Join me as I bike Sea to Sea

Distance Biked Today: 50.7  miles

Time Spent Biking:  3:41

Avg Speed:  13.6 mph

Max speed: 36.3 mph

Total Distance Biked: 3522 miles

Today is exciting as its the last day of the week, and we’re going to be in St. Catherine's and get to go to Niagara Falls.

The first couple miles of the day brought us through new housing developments. The houses and apartments were beautiful and expensive with wonderful designs. The problem though is everyone had almost the same design. It was beautiful, but not unique even though the houses must have been very expensive.

A huge farm vehicle that took up a lane and a half turned in front up me. I sprinted (28mph+) to catch up to it so I could draft it. Just as I almost caught up I passed a food stop. That two days in a row that soon as I find something to draft that there’s a stop. Bummer.

Today had a total of eight stops. From the supporters on the side of the road with cookies to several church that had lunch and tons of other stuff.

Today we biked down the Niagara Escarpment which starts in Northern New York, goes through Ontario, the Upper Peninsula and down into Wisconsin. It is basically a plateau that drops 350 feet  at a 12 percent grade where we were. It was fun to go down but there was a stop sign at the bottom so I couldn’t go to fast. It was very steep too. So steep that at the beginning the road disappears in thirty feet in front of you because it drops so steep.

At the top of the hill were so people cheering us on. I stopped at said hi. They knew me right away as lelandboy (its actually lelandbay) or so as that is my name on Flickr where I post all my photos. Its fun to meet people who have been following my blog or my pictures. Plus, I’m flattered when people tell me that I take wonderful photos. How encouraging!

I didn’t want to just be able to talk about going down it, so I went back up (John VanderVeen and Josh Krabbe went up it also). It was so steep at some points that I didn’t think I’d make it, and I was so hot and out of breath. I couldn’t take a break though because if I stopped I wouldn’t be able to start again. We haven’t done much serious climbing in a while so it felt again to push really hard. Most of the bikers that passed me as they were going down looked at me like I was crazy. Oh, and I went up it twice.

Get it? Reserved for biker Byker?

Tonight at dinner, the mayor came to congratulate us and thank us for our support in helping the poor. He discussed how St. Catharine’s has been making great strides to help the poor also. I do not believe most politicians when they talk about how good of a job they’re doing, but he sounded legimate and I believe what he said.

After dinner, we had the option to go to Niagara Falls. I knew that the Canadian side was commericalized but it was amazing how touristy it was. Also down by the falls there were thousands of people. And if you know me you know that I don’t like touristy stops, and crowds of people. I had lots of fun walking along the falls and taking pictures. Its beautiful to see the water falling so peacefully over the edge and cascade along the sharp rocks at the bottom. But there were tons of people. It’s great that we could go to the falls.

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