Day 46 -- Hamburg, NY to Canadaigua, NY

Miles: 100.59
Total Miles: 3512.17
Time: 6:21
Average Speed: 15.8 mph
Max Speed: 37.3 mph
Flats Today: 1
Total Flats: 15
Elevation Gain: 3869 ft
Weather: Rainy and slight tail winds for part of the day around 80 degrees

Today could be summed up by rolling hills and rain in the morning. We didn't take many pictures because there wasn't much to see, but when we got into Canadaigua we went to see part of the finger lakes. It wasn't the most beautiful day, but it was still very enjoyable. We woke up at 5:30, ate breakfast at 6:00, loaded at 7:00, and began our first full day in New York. It started out very nice because we were following big John, so we were getting a great draft. After we went through some round abouts, we started getting into some rolling hills. John was much faster than me up the hills, so he usually had to wait at the top of the hills, but we stayed on his wheel for the first 15 miles. At the time that I just couldn't hold onto his wheel anymore, it started to look a lot like rain, so we decided to stop, put our cell phones, diabetes supplies and camera into plastic baggies, and let John go ahead. Right after we started riding on our own, we could see the rain falling in the distance... On our road. We just took it like tour bicyclists and didn't put on our rain jackets. We didn't put on our rain jackets because we were stupid enough to leave them in our luggage. It wasn't very bad at first, but once we got into it for awhile, the rain started to pick up. After about 5 miles of rain, we arrived at the first sag stop. It wasn't much of a sag stop because we were getting rained on, so we didn't stay our usual amount of time.

We left the sag stop just in time for the rain to pick up again. The funniest part was that we were riding along the edge of the cloud and if we had been paralleling our route 2 miles to the left, we would have been dry. Unlike some things (wind) the rain didn't slow us down, so we just got used to it and kept pedaling along. Today was a day filled with flats for the entire group, so it only made sense that we would have our share. About 15 miles past the first sag stop, Wade got flat on his front tire. I couldn't get the tire off to change it, so I went to get the tire levers out of my bag. Just as I was opening the bag, Wade pulls off the tire. Surprisingly he didn't rub it in that he got it off when I couldn't. Anyway, I changed it, and Wade pumped it with the hand pump. We got going again, then the sag van when by, so we got them to stop and give us a floor pump so that we could top off the pressure in his tire. Once we got that done, we started going again, and just about 2 miles down the road, Wade stops again. It wasn't a flat this time, but he said his brakes were rubbing. It was great because it gave me time to pee while he fixed his brakes. He actually found out that it wasn't his brakes and instead the wheel was rubbing against the frame. Someone put it back on his bike wrong... I had no excuse to get out of that one. Anyway, he fixed the wheel then he rubbed that in. I didn't expect to go 2 for 2 with messing up and Wade fixing it without him making fun of me.

After the flat it was just nice riding with a slight tail wind until the second sag stop. That sag was at a root beer stand type thing with burgers and such, so we had some real food, then ate some sag stop food. We stayed for quite awhile to make up for the short first sag stop. After we were done there, we made our way to the hotel. It was just more of the same rolling hills and slight tail wind basically the entire way there. We didn't get hit with rain for the entire day after the morning, so we were just getting dry when out to the left we saw a very dark cloud that was about to come over top of us. We sped up a little bit to try to avoid it, but since we were only about 5 miles out from the hotel, we thought we could beat it. Just as we were getting onto the road that our hotel was on, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees, the wind picked up dramatically, and a couple strikes of lightning came into view. At that point we were about a mile from the hotel, so we debated whether to get shelter or try to make it to the hotel... we chose the safer option. As we were darting to the hotel in that last mile, the wind was picking up more and more, but we just kept pushing our pedals around and around. Wade was fast enough to keep up with the cars, but I wasn't quite that fast. We eventually got to where our hotel was, crossed over 2 busy lanes to get into the left turn lane, then went quickly through the parking lot to get away from any possible rain. We succeeded by not getting wet and not getting hit by lightning... I bet Joan's proud of me for keeping Wade safe.

After we checked into our room, unloaded luggage, and waited for the rain to stop, we went out to do our extra 6 miles for the day. Today's extra was more than just roaming around so we could reach our 4000 miles mark by the end, it was a ride to add 6 miles on to 94 miles to get a century, a ride to see one of the finger lakes, and most importantly, a ride to get ice cream. We rode out of the hotel, went to a pier, got some pictures, went along a gravel bike path along the lake, got some more pictures, rode some more miles, then went for ice cream. There was a very nice view at the lake at many spots along the path, so we took quite a few pictures. The ice cream was also good, but it was expensive, so we only went once today. After we finished dinner tonight, we went to Wegman's, which is a grocery store that was enormous. There was a huge selection of beers, which I enjoyed, and a huge selection of fruit and candy, which Wade enjoyed. We didn't buy anything, but we still had fun shopping for the first time ever.