Day 18 - 20: Corning to Geneva

I’m going to be brief because I’m feeling the mounting pressure of trying to get something meaningful out while getting further and further behind.

The last I left you I was at a tiny nothing of a town called Ansonia situated inside of Pennsylvania’s “Grand Canyon”. Or at least that’s what they call the groove that Pine Creek has cut into the surrounding mountains.

My objective for the day was to make it to Corning, which was around 40 miles up the road. For me that is a half day at this point an “Easy ride” and it genuinely was an easy ride. The elevation was now a slow, fairly flat track following some other river fork towards Corning.

Corning was always a location I intentionally wanted to spend time at. I wanted to see the glass museum there, and it made sense in terms of my recent days’ pace that I would need a rest. So I had planned the night before to stay in a very cheap motel for two nights. The second day would see me doing some necessary tasks but then also touring the museum.

So that’s what I did. I could go deep into the museum itself or Corning as a town, but I fear that’s something you’ll have to research on your own. Just know that Corning is a very important place for glassware in the United states, and that goes beyond cooking. Fiber optics, Lenses, ablative coatings for the space shuttle… things you might not expect glass so instrumental in the creation or advancement.

The museum itself was a smorgasbord of visuals. There were entire wings and if you had the time you could spend days viewing all the pieces. Unfortunately I had to do a kind of abbreviated speed run. These were just a few of the different pieces I saw that I found interesting enough to snap a photo of:

The next day I was up at 5:30am with every intention to beat the heat, which had been 96 degrees the day before and was to top 97 degrees on this day. By 6:30 I was rolling.

My path was not exactly direct to my destination, Geneva. Rather than go over what amounted to a mountain, I opted to follow the lowlands created by the river swooping south east and eventually straight north to Seneca lake via Watkins Glen.

Before I got to the base of the lake I passed through a small town named Montour Falls. It became fairly apparent why it was named this as I pulled through town and saw this just off my route:

Watkins Glen was a kind of resort town that is filled with overpriced everything. I had initially planned on a late breakfast there, but instead I found myself at the park just at the tip of the lake, eating granola bars for energy before departing.

I had expected the route to skirt the lake, as often the highway follows the natural contours of low lying areas. The geology of Seneca lake was apparently not favorable for this, because it was surrounded by hills that basically just plunged directly into the lake, much like the Lochs of Scotland or the fjords of Norway – and likely for the same reason. All being the remnants of deep scars left by the retreat of the glaciers.

What this meant for me was I had to climb up the lee of this great mound and stay about 300ft above the lake, and inland somewhere between and mile and a mile and a half. The only vistas of the lake that were to be had were over the shoulders of active farms and wineries that hugged the highway.

Often signs would point to the lake and advertise services and restaurants a mile down by the lake itself. I had no desire to go down to one of these lakeside respites and then have to climb back out to get back on the highway.

My task was simple, make the 65 miles to Geneva as quickly as I possibly could to avoid the hottest part of the day.

By 11am it had already hit 93 but I was paced so that within an hour I would make it to Geneva, well ahead of my projected 3pm.

Then it struck – a roadside nail found its way through my tire and into my tube. I learned this when my tube went so flat the tire came off the rim. This happened in a large opening between shade, and I couldn’t risk doing worse damage to the tube, or potentially harming the tire by walking it to shade a few hundred feet further along. I had to repair it there, in full sun, at the side of the road.

I’m certain that the effects of the heat caused me not to think as clearly as I normally do. Taking the wheel off the bike was a struggle which sapped so much energy from me that when it finally pulled free the bike got away from me and fell on its drive side. This is never ideal. Important components are on the drive side that you don’t want damaged.

What had happened was for future me to address. It took another 30 minutes of sweating confusion to get the tire on, inflated enough to seat, deflated to reseated and then reinflated to a reasonable pressure.

Twice people stopped to offer some assistance. Twice they were turned away because I just needed to fight my way through this.

Eventually I was ready to remount the wheel. The struggle the remount the wheel was worse than dismounting it. I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t pop into the dropouts. Upon closer investigation the derailleur was tangled in the gears. It took me a moment to realize the cause.

Upon dropping the bike I bent the derailleur hanger inward. The only way to remount the wheel would be either to remove the derailleur altogether or gently bend back the hanger. I’ve done the second before. As long as you don’t take it past certain stress point it won’t shear.

So I dismounted the derailleur and pulled. I felt it moving. I gave it one last tug and felt something snap beneath my grip. A wave of panic washed over me. If the hanger was broken my only option was to turn my bike into a single speed.

I looked closely and the hanger was straight, but the small, red, aluminum extender I had used to help me access a all my gears had cracked and bent outward. It wasn’t sheared fully, but it could not be trusted. This was the best possible case.

I know the bike will work with the derailleur mounted directly to the hanger, it just won’t be able to access all the gears. So I remounted the derailleur directly to the now straightened hanger and got on with it.

Finally the wheel seated and I was back on my way in minutes. The gears were a mess, and where I used to be able to hit the shifter and it would reliably move from one gear to the next, now it was taking multiple presses. Again, not ideal, but even this I could improve.

That affair cost me an hour. It was now the full heat of the day and I had ten more miles to do in order to make it to Geneva. But I made it by 1:30.

I had let the church contact in Geneva know that I’d be going to the library to cool off and blog because the church did not have air-conditioning. So after lunch, and seeing if the local Trek store had a replacement extender (they didn’t), I made it to the library.

At 6pm I contacted Faye, my contact at First Geneva UMC and we met behind the building. We did a tour throughout the building trying to find suitable rooms for sleeping, but we all agreed the top two floors were not ideal.

As part of the tour I was shown their absolutely stunning sanctuary:

Eventually we went down to the basement, and it was immediately more livable. Cooler, but not the sort of cold you want after an extremely hot day.

Faye showed me some other things and then departed with her husband, leaving me to figure out my own positioning. Initially I sat in a 1st floor room with fans as the Bible study downstairs finished up. I fell asleep in minutes even though the room was likely 85 degrees. Eventually I woke up around 9pm and moved down to the cooler basement and set up my sleeping gear.

It was cool and I had a fan blowing on me all night. I didn’t have an opportunity to shower, but at least I was safe.