Total for this ride: 69.2 miles
Total for this year: 1681.5 miles
I'd been waiting for this day and this ride for a long, long time.
Early in the year RIT's Orientation Office sent out a call for proposals for "pre-orientation" activities for incoming freshmen. They made no restrictions on the nature of the activity, other than it had to fill three days. To me, this was a no-brainer -- I'd propose a bike tour. I immediately set about designing the trip.
At first, I wasn't sure exactly where the tour should go. I can't remember all of the options I considered, but I do remember drawing lots of lines on a map of New York. Ultimately I settled on a round trip to Niagara Falls. I wrote it up, submitted the proposal, and a couple months later received notice that it had been approved. I was on my way. I threw together a web site to promote the program in the hopes that it would help me reach my goal of attracting 16 students.
The months between the approval of the proposal and the beginning of the tour were spent developing budgets, arranging meals and lodging, and lining up an adult support team. Naturally Bob would have to come. I asked Roger, but I knew he would find some reason not to participate (he didn't disappoint). One of my colleagues at work volunteered to provide rescue vehicle service (thank you Dan...). And few other co-workers (who I would call casual riders) heard about the trip and decided they wanted to come too.
Student registrations for the ride were slow coming in. At one point I thought I'd have to cancel the trip due to lack of interest. But right before the deadline to sign up we managed to get what I thought was critical mass. The ride was on.
That's when things started getting hinkey. With registrations in hand a few weeks ago, I was able to finalize the contracts for the hotel and meals. But shortly thereafter, the numbers started changing. One kid dropped out. Since I needed an even number of students (of each gender) I quickly asked one of my current grad students, who jumped at the opportunity to go. OK, back to even. I set up a Facebook page and sent an e-mail to each of the registrants asking them to use the site to introduce themselves. A few did right away. Others trickled in over the next couple of weeks. But a week before the ride I realized I hadn't heard from three of the kids and decided to call them to see if they were still on board. The first two calls went right to voice mail. The third call reached the kid. He was in a car, somewhere in Colorado, on his way to Rochester with his sister. Among other things I asked him how he was transporting his bike to RIT. He said he didn't own a bike, and was expecting RIT to provide the bike for the ride. Since we weren't, he too dropped from the event. Rather than tell my one student I no longer needed him, I invited a SECOND student to get back to even numbers of guys. I was beginning to realize that it was going to be a challenge keeping the number of participants at the level I had requested when I signed the contracts for the meals and lodging.
And it wasn't just the students who were making life difficult. The adults were pretty flakey about riding too. One of my riders discovered he had written the wrong dates on his calendar and told me he could only ride the first two days. Until he later changed his mind and decided he could ride three. Another was originally going to ride three. Then decided it would have to be only one, but she would check in to the hotel the night before so I should get her a room. At the last minute she realized she wouldn't be able to get there until the morning of the last day. And literally the night before the ride, two of my adults (married couple) dropped out because one (the husband) literally fell down a cliff and busted his face wide open, requiring 20 stitches across his nose, eyebrow, and forehead. It was a circus. And when on the Friday before the ride my contacts in the Orientation Office told me that I couldn't use the department credit card to pay the bills because the adult riders weren't eligible for tax exempt status, I threatened to cancel the ride. They eventually relented, but at that point I had pretty much decided that this would be the one and only time I'd lead this event.
As everybody was making their final preparations, a crew from one of the local news stations, YNN, came by to do some interviews and take some video. Our departure was broadcast later that day. At the appointed hour of 8:30 exactly, we rolled away from campus.
The ride started out uneventfully. Everybody was in good spirits and ready for an adventure. Since none of the kids knew the route, the group pretty much hung together as we rode northwest along the paved section of the Erie Canal Towpath. But then at the 10-mile point, just as we were about to leave the pavement and hit the crushed stone which we'd be on for almost 60 miles, one of the riders had a flat. It was the girl with the racing bike. The flat came as no surprise to me, and with it, I realized that it was going to be a very long day. Bob and I fixed the flat, and we hit the trail again.
That flat was just the first of several "adventures" we would have over the course of the day. At the 16-mile mark, one of our adult riders, unaware of the fact that he was riding straight toward a large metal post in the middle of the trail, slammed into it, hit the ground, and tore up three of his fingers. Fortunately I was carrying a first aid kit and we were able to bandage him up. Not long after a quick break at the welcome center in Brockport, Brooke had her second flat of the morning. Bob patched it up, and I offered to take over for him in the sweep (rear) position so he could ride in the lead for a while. It was about this time that Tal, the kid with the backpack, started to fade. My grad student Dave (who is a real saint) took Tal's load and bungeed it to the rack of his Schwinn. In spite of this, Tal kept falling further and further behind the group. So far, in fact, that soon he and I were riding alone, completely out of eyesight from the peleton. Tal was sure his inability to keep up was due to a mechanical problem with his bike. I knew better - the kid did nothing to prepare and he was never going to make it. I started planting suggestions in his head that he could get picked up at lunch and given a ride back home. At first he declined, but after taking several more brakes, and drinking my entire water supply, he accepted the offer. I called Dan and asked him to head for Albion.
Tal and I rolled into Albion and up a short hill to the Subway where the rest of the group was waiting for us (I had the credit card...). As soon as I got there, someone pointed out to me that we had a problem - another one of my riders, Drew, was sitting by himself in a booth sobbing his eyes out. My first reaction was to go all "drill sergeant" on him and slap him around a little. But instead, I went over and sympathetically asked him if he was OK. He blubbered something about having a headache. I suggested that he get in line for a sandwich, that maybe he would feel better if he got some food in his stomach. He said that he just wanted to think. OK... so I got at the end of the line, ordered my own sandwich, and paid the bill for the entire group. While I was eating, Drew, with tears streaming down his swolen red eyes, came over and asked if he could use my phone, since he wasn't getting any reception on his. My first thought was "must have ATT." My second thought was "he's gonna slobber all over my phone." Which he did the whole time he talked to his Mommy and Daddy. When he finally finished his call, he asked if he could get a ride home, which I gladly agreed to arrange. Having him out of the group wouldn't bother me in the least. But what did bother me is that after I had already paid for everybody else's lunch, he had the nerve to ask me if he could get something to eat. It was about then that Dan rolled up with the car. We loaded the two wimps and their bikes into the car and we set out once again to the west.
After lunch the group started to spread out a little. I was up near the front group - the first ones to reach our destination for the day, Lockport. I've been on the Erie Canal Towpath in Lockport a few times before. The last time was two years ago when Bob and I made this same ride. When we got to the locks, there was a jersey barricade across the trail with a sign indicating that it was closed. But it was no problem getting around the barricades and we were able to walk our bikes up the one big hill on this ride to the street level of downtown Lockport. Unfortunately, this time the trail really was closed - blocked by a chain link fence that extended over the canal. There was no way to get up to street level, short of climbing an enormous set of stairs which zig-zagged up to the top of the escarpment. A couple of the guys in the group started carrying their bikes up the stairs. I decided it would be easier to make two trips, so I took all of the gear off my bike before making the trip to the top. It was a killer climb. When I got back down, I asked Dave, who was taking video of this whole episode, to ride back and have everyone behind us to use a bridge about a half mile back to get over the canal and take surface streets to get to the hotel. I grabbed my gear, climbed back up to the top, and took the small group to the hotel.
Just as I was checking in, Bob called to say Brooke was having more problems. She flattened out again, for the third time, near a house where the owner was taking target practice in his back yard. Bob got it patched up, only to find that another leak sprung up somewhere else. He patched that one, and another appeared. And then another... soon he was completely out of patches and stuck in Middleport. He said that he was going to need transport to the hotel. The nice lady behind the counter gave me the number of a local cab company, who agreed to pick up Bob, Brooke, and Maria (who was also riding back in the rear). While I got all of the other riders checked in and started on dinner, I waited for those three to show up. When they did, I had some dinner myself, and crashed for the night. It was a long day...
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