HIghways and Skyways

2nd Saturday began the same time as yesterday; 6:48 am.  I was ready to get up because I fell asleep somewhere around 7:00 pm last night.  Sadly, I woke up with a rip roaring headache; I think a little bit of dehydration had set in.  We checked out our hotel's pathetic excuse for breakfast, then decided to go ahead and layer up and hit the road.

As we pulled a U turn at a steep hilly road to go back to the cool restaurant we spotted, I realized I was pretty overdressed.  I ordered a Sweet Potato pancake with a side of bacon.  Oh my heaven, that was SO good.  I couldn't finish it all, it was soooo huge.  After shedding my 1/4 zip pullover, we hit the road towards New York.  Today's ride became a game of "Dodge the potholes".  The road was seriously BAD.  And then once we hit the state line, it was a chewed up grooved highway.  Fun, not fun.

We veered over as close to Lake Erie as we could get and really enjoyed riding along the edge.  The ride reminded us greatly of the California coast, just without the breathtaking mountains.  Lake Erie does have some cliffs, just none too dramatic.  Traffic was non existent and we enjoyed just riding at our own pace.  Still feeling great!  No sore booties or aching backs.  We REALLY enjoyed riding through Buffalo.  It's a quaint, beautiful little city.  Luckily, David was doing some filming through the city, so I should have some fun still shots captured from the GoPro.

As we followed the GPS, we did manage to find the 'hood of Buffalo; it's like any other city ... just keep on movin' through!  Hwy 5 turned into the Skyway, but it was closed!  We had to take a long, drawn out detour around.  Before we knew it, we were at the entrance to the park.  Amazingly enough, the park is free to enter.  It simply cost us $10 to park.  After locking down the helmets and I changed into my walking shoes, we waded through the mist and the throngs of people to get to the edge.  Niagra is just awe inspiring.  A perfect example of God's handy work.  We took it all in and savored the moment, fought through the crowds in the gift shop NOT to find any stickers, and as we mounted back up, we shed down to minimum layers.  NO rain at all, even for a second, but it was pretty warm.  We both sweated today.

SO thankful I always hit my skin with sunscreen before getting on the bike.  I sprayed all my exposed skin and coated my face with the stuff.  Love riding in a jacket too.  My mesh jacket was a little warm today, but it kept the sun off me, and with the long, straight stretches of high speed interstate just a T shirt will beat me to death.  The mesh jacket doesn't flap around or irritate my skin one little bit.

Haven't had one of these since CA

On the way home, we continued to dodge the awful holes.  I found that consistently the best spot to ride was smack dab in the center of the lane.  I tell ya, the weirdest thing for David and I to get used to is people riding with no helmets.  We always ride in TN/NC and sometimes GA, and those are all helmet states.  No worries, you will ALWAYS see David and I with our brain buckets on.  I believe that the day we're born,  we have a set end date, but what happens in between is up to us.  I don't want to spend my days drooling in a wheelchair.  I choose to protect myself because if  it's not my time to leave this earth and I have an accident, I want to recover fully.  Wearing protective gear gives me the best chance of surviving intact.  So, our helmets have not left our heads unless we're going in somewhere!

Happy to get out of Erie tomorrow.  No desire to ever stay in this city again.  We'd rather stay in Buffalo next time.  Heading down to Roanoke, WV the long way.  Hopefully just a short stint on the interstate; seriously missing our curves!

I love this man!

930 miles so far