Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Aug 5 2014 Geneseo to Seneca Falls NY




Last night Greg was out doing routing as Ed W was back in Colorado. As a result Matt stood in to do the rider meeting.  The weather report he gave us sounded pretty ominous.  The forecast was 80% chance of rain in Geneseo and 50% percent in Seneca Falls.  As the day’s ride was 95 miles and 4820 ft of climb, you are pretty much guaranteed to get rained on.  In fact Matt made it sound like constant thunder and lightening all day.  So I laid out my heavy duty rain gear. 

When I crawled out there were some clouds but it was pretty much blue sky.  It didn’t look too much like rain to me.  So the rain gear was bundled up on the bike as you just never know and it is easy to put on if you have it.  At digital sign indicated 64F as I rode out of town. 

Ken C and I had rolled out together but were only loosely in contact with eath other during the first 20 miles.  Ken stopped to help fix another rider’s tire and by the time I got up he had it well in hand.  As he did not need any supervision or a safety officer present I rode on and Ken met me at picnic. 

The ride was running perpendicular to the finger lakes so there was lots of hills between each lake. As we were on back roads the hills were really steep and I saw 13% on my bike computer several times.  It was very pretty riding down the little used winding back roads.  The lakes were lined with beautiful summer homes which actually looked more like summer mansions. The hills had small farms which looked like the farmers were probably pretty poor.  

Ater lunch Ken and I got together and rode along together as it was starting to look more and more like rain.  The last 15 miles was a race to get in before the down pour.  We were taking turns pulling as hard as we could.  We got to the school and started putting up tents among the first drops of the down pour. 

Terry

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