First the riding: We had an 81 mile trip on Hwy 5 from Erie PA to Hamburg NY. This road was in good condition, with wide shoulders, the wind was light, the temperature was in the 70s and the blue sky was accented with beautiful puffy clouds. A perfect day to ride.
As we found out, this area is dominated by grape vineyards both for wine and grape products thru the Welch's company. On our ride, we paralleled very close to Lake Erie on the left and huge spreads of grape crops on the right.
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| Lake Erie on the left..... |
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| A perfect road straight ahead..... |
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| Vineyards and a beautiful sky to the right!!! |
We passed a really beautiful stream that was running into the lake and just had to stop and take a picture. While admiring the scene, we noticed that this stream had a dozen or so rather large fish (18 to 23") in it. After talking to the locals it seems like these fish might have been salmon. In any event it was fun to watch them swimming around.
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| Very nice stream feeding Lake Erie |
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| Slightly above center in the shadowy area....can you find 5 fish???? |
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| Incredible!! We have been in 12 states on this tour. |
Now to the disaster. Today's ride was not too long and I arrived at the hotel at about 1:45 pm so I decided to clean up the bike. While cleaning I notice that the rear wheel had several 1/2" hairline cracks streaming in both directions from many of the spoke islets. Anyway, the short version is that this could lead to a catastrophic wheel failure and if it happened on a high speed descent, well, the results would not be good for yours truly. No new wheel meant that I don't ride tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I would not be happy to miss out and a riding day and not be able to really 'complete' the coast to coast ride.
Fast forward: After many frantic internet searches and phone calls to both coasts, I found a local bike shop about 20 miles away that in the end gave me a loaner rear wheel, installed it on my bike, checked the shifting and gave me a pair of riding socks with his company name on the side. Tom the owner said, good luck getting to Boston and then get home to CA, just ship the wheel back to me. No charge, no deposit....just one cyclist helping another.
So my trusty bike is now at the ready for the remaining 500 or so miles. THANKS TOM!!!!
Tom's Pro Bike
3687 Walden Ave.
Lancaster, NY 14086
(716) 651-9995
www.tomsprobike.com
That's all for now. It's 9:30 pm; tomorrow is up at 0500 and a tough 95 miles to Canandiagua, NY with 5000' of climbing in the hills of NY.
Good Night...... zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Click here to see details of today's ride:
Day 42: Erie PA to Hamburg NY by xctom2012 at Garmin Connect - Details
2 comments:
"Community" is a wonderful thing to behold! It's so nice to experience the generosity of fellow humans.
Ken
The LORD will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
Psalm 121:7-8
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