Monday July 2, 2007, 42 miles (67 km) – Total so far: 760 miles (1,223 km) 41.85 miles
27 max 3 hr 42 min 11.2 avg Chuck
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At 5am the seagulls arrived at the campground and went to each campsite in a group of 20 making as much as they can while seeing if anyone left out any food. They scattered and moved on the minute I peeked out of my tent. As chuck and I packed up, the family camping next to us all sat and stared at us as we got ready to hit the road. Occasionally they would take turns using the grandmother’s electric wheelchair to take them to the bathroom.
The original plan for today was to ride 60 miles to Sodus point and then ride like 20 miles tomorrow to Palmyra where we are staying with Dale Oswald from Crazyguy. We had no breakfast so we rode 20 miles to the next town Fulton. Chuck struggled because without his morning egg and cheese, he is mashed potatoes.
In Fulton we hung out at DND for a while. Then we went over to the library. The journal had not been updated in 5 days and I had tons of stuff to put on here. I used my computer and chuck used the library computer and we both spent 2 hours updating the journal. In that time the libraries server crashed 4 times. They said it hadn’t crashed in 3 weeks. When we were 99% done it crashed again and the crazy librarian said she wasn’t restarting the server.
It felt great to finally get the journal updated we were both exhausted getting it done. We have had a string of bad luck with finding internet and libraries. The Fulton Library was a really nice building; Chuck said it is an original Carnegie Library.
The day was really hot so we went over to Carvel for an overpriced ice cream cone. Some dude stopped us to ask about the license plate. The farther away we get from Maine the more attention the license plate gets. Everyone loves it. At carvel we realized that we should probably just make it a 40 mile say instead of a 60 and just go to the state park in Fairhaven.
I asked the kid at carvel where the grocery store was and he gave me directions for 2. We decided to go to the one that sounds like it’s not too far off route. Our new plan was to buy some cold cuts and groceries, eat a cheap lunch and ride 20 miles to the state park on Lake Ontario. But only after Mike Riscica had his afternoon cup of tea.
We went back to dnd and took a break from taking it easy all day long. We chatted with the nice girl working at dnd for a little bit.
I rode up to a bunch of guys on the street and asked where the grocery store was and them all yelled back ‘ITS RIGHT HERE!’ I looked up at the sign and it said grocery. Duh!? They asked where we were going and we told them. The old man got all crazy when he heard we were riding cross country and insisted that we come inside because he wanted to take care of us. His name is Doc and he turns out to be the owner of the store.
Doc brought us in the back of the grocery store, made us wash our hands, put down a giant piece of white paper on an old butcher block table that looked like it was 100 years old and he made us both a delicious roast beef sandwich. He shared with us his favorite pepperoni (and he cut it horizontally, the way it should be cut) and green olives. Doc was hilarious. As we ate he kept telling us that God sent us to him and how proud he is that 2 young college graduates like ourselves are taking a trip cross country by bicycle.
Every person that came into the store Doc said to them ‘See these 2 guys, they are riding their bikes to Seattle!’ he was so happy to meet us.
The grocery store is a big hangout spot and all of Docs friends were really cool, everyone was really interested in our trip. I picked up some groceries for dinner, Doc made us get the Don Peppino Spaghetti sauce. He said it took the guy 4 years to get it right. In the end he charged us only $10 for 2 giant sandwiches and groceries for dinner. We probably spent an hour at the grocery store and had the best time. Eventually we said farewell and rode 20 miles to Fairhaven.
Doc made me smile all the way to Fairhaven. He told us right before Fairhaven there’s a giant hill that’s so steep your balls are going to hit the ground. When we got to the campground chuck got all chummy with the young girl working the office and told her to give us the best site.
It was almost 2 miles ride through the state park to our campsite and we rode past every single camping spot in the entire park to get there. When we finally arrived we realized it really was the best campsite in the entire park. It was quiet, had a view of lake Ontario and we had 30 times more space then we could ever use. Wow.
We have a theory that I think Doc called the state park and made sure they gave us the best damn campsite they had. Today was a lot of fun.
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