Gig Harbor Washington to Bar Harbor Maine 2001

Airlift? We don't need no stinking airlift.

I watched the sky get lighter and listened to the wind gust, hoping it was shifting to a tail wind. Mike was already up when I looked outside. We were both ready to get the hell out of Selkirk, especially before the shrieking mothers woke up. (One of the shrieking mothers' kids was quietly playing in their campsite, obviously enjoying the peace and quiet as much as I was.)

We were on the road by about 7:30. The wind had shifted enough to not hinder our eastward progress and to help our jogs to the north. My knees hurt for the first time in weeks, but after a few miles of easy spinning - not fighting a headwind - I was feeling no pain. In fact, I was feeling pretty damn good.

There was a donut shop a few miles out. I got a breakfast bagel, Mike got some coffee. There was a store a few miles later. We stocked up on cookies and fruit, partly because of fear of storelessness, partly to use up our canadian cash. We got lucky on our choice of roads, with the help of some realtors we quizzed, and cruised right into Niagara Falls.

Yup, we wuz there.

A bike shop pointed us to a great path that led downstream to the falls. First he led us upstream to a good restaurant that wasn't in the thick of the tourist trade. Bikes are the perfect vehicle for Niagara Falls. We weaved around pedestrians to the falls viewing area and snapped each other's pictures. We travelled as fast as car traffic could, then snuck into line at customs and set wheel again on American soil.

Good ole US of A

Ontario was not Michigan. The people, traffic, and roads were all pretty good (although the roads all went the wrong direction), but our time there was pretty Michiganny. The headwinds were the main factor that fouled our visit. There's just no good way to deal with a headwind. And, of course, Selkirk Provincial Park truly sucked.

We're back on the Adventure Cycling route for the first time since early North Dakota, maybe Montana, and I screwed it up right away. After deftly maneuvering customs, we figured out we should have gone across a bridge farther north. Several friendly New Yorkers (no, that's not a typo - friendly New Yorkers) helped us figure out where we were and how to get where we were going. We took an alternate route all the way to Lockport, but it was a fine road and we went fast.

The wonderful thing about the A-C route is that we know where services are and we have their phone numbers. We determined at lunchtime that we'd have a place to stay tonight - even on a Saturday near Niagara Falls. We were making such great time that we decided to stay somewhere else, closer to the route to make it easier to put in some early miles in hopes of escaping the heat and Sunday traffic in a motel in the early afternoon. As Mike says, "If the second coming of Christ was happening two blocks off route to the right, I'm still turning left." So we're camping for free behind the Wide Waves Drive In burger joint, across the street from the City Marina on the Erie Canal.

The marina is just a dock and boat launch with a bathroom with showers and a washer/dryer. We'd just put our clothes in the dryer when a man came by and said he needed to lock up. (It was 8:45, we'd heard that the bathrooms were open till 10.) I was pulling our wet stuff out and he asked us if we were boaters. We told him about our trip and that we were camping across the street. He decided that it would be ok for us to finish drying our clothes. He'd leave us the key and we could hide it when we were done. In fact, there were a lot of people on the dock, why don't we leave it open for a few hours, and feel free to use it during the night and take a shower before we leave in the morning. I didn't realize it at the time, but he was the Mayor of Lockport. I've heard of getting the key to the city, but the key to the bathroom is even better.

We finally heard from the kids. They'd had a hard time across Ontario too, but had made Niagara today. They're planning on a day off tomorrow. Considering that they're 19 and don't do mornings, and we're old farts and like to get our riding in early, there's just no point in trying to ride together. Besides, Gridley's been telling me that we'd be like horses when they can smell the barn. We've got less than 800 miles to go. If we can average 75 miles a day, we can still be done by August 1. Whinny!