Day 22-???: Traversing Erie

I haven’t updated my blog in perhaps eight days, and I was already multiple days behind the last time it was updated.

The way this trip has played out just doesn’t provide the opportune spaces to force me into writing. Last tour it was a natural consequence of needing to lay over for 2-3 hours in the middle of the day. I could edit pictures while eating and then spend about an hour writing as the bike continued to charge.

It is not as though I don’t have the time, it’s just that the time often comes at the end of the day when the last three hours before sleeping finds me unable to focus or muster the motivation when fully tapped out.

So I’m doing it now because this is the first rest day I’ve had in a series and I just want to “catch up” in as much as that is feasible. So this will be more of a thumbnail sketch of hundreds of miles.

Brockport to Buffalo and beyond.

When I left Brockport the weather had taken a definite turn. It was cool and wet, and the day promised steady rain early in the day.

I rejoined the Erie Canal way just hundreds of feet from where I was staying. The crushed cinder was damp but not terrible. It sucked at my tires a bit more than when it was dry, but I was making reasonable time across it, and the way was flat.

About 10 miles into the day the clouds opened up and as I sat under a bridge eating a fruit rollup I considered what this might mean. Rolling out made it apparent very quickly that these conditions were not tennable. Now the path had become a gloopy mess that was miserable to pedal over, with frequent puddles and was fouling up my equipment terribly.

So at the next bridge undpass I made the decision to depart from the canalway and take surface roads towards Medina and eventually Buffalo.

I was immediately more comfortable on these familiar NY roads with wide shoulders to accommodate the Amish and Mennonite buggies and making phenomenal time.

Within the hour I made it to Medina which represented a meal and potential charging stop. It was a tiny town and unlike the other tourist towns from earlier, this felt like many of the rural towns I have been through. Unpresumptuous.

I pulled into the local diner and attempted to find an active outdoor outlet but to no avail. So I depressed the button to turn off my bike.

My horn sounded instead.

I tried again, and was greeted with the same. I wasn’t in a panic, but this was concerning. Not so much that I couldn’t turn the bike off, but that potentially I wouldn’t be able to turn it back on. All the while I sat in the restaurant I was researching potential ways to sort the problem. I knew If I absolutely had to I could strip wires and “hotwire” the bike by touching the correct two together. But that would also mean I’d have to do the same thing to change the assistance level. Not ideal.

When thinking about it more calmly, I determined that the wet was likely creating a moisture bridge between two unrelated signal wires, and that even though the horn was sounding, it was still getting the signal for power as well.

After paying for my breakfast I returned to the bike with that sick feeling of dread, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t be in a compromised state. I pressed the button down and waited for what seemed like an eternity.

“Hello” my bike’s screen flashed. Success. And after drying out for a bit now the power button no longer also sounded the horn. Thank God.

The next section of the day was more of the familiar farmland and small towns leading towards Tonawanda, next to Niagara and above Buffalo. Given that this nearly a 60 mile total drive at this point It was a split point for either calling it a day before tackling Buffalo or driving for more miles. I opted for the latter.

I found Buffalo to be hectic, dangerous, unfriendly and genuinely, it just smelled. I was so anxious while moving through the city that I snapped one single photo with my phone while moving. There were some genuinely beautiful buildings there but I was far more concerned with survival.

Twice in days prior my phone had jumped out of my handlebar bag and onto the ground, sustaining some damage… in fact every single crack it’s received has been in this way. A single hard jolt and it just pops right out. Most of the time the zipper is closed enough where that isn't possible, but sometimes potholes catch you unaware.

This time it wasn’t a pothole, it was a horrible transition from pavement onto a drawbridge. I watched my phone fly out of the pouch and land face first onto the ground. I had to hastily run back and get it before it was run over. I dreaded turning it over to see the damage, and it was worse than I had expected.

The first impact left a hairline crack across the screen. The second a spider crack in a corner. This one had left multiple crossing cracks and spiders making the display questionable in reability, but more poignantly it was now losing some of the touch sensitivity in areas.

It’s my lifeline, so I was already frantically planning how to source a replacement. But I rode on, cursing Buffalo as I left.

Eventually I caught my first fleeting glimpses of Lake Erie as I took a late afternoon turn into the final section.

Unlike the rural roads I had been on before, I was now placed on a main thoroughfare and because of the proximity to the lake there was basically no shoulder. The final 20 miles were made wildly uncomfortable from this situation. I rode hard and fast as a result to try to get out of harms way faster. It flabbergasted me that this was the specified cycling route in the area. It was even signed.

Finally though I made to to some nothing town that had a roach motel, which after 92 miles and around 8 hours of saddle time, I was ready for.

The Next Day: To Erie

It was finally time to depart from NY, back into the small sliver of Pennsylvania that abuts lake Erie.

I was up early and out the door by 7am.

Even though the track seems to show me directly on the coastline, this is not like being at the beach. Sightlines to the lake were infrequent, and the lake itself was often at the bottom of foreboding cliffs or sharp drops, only with a few actual low points where beaches existed. So my experience was mostly just more rural farmlands and vineyards which populated the area.

About 20 miles into my day I came across a couple of cyclotourists going the other way. Shwa and Zoa are cycling from Minnesota to Maine and video blogging and doing facebook the whole way.

We talked for a bit on the side of the road and exchanged info. Zoa is also a teacher and both are Hmong, which was a common thread as I have taught a lot of students with Hmong heritage, whose parents or grandparents fled the mountains of Vietnam during the war and were given assylum here in the US.

Meeting them buoyed my spirits.

If you’d like to check them out use the QR code below:

Hours later I entered the city of Erie and stopped for a late lunch. Since the damage to my phone I’d been pondering what to do. I could have potentially had a refurbished phone shipped from Amazon, but I would need a place to send it. I tried to do Amazon lockers, but they were not available for this. I would have done General Post, where the USPS will hold a package for you for up to 30 days at a local branch for you to pick up. However this requires the sender to use USPS, and that wasn’t reliable with Amazon.

So I bit the bullet and navigated my way to Best Buy in southern Erie and got a one generation back Pixel 10a to replace my 7a. The cost was $550… which I don’t love, but as I said on facebook, it was a planned expenditure in which the time was forced. I was going to have to spend at least $300 for a replacement and the opportunity cost of reducing my anxiety of being stranded without maps or contacts was well worth the additional cost.

That night I set up the new phone but determined the old one was still usable, and if possible I would use it as a “heads up display” in my front bag, somehow tethered to my new phone safe in my backpack.

This one night stay turned into two as when I got to the motel I was feeling the strain of days wearing on me. I felt mildly sick with something, it was going to rain all the next day and I just, honestly, wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to lay in a bed and watch garbage TV for a day and catch up on blogging. So that’s what happened.

July 7th: To Euclid, OH

After having a full day of rest I woke up feeling like a rockstar. The ride out of the exurb of Erie that I had ended up at was refreshing. It was the sort of green rolling farmland I have come to love. More than anything I felt light, dancing up hills that would have been a plodding nightmare days before. The rest had done me well and for the first time in several days I had a genuinely positive outlook. I even proclaimed aloud that “this is going to be a good day”.

I rolled through the hilly vineyard country next to the lake, getting the rare glimpse through the trees. Eventually I reached the town of Conneaut, which I had been close to before when my Aunt had taken me and my brother to Conneaut Park on the lake of the same name, a few miles south after we had gone to Sea World.

A few miles outside of Conneaut my good day took a familiar turn. I felt my rear wheel getting squirrely and so I pulled over and investigated. It seemed somewhat deflated so I hoped it was just a slow leak I could limp to the next down a few miles down the road.

I turned around and pulled out my pump and by the time turned back it was profoundly flat. The culprit was easily spotted.

A roofing nail had punctured the tire as I passed by some construction a mile or so back. The leak was easy to find and the tire was quickly patched and back on. Less than thirty minutes. I was getting pretty good at this.

Two miles down the road I felt that same sensation and the dread rose in me. I pulled to the side and sure enough the tire which was at 23psi minutes before was now at 3.

Perhaps I had missed a second puncture… So I opened it back up and looked around but found nothing. So I partially pumped it back up to listen, which was made very difficult next to the extremely busy road. But I found it. I was a prior patch that I could clearly hear leaking air, so I pulled it off and investigated. The initial hole under the patch had expanded to a slash under the patch and was now leaking. I was certain it was not something I could reasonably re-patch.

So I went back to my “Spare”, which you may remember is only a spare in spirit. It had multiple patches on it as well and wasn’t holding air. So I did a thorough check, and found a gaping hole I had somehow missed previously. It was patched and then everything was reassembled. When I pumped it up further to seat the tire I could hear air escaping.

So I pulled it off again and found that a previous patch on this tube was also leaking. I repatched this leak, leaving me with two functional patches remaining, and a dead spare with very little confidence in this current tire.

After a conversation with Beka I headed into the next town, which miraculously had a bike shop, and the guy had exactly one spare 26x4 tube left. Purchased and out the door.

Now for the final push to just outside of Euclid. The turn of events in the day left a sour taste in my mouth and my bad mood had returned. It was somewhat of a grind to do the next 30 miles. In a small town I noted that my rear tire was slowly losing pressure. So I pumped it back up until my electric pump died and got it back up to 17psi. But I knew I had probably 4 miles until it was critically low. If I could get it up high enough, the jaunt to the motel for that evening would be possible and I could deal with it then and there.

I rounded a bend and there was a Sheetz gas station, with infinite, free air. A godsend.

So I set the pump to 32psi to sightly overpressure the tire above its rated 20psi — which I had done many times before with no issue. I now felt comfortable that I would make it to safety.

I had pulled my water bottle out of my pack and was drinking it when from behind me I heard what sounded like a gunshot. My heart sank.

My tube had blown out — luckily the tire was perfectly fine.

A man from across the parkinglot jokingly asked if I had put too much air in the tire. I simply shot a single finger gun at him and nodded.

Thank God I have a pristine spare.

It was somewhat of a spectacle for many people. I watched a woman watch me from inside her car for the whole time as I did all the tasks required to get everything set up and functioning. She seemed entirely engrossed by the process.

It wasn’t long after I made it to safety and settled in for the night.

The next day I had to traverse Cleveland. With my experiences with Buffalo I was absolutely not looking forward to this. If there was a grading system for cycling infrastructure Buffalo would get solid D-. It had the suggestion of bicycle lanes, but they were unusably bad. Potholes, manholes, sewer grates with the long edge of the holes in the direction of travel. Awful.

I fully expected Cleveland to be better, but not much better.

The ride into Cleveland itself took me through some pretty rundown areas. I got the scenic view of the section 8 housing, and then the water treatment plant, and then the power plant.

I resigned myself to a bad day when a woman was waiting to cross the street. Looked directly at me and then stepped into my path causing me to swerve around her.

In the blink of an eye the surroundings changed into a neighborhood of Manses surrounded by acres of yard, walled in and forested. Some of these homes had to be 15-50 million dollars. Every one of them with signs declaring that they were under 24hr surveilance. Begone, poors.

I eventually burst out of these neighborhoods into the harbor area.

I was right, Cleveland was significantly better than Buffalo in terms of its cycling infrastructure, but it was also a maze of confusing signage and contradictory detours that presented significant hurdles. I felt safer overall, but at least in Buffalo the path forward was clear to me, in Cleveland I felt like I was chasing my tail, constantly having to reorient or backtrack to get back on the intended path as It would vanish and double back.

Again, in my heightened anxiety I took few pictures because I just wanted to be through it. It took nearly 2 hours to go 12 miles. On the far side I sat at a park bench eating a sad lunch of Natures own bars and leftovers.

I watched as a mother Robin was chased around by its juvenile offspring, demanding food scraps. It circled me a few times hoping I would drop something, but eventually they hopped away.

The rest of the day was a winding trek through what felt like an unending, upscale, suburban neighborhood. Literally 40 miles of it. When it eventually turned back into more rural areas I was spilled out onto another main highway with no shoulder. Tired and angry all over again I raced through that section to get to the side road that would take me through calmer neighborhoods.

I stopped a few miles in to rest and charge at a picnic shelter. For whatever reason outdoor outlets are extremely hard to find on this tour. I had a lot of success last year finding them on pretty much any stop. Now over half of my stops don’t have power access.

I needed this charge. So I sat in the shelter and watched the sparrows swooping and flying all around me, catching unseen insects. It was calming to watch them and it put me back in a good mindset.

I reached my destination for the evening. Sandusky, OH.

Its reputation proceeded it, and I didn’t find it terribly interesting. I had hoped to take the ferry from there to Kelley’s island and stay a night there instead, but the pacing of the tour up this point was making it hard to justify that detour. For that same reason I cut out Niagara. However I felt better about that excision because I’ve already been there.

Holy Toledo:

The next day was a return to rural backroads, less populace, and far more comfortable.

It was a beautiful ride, but there’s really not much to say about the section between Sandusky and Toledo. No major problems, no flats. I had figured out how to get my Heads up display functioning the way I wanted it. It was just a day of making miles.

In summary and conclusion…

Look, I’m struggling with what the hell all of this is for and about. Part of it is coming to terms with the loss of my parents and working through those feelings. Part of it is genuinely doing something I love. Part of it is the challenge and the failures.

This tour isn’t what I had set out for. For whatever reason connecting with churches has been hard, camping has been either not worth it in terms of the expense, or inaccessible. I feel like a phony going from motel to motel. That somehow I’m “not really doing it”, and that wears on me.

I cant rightly put my finger on it, but sitting down and writing anything about this section of the tour honestly just made me just want to skip it. It wasn’t the raw beauty of the Shenandoah. It wasn’t the striving of upper Pennsylvania. It was just kind of “existing on a bike”.

It just didn’t seem worth telling, and I was seething with some sort of anger that I couldn’t pin down. Probably that deep in me I kind of just want to be done and over.

In my last tour when something difficult would come along I would say to myself “You chose this” and have a genuine laugh and just do the thing. I’ve been having a hard time connecting back to that.

I chose this one too but it just hits different.

I’m writing this two more days out of Toledo, and I can honestly say that Michigan has restored some of that feeling. I think for me that in some sense just the desolate miles are the draw. I’m not drawn to history, or buildings, or populated spaces. I just want to be alone in a pretty place with my thoughts and my bike.

My first tour I called that The Big Lonely and it’s somehow terrifying and comforting at the same time. I am just a single mote of dust fluttering in the breeze of the Grand Canyon.

I like that feeling of lonesome awayness that’s punctuated by unexpected encounters and people. Every time I think about the cities in front of me, I just want to go around them.

I’m still figuring this one out.