93 miles ridden – 1480 feet climbed.

Another great day’s ride which started with 23 miles along the Erie Canal. Like everything else, canals are bigger in America – the Erie Canal is 363 miles long and was completed in 1825. These days there is not much traffic but it is kept navigable and it really was a beautiful ride with some interesting bridges (straight out of movies) and charming little towns along the way. If you are ever in this part of the world Pittsford is worth a visit.

As we continue to move further east into more densely populated parts of the country the amount of traffic is increasing and so is the number of towns we go through. Whereas in Wyoming we cycled 116 miles with just two towns (and one of them only had 10 residents) over 90 miles today we went through 13 which makes lunches and interesting 5 minute breaks so much easier. However we still enjoy great hospitality from these small towns which really is a highlight of the trip.

Lunch today was at a petrol station in Clyde. While very unassuming – and frankly unappealing – on the outside it was the first place we had stopped for lunch where they made fresh sandwiches to order. Behind the usual petrol station shelving with car parts, crisps, and Red Bull was a pretty decent deli counter with some of the best fresh bread we have had on the trip. Shame was a number of others took one look at the outside and assumed it was no good.

Some of the towns have interesting names. I wonder if Clyde was named after the river in Scotland or the gangster but perhaps Lyons, Savannah, Montezuma, Port Byron, Weedsport, and Jordan have their own unique stories to tell.

Second SAG stop was in Weedsport at a park with a war memorial and ‘Historical Markers’ (plaques in the UK) relating to the Erie Canal.

We passed another slightly more eclectic war memorial earlier in the day – we assume the Christmas lights are not original.

With only 5 more cycling days to go the crew have advised us to start cutting down our calorie intake now to improve our chances of retaining our newly sculpted and crafted torsos, buttocks and legs so with this in mind we limited ourselves to medium sized ice creams at the world-famous Heids Ice Cream parlour on the way in to Liverpool and didn’t even have one of their hot dogs. Our resolve and self-control is truly bewildering.

Only 5 more days until I see Sue in the Wallis Sands State Beach parking lot. I can’t think of a better finale to this odyssey although I did go shopping at Victoria’s Secrets.