly not really sure quite how that happened, but it was really nice. As we were getting ready to leave our location in downtown Erie this morning, two motorcycle police officers just showed up! They waited until we were all ready and together, and then they took us out of town with lights and occasional sirens. What was neat about that was never stopping, or even slowing, at the numerous signal lights in the downtown area. We blew out of town effortlessly and very fast. The police departed us at the city limits, that after probably 5 miles. Weird, but kind of nice!
Virtually the entire ride today was along highway 5. We were on that road even before we were outside of the Erie city limits. That road runs northeast, and it basically follows the Lake Erie coastline, not far inland at all. As I was riding along today, I could look to my left and at least intermittently see nice glimpses of the lake. It really was nice. This was a really nice ride today.
I was correct in my expectation that we would see even more vineyards than we did two days ago, then approaching Erie. Indeed, there were huge vineyards on both sides of the road, virtually all day long. New York state must really produce a lot of wine. The bottom of the three photos above shows the view looking leftward (northwesterly) from highway 5. There is the edge of a large vineyard in that picture, as well as the look at the more distant Lake Erie. Pretty!
The prediction had been for a nice wind today, 5 to 10 mph, directly from the southwest. That would have been absolutely perfect, but it didn't really happen. I am not so sure that we had much of any wind at all. Even without the expected favorable wind however, this was a fast ride. The road was hilly, but only mildly so. My average speed today ended up at 16.4 mph, which isn't bad considering that the wind really wasn't a boost, after all. I arrived here in Hamburg at just after 1:00 PM today.
I am pretty well settled in already now, in Hamburg. My bike is well cleaned off, with a lightly oiled chain and other moving parts. My riding clothes are washed, and now drying in the sun. I am a bit hungry and thirsty, but those are easily solvable problems.
Tomorrow's ride will be difficult. Some rides are difficult due to hills and the associated climbing. Other rides are difficult just due to the distance involved. Tomorrow's ride will be difficult due to both. We go to Canandaigua, New York, tomorrow. That will be a long ride, at 94 miles totally, and it will also involve almost 6,000 feet of climbing.
Oh well! That's what I signed up for!
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