The Heart of a Lion

My buddy Roy took a fall today. It happened 12 miles into a 78 mile ride. He was taken to the hospital to get checked out, but seemed in pretty good shape. When he left the hospital, he was taken back to the point where he fell, and continued the ride. As of right now, he's out there determined to complete every inch of our cross country adventure. As I've said before, he's an incredible person. His courage and determination are an inspiration.

GO ROY!

I'm still in shock from the surprise Fathers Day visit yesterday from Peg and Michael. I'm even more impressed that Michael got up this morning at 6 a.m. this morning to have breakfast with me and see me off. What a great kid!

The visit limited my blogging yesterday, so I'll catch up on two days riding here. Yesterday, we rode by a few of the finger lakes and had a beautiful day for riding. Along the way, we saw the following sign, hearing gun shots as passed by. Notice that the sign has several bullet holes in it. At first I was confused, since gunshots and a wildlife refuge don't seem to go together. However, it all make perfect sense. This is the Clara M. Stevenson Wildlife Refuge Memorial. It's NOT the Clara M. Stevens Memorial Wildlife Refuge. Just read the sign. This means it is a memorial to a wildlife refuge, hence the gunshots and bullet holes. It's not a memorial to Clara. Not knowing if homo spandexus was in season, we quickly left the area.

This memorial was near the famous Erie Canal. Here's the canal. Kind of pathetic, huh? You have to use your imagination to think of this as a major thoroughfare.

Today, we had 79 miles of fairly flat riding through more of scenic upstate New York, ending in Little Falls. A short walk from our hotel is a lock on the New York State Canal System. This system replaced the Erie Canal.
This engineering marvel lifts boats 40 feet, allowing them to navigate around the not so little falls on the Mohawk River in Little Falls. I didn't realize canals like this were still used. The operator of this lock explained that the canal system is like a highway, with exits along the way to various bodies of water.

This morning at the hotel, we all got excited when we spotted this:

We thought this was the food for our SAG stop, but that would have been udderly ridiculous.

However, it did provide inspiration for Greg and I. During the ride we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts and had coffee and glazed apple fritters.

Note that the fritter is about the size of Greg's head. It was also quite dense, like my head. The Dunkin Donuts website claims these mutants are only 400 calories, but I find that hard to believe.

About 3 miles down the road we caught up with a few of our fellow tourers. They invited us to stop for lunch with them at a pizza place. So, about 20 minutes after coffee and fritter, I ate a giant slice of garlic pizza and a 20 oz. pepsi. It all seemed to make sense at the time.