Gettin’ my towpath on

You know the old song, “29.61 Miles On The Erie Canal”? I was reminded of it today when I traveled 29.61 miles on the Erie Canal.

Once a month, my friends Chuck and Bob and I get together for Tunes Night, wherein we spin records, CDs and mp3s for each other. Mostly jazz. Often outside Chuck’s house along the canal, where I spend the evening waving like an idiot to everyone who passes along the canal on boat, bike or foot, trying to get them to wave back. I was 3 for 497 tonight, which is better than my usual ratio.

Now that I’m riding my bike, and given that I live just a hop, skip and two holy-mother-of-zeus-why-did-I-ride-my-bike hills from the canal trail, I decided to get to Chuck’s place along the 19th century waterway once known as Clinton’s Ditch. (Yes, everything can be blamed on Bill.) It’s just under 15 miles from my house to Chuck’s house if you go that way, and it was a gorgeous ride! I wrote about a portion of the route yesterday, but I went a lot further today.

Once you get past Schoen Place in Pittsford, the trail turns from a paved, laned path to a gravel path. I’m sure skilled road bikers would have been fine, but I was glad for the wider hybrid tires on my Sedona. It was fun riding 10 miles on gravel, which is probably 10 more miles than I’ve ridden on gravel up to this point. It was a hot one today — right around 90 degrees with about 75% humidity — but it didn’t feel too bad during the ride.

At one point on the ride, the trail was detoured around a bridge that’s being rebuilt. I was a little surprised to find a construction detour on the canal trail. Mostly because I’m surprised anyone pays attention to it.

By the time I got to Chuck’s, I was glad for the extra shirt I’d brought along. Even though it was three guys sitting outside listening to music, I’m sure my je ne sais quoi was more than enough to wrinkle the noses of my fellow jazzheads.

I left Chuck’s about 9 p.m. and decided to bike home along the trail. I learned several important lessons as a result:

• If you want to ride on the trail at night, be prepared to breathe through your nose or eat your weight in bugs.
• Rabbits run out in front of you with no warning. They run back and forth in front of you several times and are very hard to dodge.
• It’s very, very dark on the trail at night.
• My headlight is useful for signaling my presence to oncoming cars, riders and pedestrians.
• My headlight is useless as a means of lighting the road in front of me.

After 25 or so minutes of riding through a solid wall of bugs in the inky black night (zing!), dodging frogs and rabbits, I got off the trail at Schoen Place and continued along East Ave. Then I took a new shortcut I learned and turned onto Elmwood Ave. Guess what? From East Ave to Monroe Ave, Elmwood is also pitch black. The only light comes from the soft glow of the headlights of speeding cars as they approach with their high beams on. In any case, I made it home, tired but exhilarated.

• The rest of my pictures are here.

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