July 27, 2014. Buffalo, NY to Dunnville, ON. 48 Miles.

This was Sunday morning so there was not much traffic in downtown Buffalo. We took a rather circuitous route to the Peace Bridge, utilizing Buffalo's bike paths. When we got to the bridge there was only one outbound lane open so we rode on the sidewalk. There were no pedestrians on the bridge this morning or we would have been forced to walk it.

The Canadian Customs official collected all our passports, took them into the booth to scan them, then came back out and asked who among us had ever been fingerprinted! I owned up to being printed for FBI clearance to work at a nuclear power plant, and a few others admitted it too. He asked if there were any more and no one stepped up. He called us each by name and gave us our passports and let us go on. I found out later that several people had been fingerprinted and did not admit it.

 

We got on the bike path as soon as we cleared Customs. It started along the lakeshore, but after a few miles went inland through the woods. We enjoyed being off the road.  Right where the path ended we crossed the Welland Canal.  There was an Algoma Central freighter nearby, not moving.

 



Lorna had the SAG stop near a park in Port Colborne, and right after we got there Charlie rode in. He calls himself greenrider and is riding to raise funds for climateride.org. He was fully loaded, riding self supported, camping along the way. He started on the west coast and is basically riding the perimeter of the US. He expects it will take a year.

We got on Lake Shore Drive and rode alongside Lake Erie for the next ten miles. We battled a headwind all day; it was worse when we got out of the woods.

Dianne and I rode into Dunnville about 12:30 and the first restaurant we entered does not serve lunch on Sundays. so we went around the corner to Knowles and had a great lunch there, joined by several others from our group. Then we headed back into the wind for the last couple of miles to our motel.

We arrived at the motel around 1:30; many of the rooms were ready but the van was not here so we had no luggage! After about an hour Lorna tried to call Sarah and left voice mail. When Michelle arrived she called Sarah and found out that she had just crossed the bridge into Canada! So we had to sit around in our smelly bike clothes another hour. Below are Barb, Dianne, Pat, Joan, Kathie and Sally just sitting around waiting. We are not very good at that.

She finally arrived about 3:30, we unloaded the luggage and went our separate ways until supper. Dianne and I played Scrabble out in the yard until it started raining.

I missed Michelle mixing the margaritas, but Cindy did a great job serving them. On all the other Woman Tours I have done we had margaritas every time we crossed a state line, but this one is different--we have them when we cross a national border.

The rain never really materialized, just enough to send us indoors with our Scrabble game. So we ate in the parking lot; here we are in the food line. Someone had the idea of taking "decade" photos, so after map meeting we did. First up were the 70s, then the 60s, 50s, 40s and 20s. You may notice that Ellen is in almost every photo. She is truly ageless! (I've heard that biking can do that for you).