Onto Canada

     Day Thirteen  7 July, 2014
     Day Fourteen
     Day Fifteen
     Day Sixteen



Day Thirteen 7 July, 2014 Marion, Illinois - Cincinnati, Ohio 297 miles

I made it to Marion, Illinois where I once again got off the Interstate and started to ride along the
secondary roads.

This part of the Midwest is fairly flat and not particularly scenic so it was pretty much just getting on down the road.  I was not on the back roads long before I had to rejoin the Interstate and was on them for the rest of the day; always boring.  About mid-afternoon, I left Illinois,  whose motto is "Land of Lincoln" and entered Indiana.  If they have a motto, I certainly don't know what it might be.  I get to thinking that I really don't know much of anything about Indiana other than its called the Hoosier State and that they love basketball.  The only reason I know that little bit of trivia is the the movie Hoosiers, staring Gene Hackman, who I like, is Mrs Hansford's favorite movie so I have watched it seemingly thousands of times.  It really is not a bad movie.  At one of the Rest Stops located along the Interstates, I see a sign that claims Indiana as the "real" home of Lincoln.  I guess there was not much else in the region to claim ownership of something historically important other than the famous President so Indiana decided to steal from Illinois.

All in all, this was a pretty uneventful day, particularly in light of the fullness of its predessors.  At least I had good weather, the clouds had threatened all around me but I did not get wet.  I had timed my entry into Cincinnati poorly and arrived at the height of rush hour.  Normally I like to get through any major towns at the end of a day so that I do not have to fight traffic the next morning but this traffic was so bad that once I made into downtown I took the first hotel I could find and spent the night.

Day Thirteen Commentary

Day Fourteen   8 July, 2014  Cincinnati, Ohio - Cleveland, Ohio 268 miles

I actually ended the ride in a suburb of Cleveland called Macedonia which is close to Cuyahoga Falls on the Cuyahoga River.  I remember the name because it was the Cuyahoga River that was the site of an event that really started the environmental movement in the 1960's.  The river caught fire and the local officials were unable to extinguish it for some time.

The image of a river catching fire was so forceful that the fire was a national media story for some time.  People started asking themselves, "if a river can catch on fire, what in the world are we dumping into our waterways?"  I think that was the real start of a general public concern with pollution and other environmental problems.  Perhaps not widespread enough or soon enough to save us from global warming but a start nevertheless.  My luck ran out on the weather today and I was in fairly heavy wind and rain most of the day.  When I stopped for gas outside Cleveland it was really blowing and pouring down.  The guy in the car in front of me at the gas station said, "you better check the weather reports, I heard there were tornados in the area". That was enough to get me looking for a motel and I found one practically right across the street.

Day Fourteen Commentary

Day Fifteen   9 July, 2014  Cleveland, Ohio -  Corfu, New York  268 miles

This day broke sunny and warm.  I hoped the torrential rain, hurricane winds and tornados of yesterday would remain things of the past.  And for a while, they did.  But as I got on the Interstate to ride east toward Buffalo, I could see yesterday's clouds out on the horizon.  I guess this made sense since the winds are predominately west to east in this country, it is logical that the storm would move in that direction.  I was enjoying the ride and the local landscape so I really was hoping that I would not catch up to the storm before I had to turn north into Quebec.   The ride to Buffalo runs along the southern side of Lake Erie and through the small bit of Pennsylvania that juts north so that Erie, Pennsylvania can give the Stare an port of the Great Lakes.  I have been this route many times and there is not much to commend it but it is all freeway and as long as the weather cooperates, I can look

forward at least to making good time.  I did see one sign along the roadway that was intriguing and that was an billboard advertising a restaurant that specialized in Amish Food.

 I don't know much about the Amish at all other that that they do not use cars or other types of machinery, dress in black and white, nineteenth century costumes and snarl traffic by driving slow, horse-drawn carriages on the backroads of this area of the county.  I do not think I ever heard of Amish food as a speciality and have to admit, it really does not sound too appealing.  In any case I give the food a miss and shuffle off to Buffalo.  Buffalo has a pretty bad reputation, mostly I think because of the weather.  Located at the Eastern end of Lake Erie, the town gets a huge amount of lake effect snow and ofter gets 6 or more feet in a single dump in many winters.  Not a place that I would find too endearing but the few people I know who have lived there all talk about the place with obvious affection.  I guess it is just hard to not like a place with place names like Lackawanna, Cheektowaga, Tonawanda and Batavia.  When I was living in Toronto, I had an employee who lived in Buffalo and I was invited to his wedding.  The guests stayed at the County Club of Buffalo.  This was a treat, mostly due to the long history of the Club as the first country club in western New York and as the first golf course.  I rally enjoyed the few rounds we were able to play and the wedding was a huge success as well.

All the way up the road I had been eyeing warily the dark clouds that hung low on the eastern horizon.  It looked to me like I just might skirt yesterday's storm to the North but it was likely to be a close thing.  I was not looking forward to dealing with the rain again but I had only covered a few miles and wanted to make better progress in getting to Quebec.  I lost that bet once I was through Buffalo and had just entered the New York Thruway Tollroad heading east.  The road jogged a bit south and before I knew it I was in the heart of the storm with very strong gusting winds and rain that just bucketed down.  It quickly went from uncomfortable to downright scary.  I was being blown around on the freeway and if I slowed even a bit, the giant trucks would roar by throwing up a nearly solid wall of water in their wake.  Not only did this blind me temporarily but the weight of it also made controlling the bike more difficult.  And I was really worried about control.  There was a good inch or so of standing water on the highway and I was very concerned about hydoplanning.  I have had that happen to me in a car a few times and you go from in control to a full uncontrollable slide in seconds.  I knew if that happened on the bike, I would be down immediately and likely run over by the heavy truck and auto traffic.  I have to admit, I was frankly very scared.  It was also a cold rain and it had come upon me so quickly that I had not stopped to put on my rain-gear and there were no places along the road to pull off to the side.  I considered slowing down dramatically and just taking it easy until the next exit but the trucks were still driving at the full speed limit and slowing down seemed to be to guarantee that I would either be knocked over by the wake of passing trucks or run over from behind.  Either of which would have been a disaster if not instant death.  I was also worried about my breathing.  Sometimes when I get a rush of adrenaline, my oxygen needs go up dramatically and I have a breathing crisis.  I knew that if I added that problem to my other difficulties I was toast but there simply was not any choice but to soldier on since there really was no safe place to get off the roadway.  I was lucky that the danger and discomfort did not trigger an attack, probably because of the lower altitude of Buffalo, I was getting more oxygen than I normally experience at higher altitudes.  Because I was on a toll-road rather than an Interstate, the exits had to be manned by toll collectors and that meant that the exits were far fewer than normal.  I just prayed I could avoid an accident until the next one.  Unfortunately that was not for another very uncomfortable 20 miles.  I took the first motel I found which was a real dump but the roof did not leak and I was happy.  At least my luggage worked well and even through I soaked through to the skin, the rest of my stuff was dry.  I quickly stripped off the wet gear and after standing under a hot shower for a while, got dressed in warm and dry clothes.  What a treat!  Depending on the circumstance, the smallest things in life can sometimes bring immense pleasure.  Getting clean and dry after being cold, wet and miserable is one of those things.

Day Sixteen   10 July, 2014  Corfu, New York  - Malone, NY  297 miles

Day 16 commentary

I talk about the author, Charles Dickens in the day's commentary.  I was reminded of the opening lines of the book A Tale of Two Cities when Dickens says, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,,,,", as I started the ride under absolutely perfect condition.  Warm sunshine and blue skies in every direction without a cloud on the horizon for me to catch up to.  The  storm of yesterday was truly and finally a thing of the past.  I had stayed in the small town of Malone and out of my hotel window I had the following views.

The area is very rural with lots of farms and quaint little villages.  When you are from the West you often fall into the habit of thinking about the East Coast of the US as almost all urban sprawl or rusting industrial areas.  It is easy to forget just how beautiful and in many case pristine some parts remain.  Your sense of size also gets changed and you think that somehow all the locations are somehow jammed together into a small area.  That is one of the first lessons that was forced on me today when I got back on the New York Thruway and saw a sign the said it was just over 400 miles (700 Kilometers) to New York City.  Most of the time you are riding by small farms, but occasionally you will ride though some area of preserved forest and the trees grow so thick that it is like riding down a tunnel of thick green vegetation.  The fecundity of the land is suck a stark contrast to the mostly dry and thinly vegetated  West.  The sheer richness of the land reminds me of how blessed the settlers of the Americas were in the vast natural resources that the country contained.

And after the harsh conditions of the previous day, I am doubly pleased to enjoy the wonderful weather and the ride is just a joy.  I had hoped to stay the night in the small town of Potsdam rather than continue on to Malone which lies another 40 miles down the road, but there is a College located there and they were having some kind of event so that there were no hotel rooms available.  Whenever possible I try to stay in college towns since they normally have a good supply of hotels as well as restaurants that cater to the student population.  Potsdam is the home of both a State University of New York Campus and Clarkson University.  As I was approaching the town and seeing its name of the roadsigns, I could not help but be reminded of the close ties that this part of the country's immigrants had with their native lands.  So many of the towns in the East have names that echo their European roots.

Another thing that the day gave me was a resolve to try to document the many farm barns that are visible from most of the roads traveling through rural agrarian America.  They are eveywhere and are everywhere mostly in a desperate state of repair.  It will not be many years and almost all of these remnants of our history will be lost forever.  I suppose there are already many photographic studies of these distinctive farm buildings already completed but I would like to make the time on some future trip to stop at each one and try to get some shots of the distinct individuality of these structures.  I was told somewhere that the traditional design of the barn building with its high, stepped and peaked roof was dictated by the needs of farmers before mechanization of farms to care for livestock in the winter months.  In colder climates with moderate or heavy snow, it was necessary to keep the livestock inone place where they could be fed thought the winter months.  The feed was generally hay and the need to store large amounts of loose hay in a way that it could easily be delivered to the animals gave rise the hayloft design that dictated the large upper story space for hay and the lower floor for animals.

Haystacks by Claude Monet

Mechanization meant that the hay could be mechanically baled and did not need to be stored loosely in haystacks or barns and the bales could be derived to the animals in their fields so they did not have to be kept inside.  If VanGoug and Renoir had lived a 100 years later, we would have had paintings of hay bales in the fields rather than haystacks.  I saw some of Monet's work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and was frankly astounded at the power of the works and his use of perspective.  I have never seen anything quite like it before of since, simply amazing.