Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Cycling The Erie Canal – July 2009
The stone dust takes a few MPH off your average but it is a tour, not a race, and going slower lets you take in the scenery. Because you are following the canal, it is pancake flat. A couple of TCC folks I talked to who had done it before said that it was flat, but I can tell you, it is really flat. The one or two big hills engendered much attention and conversation among the riders, but they were nothing that we don’t see as on a typical Saturday ride. It is a ride that is done by all ages and many families do it together. The youngest rider to pedal their own bike the whole way was 7, and the oldest (that started) was 85. The mean age was 48 but folks felt that that number was skewed downward because there were 43 junior riders under 18 (there were lots of grey haired riders). Riders were from all ability levels, and I appreciated not being the only one who knows how to fill out a bike jersey.
While bikes came in all shapes and sizes from high end to low end, the typical bike was a hybrid, with upright handlebars, and a click shifting hand grip. There was one guy who calculated the cost of shipping a bike from Texas and came to Buffalo, went to Wal-Mart and bought a Huffy to do the ride (I saw him at the bike mechanic’s van trying to get the brakes adjusted). Because it is so flat, it is recumbent heaven. I have never seen such a wide variety of ‘bents in one place.
The tour is designed to celebrate the history and culture of upstate New York. There is the canal of course, and you travel by and over locks and waterways. Each day there was something special to see or do, from taking a boat ride through a lock, to visiting an art or history museum, attending a wine tasting, checking out the birthplace of Mormonism, or the birthplace of the Women’s Rights movement in Seneca Falls. The tour organizers did a marvelous job of working with locals to highlight towns and places of special interest and making sure you knew about them on the cue sheet or at morning meetings. We camped one night at the Revolutionary War monument of
Fort Stanwix in Rome and were hosted at the Syracuse Zoo when we were in the ‘Cuse.
The accommodations were like most tours ,creating a tent city by camping at schools, parks and colleges along the route. There are optional Camptel services (they set up a tent and air mattress for you each day) and some limited off site indoor accommodations. Unlike RAGBRAI this trip follows about the same route every year. Since this was the 11th year, it is pretty well dialed it and runs as smoothly as any 500 person travelling circus can run.
A typical day is wake up an pack up your tent and gear, take your duffel to the truck, head to breakfast buffet in a school gym, and head out to ride. I was an early riser and usually was on the road by 7AM or so. There is a morning rest stop about 15-20 miles in, with a typical array of fruit, water, Gatorade, crackers, peanut butter, nuts, pretzels, granola bars and sometimes local baked goods. Lunch was on your own, but the cue sheet would let you know that there were lunch options in a town typically at the 25-30 mile mark, and often there were local civic folks at the trail crossing with lists of restaurants to stop at in town. Afternoon rest stops come another 15-20 miles in and then finishing at another school, park, or college. I was finishing between 2PM-3PM each day, leaving plenty of time to pick up my duffel, set up my tent, grab a shower at the shower truck, rinse out my bike shorts and shirt, buy a smoothie, grab my rented lounge chair, and still have time before dinner to spend $20 for a 20 minute massage at the massage tables. Dinner was at the school or park tent city, but two nights we were turned loose to find dinner in town. There was some activity every evening, either music, or a speaker and usually there was a shuttle bus into the nearest town.
Now, I know what you all are thinking. Fifty miles per day, starting at 7AM, finishing at 2PM is like 8 mph, over flat terrain? Well, it is a tour not a race. The compacted stone dust is a little slower than pavement, and I was pushing “Sweetness” my heavy Trek touring bike, but as the RAGBRAI folks found out, it is best to go slow and enjoy the experience. I took my time and stopped to see the various sites along the way, and found the most enjoyable part was the people you meet riding and in camp. Chatting up other riders about where they came from, what other rides they had done, how their ride was going, what they were stopping to see, led to great conversations, dinner and lunch companions, and contributed to just a general camaraderie and a great feel to the ride. Many
people were veteran tour riders and knew where the special pie shop was in the next town, or that the climb up the long driveway to the shrine of the martyrs was not worth it. I learned about lots of other tours and multi-day rides from the vets.
Every once in a while when some folks went by in a fast line and if my legs were up to it I jumped in
cruising in the high teens, and I really put the hammer down for a couple of hours on the afternoon of the 63 mile day when the thunderheads were rolling in, but mostly it was leisurely cruise each day. We did hit a perfect week of weather with cool temps and only one night of rain. It would have been a different ride if the weather was hotter and more humid.
If you are looking to try out a multi-day ride and not yet up for biggie like a RAGBRAI or Michigander, Cycling The Erie Canal (http://www.ptny.org/canaltour/) may be the trip for you. It is a bit closer to home, very well run and doable by riders of a variety of ability. With 500 riders it felt big enough so that you were meeting new people every day, yet you were not overwhelmed by the logistics of thousands of people. You can long term park in Albany, put your bike on a truck and board a bus to Buffalo to take care of getting to the start. The coordination of the ride is handled by InMotion Events (http://www.inmotionevents.net/index.html) a veteran bike touring company that
sponsors their own rides, but also coordinates the Bon Ton Roulet (http://www.bontonroulet.com) in the Finger Lakes Region and the Great Hudson Valley Pedal (http://www.ptny.org/hudsontour ) which are more road rides (with more hills). There is a great resource of all kinds of tours to be found at the National Bike Tour Directors website (http://www.nbtda.com/default.php) where you can search for rides by location or date.
I am headed back next year, hope to see you there!
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Cycling the Erie Canal is organized by the non-profit Parks & Trails New York www.ptny.org/canaltour.
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