Finger Lake 'n Good

My apologies to KFC - I couldn't resist.  While Paul C. attended his Palm Springs junket, Gayle and I explored the Finger Lakes region of New York.  Wednesday I rode around Seneca Lake, the second biggest (I think) of the ten lakes.  They're not all that dramatic and I don't know why they draw so much attention - maybe it's all of the wineries clustered around the southern end of Seneca.

 I got a kick out of watching several artists create their masterpieces....

 It was a windy day and these sailboaters, likely taking a class, were having a hard time keeping their boats upright.

 

Today I rode part way around Cayuga Lake, before getting doused with a rain shower.  I guess it's a good thing....This area of New York is in an extended dry spell, and this waterfall on a creek flowing into Cayuga Lake is almost completely dry. 

 

I was happy that Gayle could rescue me before I got completely drenched. 
Saturday the trek resumes with an 80 mile stretch along the Erie Canal.

Niagara Falls

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Day 45 Just missed the rain and saw Niagara Falls - and made it through customs! Crystal Beach, Ontario to Buffalo, New York.

Day 45.  39 easy miles and only1,422 feet of climb to see Niagara Falls.  It was indeed impressive and not something I would like to try running!  First, we had about twenty miles to get to the falls.  Nice trail ride.  Here are some pictures of this and along the way.

Then, it was on to the main attraction - Niagara Falls!  First, there were the drops just above the main falls.

Then, there was the barge that almost went over the falls back in1918 !  The captain wisely ran the boat onto the small island in the river before it went over the falls and it is still there.

If you looked downstream from there you saw the mist rising above the falls.

Then, it was past the falls and one could see how gravity works!  Despite all the schmaltz, it is impressive!  This is the Canadian part of the falls and it is much more impressive than the U.S. side.

Here is the American side.  Not as big, but still impressive!

After this, we headed for the bridge to cross back to the U.S.  The flags show which way to go.

After that, here is Paul P. on his way out of Canada.

Then we met Gayle at "Our Lady of Peace" nursing home, put the bikes on the car, and headed to a place to stay as the rain just started to really fall - perfect timing.  Now, I have a conference to attend, and won't be back for about three days.  The bike is getting a much needed tune up.  See you later!

The Legend Lives on...

....Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below, Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
---from "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", by Gordon Lightfoot

For the past couple of weeks we've been following the flow of the Great Lakes, starting near Duluth, Minnesota and now nearing Niagara Falls.  I never really thought much about how water flows between the lakes, but now that we're "flowing" from one to the next, we figured it out.  Apparently inflow to the lakes is only around 1% of the total volume.  We didn't actually see Lake Superior, so the uppermost lake we rode along was Lake Michigan. Here's Gayle frolicking on a Lake Michigan beach before Mackinac Bridge.

Lakes Huron and Michigan are connected at the straits of Mackinac, and some technical references consider them a single body of water. 

Lake Huron wraps around the "thumb" of Michigan and water from it flows through the St. Clair River and the Detroit River into Lake Erie.  Lake St. Clair, in between the two rivers, isn't considered a great lake, but it is more than 25 miles across, which, in my book, makes it a pretty "great" lake.  Here we are crossing the St. Clair River at Courtright, Ontario.

The last several days we've been riding along the north side of Lake Erie.  Lake Erie isn't very deep, less than 100' on average, but we had several nice views today.

 Here's Paul C. enjoying our first glimpse of the Pennsylvania coast across Lake Erie, a distance of about 30 miles.

From Erie, the water flows into the Niagara River, and then flows over Niagara Falls, and into Lake Ontario, making that lake 320' lower than the others.  So tomorrow we'll "flow" along that waterway and try to stay out of floating barrels.

Day 44 Of course a headwind but beautiful weather. Port Dover, Ontario to Crystal Beach, Ontario.

Day 44.  It was a great day with cool weather, a moderate headwind, and great vistas on Lake Erie.  We did 71..6 miles and only 210 feet of climb - flat!  The headwind was only a nuisance.  We are used to it.  All that talk about a west wind was just that - talk!
Ok, we did see some glorious views of the lake and surrounding terrain.  The pictures don't do it real justice, but here are a few.

While on the way we biked by a US Steel plant and a generating plant.  They were rather massive and one kept spouting steam.  Here are some views of the steel plant and the transmission wires.

So, as usual, we saw some "interesting" things.  This one is an airmail box.

Then, there is the usual custom mailbox.

This sign shows what happens when golf clubs become carnivorous.

So, this is a festival I think I just might miss.  A "gas" festival!?  I can only imagine, well, I hope only imagine!

Along the way there were more nice houses, old ones, but very nice.

This looked like an interesting place, at least for a beekeeper.  Very nice.

Finally, here is a bowler!  I did not see one working, but glad they do the needful.

Tomorrow we head up to Niagara Falls!  Only 40 miles or so and hopefully we can make it before the rain!

Wind Technology & Politics

From a distance, wind turbines make a lot of sense in that they tap energy from a renewable resource, produce no waste, and have minimal impacts on wildlife. 

But, nothing is ever as simple as it looks.  In digging into the issues of wind power politics, it seems that where the power goes is a big deal.  I have not confirmed this, but the locals contend that the power is generated in Ontario and then exported to the US and sold there for less than what they have to pay for their power.  So Ontario residents have to look at these giant towers with spinning blades disrupting the landscape, realizing that while the turbines are environmentally benign, the only benefits that come their way are the small  number of jobs, the land lease fees paid to local farmers,  and the fleeting flow of profits going to the (probably) US-based companies that organized and constructed the wind farms.

All that said, in a global sense we all use energy, and the residents of this area should (in my opinion) be proud that they are helping the world wean itself from fossil fuels.  I did get a kick out of this image showing a wind turbine, a solar panel, a car, a power transformer, and a power meter.

 I've heard lots of concerns about turbine blades hitting birds, especially at night, and that is a tough question.  The wind farm developers insist that turbines kill less than 0.001% of the birds that human activities do, but in ways that misses the point.  As more towers are built and put into operation, the number of dead birds will obviously increase.  But the real concern is whether the birds that are impacted are being threatened with extinction from other causes.

Ultimately, the only ones who can fairly protest the centralized power production of modern industrialized nations are those that produce their own power.  This guy had his own wind turbine, solar panels out back, a sign on top of a hay bale bragging that he was "off the grid", and what appeared to be wires coming from roadside transformer to somewhere on his property.

I was really surprised to see tobacco plants way up here - I thought that it only grew in North Carolina and Virginia.

 Anyway, we did learn some really interesting things about the turbines.  One of the most remarkable ones was an optical illusion when we were looking at the blades side on.  At first we thought that the blades were spinning backwards, but then as we moved along the road, we realized that the shadows just made it look that way.  We got so we could look at the rotors and make them go forwards or backwards at will!  The other thing that amazed me was how much weight is up in the air - each blade weighs 7 tons and the hub/rotor assembly weighs 64 tons, so there's over 90 tons, or 180,000 lbs of stuff 300' in the air!
We also observed how the machines can adjust the blade angles to turn in the slightest wind and also how the hub assembly rotates the main body to keep the blades pointing into the wind at the optimum angle.

Day 43 A great day even with a headwind. Port Stanley, Ontario to Port Dover, Ontario.

Day 43.  Today it was 72 miles and 862 foot of climb, but those climbs were some of those "painted roads on hills" types!  We still made it.  Lots of things to look at.
First, we started the day with a hike on the beach and a beach filled with seagulls.  They were trying to stay warm I guess.

Next, there is a tourist train right there in Port Stanley.  They were warming it up for the morning trip.  I had to ride to get lunch.

Along the way I did pass three thousand miles of biking!  Here I am at the place this happened!!  Copenhagen, Ontario.

Of course, there were several interesting things to look at.  Here are a few.  I wonder where they got the stones and if they glued them together!?  As for the ice cream sign, it says it all I guess.

Then there was Frogmore.  I thought this was an interesting name for a town until I got there.

It is interesting how many vegetables are grown here.  You can see pumpkins are popular, and there was tobacco as well.  Paul P.  seems to attract oversized farm machinery!?

Finally, this was a great sign to follow for us bicyclers.  Here in Ontario they seem to care about us "little folks" and it makes up for the missing shoulders on the roads.

Tomorrow it is on to Ridgeway, Ontario and then if things go as planned (a risky concept I know) we will cross back into the states.