Spencerport

Total for this ride: 31.8 miles
Total for this year: 1129.6 miles

RIT group ride... plan was to start at Genesee Valley Park and ride along the canal towpath to Spencerport.  My buddy Bob suggested that he and I pick up a few extra miles by riding from the office to the meeting point in the park.  It was a good idea.

The ride was fairly uneventful...  Only eight of us all together.  I think the fact that I had advertised it as a 24 mile ride scared a few people away.  Good.  We had a little bit of a wind working against us on the outbound leg, but of course it worked in our favor on the way home.  By the time we hit the park I was actually getting kind of cool.

Only real excitement came on the last leg of the ride between Genesee Valley Park and RIT on the Lehigh Valley Trail.  At one point we spotted a young buck on the side of the trail, about 30-35 yards away, just staring at us.  We stopped, took a picture, moved a little closer, took another one... the whole time the buck just stared at us.  It wasn't until he realized that there was a woman with a dog coming from the other direction that he decided to take off.  Wish I could have gotten a little closer for a better picture.

Seneca Lake Loop

Total for this ride: 78.7 miles
Total for this year: 1097.8 miles

Let me start by getting something off my chest.  Geneva, NY, sucks.  It's a pit, a hole, a cesspool.  It is the most bike unfriendly town I've ever ridden in.  The toads who planned this wart of a town took one of the best east-west routes for cycling in New York state (Rts 5 & 20) and totally destroyed it.  Anyone trying to ride through Geneva (no one in there right mind would want to make it their destination...) is literally playing Russuan Roulette.  5&20 in Geneva has a 6 inch "shoulder" if you could call it that... it's little more than a white line painted up against a curb on a 4-lane road where the speed limit is 45 mph.  Now, typically a 6 inch shoulder wouldn't bother me, but 1) butting it up against a curb leaves no margin for error (hope the pedal doesn't clip the curb...) and 2) what little shoulder you do get has more craters than the face of the moon!  I think you can tell a lot about a town by the condition of its roads.  In my opinion, Geneva is worse than scum on the bottom of the ocean.

I feel better...

So... except for the fact that today's loop around Seneca Lake started and ended in Geneva, it was a good ride.  It's a ride I've been wanting to make for a long, long time.  I tried to do it last year, but cut it short when it became very apparent that the weather was turning foul.  The weather threatened all day today, but except for a quick 10 minute downpour at about the 63 mile mark, it was OK.  Hot and humid - one time/temp sign flashed 88 degrees - but I kept well hydrated and didn't have any problems.

Things I learned on this ride:

1. There are about 14,723 wineries around Seneca Lake.  But I may have missed a few.  Some are large, elegant affairs with worldwide sales and snooty tasting rooms.  Others are little more than Mom and Pop operations set in an old storage shed on the side of the road.  My favorite was the Ashley Lynn Winery because they had a Port-A-John in the parking lot right in front of their building.  Such amenities occasionally come in handy on a long ride...

2. Traffic in Watkins Glen is bad even when it's not race weekend.

3. The town of Hector has more New York State Historic Markers per person than any other town in New York (I suspect).  They have so many that some of them are literally a few feet apart.

4. If you want to get the Raspberry Chardonnay ice cream at the little place where I parked the truck in Geneva, you need to get there before 4:00.  By the time I got there, all that was left was Chocolate Cabernet.  Which was OK... (it really is made with wine - you have to be over 21 to buy it), but after a long sweaty ride I really had my heart set on some thing a little fruitier.

Picture below: Hector Falls, on the east side of the lake, a few miles up from Watkins Glen.  You don't get a chance to appreciate something this cool when you're speeding by in a car.

Another Commute...

Total for this ride: 27.7 miles
Total for this year: 1019.1 miles

Nothing special about this ride, other than it put me over the 1000-mile mark for the year.  I'm 19 days ahead of the pace I set back in 2008, which has been my best riding year up to now.

Brockport

Total for this ride: 16.0 miles
Total for this year: 991.4 miles

Nice little ride with a few colleagues from work.  Started in Spencerport, rode west (against the wind) to Brockport (where we stopped for ice cream), and then back along the same route.  It was really cool - I was wearing my Beatles bike jersey, and the little candy/ice cream shop in Brockport was playing a Beatles album over the sound system.  It was kind of like... wow...  After the ride Jill met us at a Mexican restaurant in Spencerport for dinner.  Just now got home at 10:30.

Frontier Field

Total for this ride: 16.9 miles
Total for this year: 975.4 miles

Closing in on the 1000-mile mark.  Probably Friday.

I hadn't been on the bike since last Friday, so since the Univega was sitting there in my office, and I had all the gear I needed, I decided to just to go for a solo ride after work.  Didn't initially have any route or destination in mind, but eventually decided to head into town, and eventually found myself at Frontier Field.  It was a nice ride with a little variety.  Of course there were the trail segments, where I can mindlessly pedal along with my brain in neutral.  But there were also the segments on the streets of downtown Rochester, which, although they weren't clogged with rush hour traffic, still demanded some attention so as to avoid getting killed in a grusome and painful fashion.  Needless to say, I succeeded.

I half expected Frontier Field to be empty.  For some reason I thought the Wings played a day game today, but in fact they were scheduled to hit the field against the Columbus Clippers at 7:05.  Folks were lined up at the gates waiting to get in as I rolled up.  Since there was indeed a game scheduled, I figured my son AJ might be there.  AJ is an intern with the Wings this summer, and typically provides audio-visual services at the games, most often working one of the TV cameras on the field.  I took a quick look in the employee parking lot and saw my Civic (the car AJ is using this summer) so I knew he was around somewhere.  Thinking he might be busy getting ready for the game I decided not to call him but rather just to head back to RIT.  As I was riding past the stadium on Morrie Silver Dr. I noticed that just inside one of the fences separating the stadium concourse from the outside sidewalk there were a group of people sitting at a table eating.  One of them was wearing a red shirt that looked smilar to one which AJ has "borrowed" from me since the filming of his major production in the late winter.  I slowed down, rolled up to the fence, and saw that it was indeed AJ.  I called him over, we chatted for a while, and I took a quick picture.  Then it was back to RIT.

When I got back to campus (minutes before the rain hit...) I checked the GPS and was surprised to see that my average speed was under 13 mph.  I was consciously trying to keep the rate up, since I needed a workout.  After taking a look at the data it appears I did hit 14-16 mph on the straight trail segments.  I guess my speed dropped off a little in town.  Oh well...

Full Commute

Total for this ride: 21.1 miles
Total for this year: 958.5 miles

This is what a full-length, one-way commute from home to RIT looks like.  This was the first time I've taken this particular route when riding all the way from home.  Normally I'd either go up Victor-Egypt Rd to Rt 31 and then west to the canal towpath at Schoen Place, or I'd ride down to Rt 215, then west to Pinnacle when I'd start winding my way up toward campus.  But for this ride I decided to take the stretch of Rt 96 which runs by the mall, since it's the most direct route.  Really not that bad... at least at that time of the morning.  Nice wide shoulder all the way to Bushnell's Basin, where I hop on the canal towpath.

Still no bear...

Bear Hunt

Total for this ride: 12.2 miles
Total for this year: 937.4 miles

Took the CIS group on a ride along the Erie Canal, right through the area where there have been numerous black bear sightings over the past several days.  Didn't see the slightest trace of one.