June 16

Today the group woke up early after a late night of pizza and soda. We ate a delicious breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant where we arrived extremely underdressed. Not only were all the business executives wearing shirts and ties but so were the waiters. After breakfast we packed up and headed to Towpath bike for repairs and maintenance. While Dad was having his spare tire put on (his back tire had a lot of miles and was extremely worn down) Zach, Maggie, and Jake made sure the tire pressure was up to par on all our bikes, and that all the rack screws were tightened properly. Jake purchased a new set of gloves and is now flossing a nice pair of Pearl Izumi’s. Thanks to Scott and his staff at Towpath for the great service. He has a great location right on the canal path. Scott has some New Hampshire connections as he went to Proctor Academy and was intrigued by Maggie’s St. Paul’s experience. We started to rack up the miles following the Erie Canal (a neat slice of history ) when trouble came knocking at our door… Jake’s chain broke. Dad immediately breaks out the repair kit and quickly went to work to get us back on the road. Although the chain repair was successful, Jake was unable to shift into certain gears making keeping up very difficult for him. After exhausting all options, looking for bike stores close to our location using our blackberry, iphone, and GPS, some locals helped us set our destination on another bike shop in Spencerport, NY some 10 miles away. Once we arrived the guys at Sugar’s bike shop (Thanks Dan and Damien! ) went to work on Jake’s bike. It was here we discovered Jake’s chain had other problems and needed to be replaced. We also discovered at this time was that Jake was sporting a bent rim and broken spokes. To quote the guy at the shop “Did you get hit by a Truck?” We took this time to eat lunch, at a restaurant conveniently located right next door. After a couple of tweaks we had things working properly and we set off down the canal again. The canal made for an easy ride but became rather boring at times – haha. I’ll take boring for a while if it means avoiding hills and mountains.

Unfortunately the problems with the bike set us back big time and we were unable to reach our target mileage despite having flat terrain the entire ride. We had dinner after about 40 miles and change and decided it was in our best interest to spend the night in Albion. We found a motel to crash at for the night and aim to be on the road early in pursuit of Niagara Falls, Ontario.. Eh? Cheers.