Scenic Route

It was another fantastic Monday in R-Town today. Full sun, 60°F (15°C for you lot) and the winds were under 10 MPH all day, most times under five. The Weather Channel is reporting winds right now as “calm”. I don’t think I’ve seen that more than a couple of times all year.

Plus, I slept a lot yesterday and got in a good night last night. I was feeling as good as the day.

I took care of business in the morning then hit the shower. After that, I rode to the grocery store. I ran into several friends while shopping. And I managed to buy more than I planned on, while at the same time, forgetting a couple of things on my list.

The killer is the pre-season sale on canned soup. I love Progresso soup and it was on sale last week and this week. My favorite is their Minestrone, which was a buck a can last week. I came home with ten cans of that alone on Saturday.

Today I went with an assortment of their other soups, and I remembered to split them evenly between my grocery panniers. I was a little lopsided on Saturday which made for an interesting ride home.

After lunch, and after lunch settled, I went out for a spin. I took the long way to the Canalway, tooling along the fresh pavement on Park Ave, riding at a leisurly pace through Cobbs Hill Park and out through Brighton. The geese are migrating, and I watched a whole flock of them land in the pond. (I know it’s a gaggle of geese when they’re on the ground, but is it a flock while they’re still airborne?)

There were several gaggles of them in the office park by the canal. There was no gooseshit-free way along the path. Fortunately, it’s a nice enough night that the bike can stay outside tonight.

Despite the fact that there was no wind to speak of, I didn’t really push at all along the canal. In fact, I’ve gone faster into a strong headwind through there. It was a day to take in the sights—and to avoid geese and squirrels.

After crossing the river on the bike bridge, I ran into Harvey Botzman, author of several cyclotouring books. Harvey was on his Bike Friday folder with a couple of panniers on the back. We chatted a while on bridge over the canal. We both seemed to be in the mood for a slow ride and decided to ride together while we continued the conversation.

He’s quite a talker. Several times, he stopped to pull stuff out of his panniers to show me to illustrate a point. It was quite a nice ride. I learned a lot. I’m not necessarily looking to become a big-time tourer, but next year I’d like to give it whirl. With Harvey’s tips—both from his book I won at the RBC dinner a couple of weeks back, and from our ride today—make it sound easy and less expensive than I thought. And he thinks my bike would make a nice tourer, even if that wasn’t the design intent.

We stopped for ice cream—Harvey’s treat—on the way back. I’d never stopped at that place in Corn Hill Landing before. Without question, it’s the best ice cream in town. I’ve been an Abbot’s fan for decades, and this place blows them away. It’s a different style, of course. Abbot’s is known for frozen custard whereas Corn Hill Creamery is closer to traditional ice cream. But it goes way beyond that. I’m not sure it was a good thing that we stopped.

Rush-hour traffic had begun as we headed out of downtown. We parted on Court St. Hammering through downtown traffic is ordinarily a highlight of a ride for me. Today, it was anti-climactic. As it should have been.

Plans for the week

I have to get some domestic stuff done around here—and soon. The long-term bachelor look has settled in and I’m not happy about it. Plus I still need to rearrange the living room to move the bike area closer to the door.

Besides the Tuesday Night Urban Assault ride tomorrow night, I’m planning another metric century ride with bikerjohn on Friday. We both have the day off and, while the forecast has been back-and-forth, it seems to be settling down and perdicting a pretty nice day.

Where last time we went east on the canal to Palmyra, this time we’re heading west to Medina, which is halfway between here and Niagara Falls. I’ll be cheating a bit. John is going to pick me up and we’ll start the ride from his place in Spencerport, maybe a 20-mile ride from here. Depending on how I feel at the end of 100 km, I may ride home, or he may drive me home. We’ll see.

Oh, almost forgot

I shared a commuting story the other day on Bike Forums. In the Commuting section, the thread titled “Do you find competition while commuting?” Or go right to the post, #30, here.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 7:29 pm EST and is filed under Bike, Generic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.