307 Miles on the Erie Canal - Getting Started

The Journey Begins

A Little Background

My name is Libé and this trip is a BFD for me.  It’s my first bike tour.  I am a 65 year old woman, and just started riding bike about four months ago.  My friend Choche suggested I give it a try. He’s been biking since he was a young man and he loves it.  Since I used to be a runner, he thought I might like it too.  So I decided to give it a try – and I love it!  I’ve done some training – one overnight trip with my bike loaded with panniers.  And the trail is supposed to be flat, so I think I’ll be okay.  It better be flat – because Choche just had knee surgery 6 weeks ago.  The doctor said he could do this trip, but we are counting on it being a fairly easy ride – each of us for our own reasons.

Buying Boxes in Cleveland

The day has finally arrived for us to begin our bike tour of the Erie Canal Trail.  We have reserved a seat on the train from Cleveland to Albany, and our plan is to ride the Canal Trail to Buffalo, and then put together a route to get from Buffalo to Cleveland using a couple of our Adventure Cycling maps.  We have the “Cycling the Erie Canal” book to guide us from Albany to Buffalo, so we’re pretty confident about this part of the trip.  We’ve even studied a little history of the canal by reading “Wedding of the Waters” by Peter L. Bernstein.  I recommend this book.  It really helped us understand just how important the canal was in the history of the U.S.

In spite of all our good intentions, we get a late start up to Cleveland, and it is approaching midnight when we pull into the Amtrak station.  The people there are very helpful.  For only $20 each, we get a box to put our bike in, and they help us get them taped up.  (We did have to bring our own tools to take off the pedals and loosen the handlebars.) 

Even though everything goes well at the train station, it is almost 2 AM by the time we get checked into the hotel in downtown Cleveland.  The train leaves at 5:50 AM, so we have to get up by about 4 AM.  That makes it a very expensive sleep – about $30 an hour for each of us!

I've got a mule, and her name is Sal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie canal,
She's a good ol' worker and a good ol' pal,
Fifteen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
We've hauled some barges in our day,
Filled with lum-ber coal and hay,
And ev'ry inch of the way we know
From Al-ba-ny to Buff-a-lo OH

Pulling into Albany

The train ride is great!  It is very relaxing and we are able to sleep some, read some, talk about our plans some.  The food is even tolerable.  We arrive a little late because the engine quits just a few miles out of Albany, and they have to send out another engine to pull us in.  The train is HUGE – lots of passenger cars, and there is only one engine pulling the whole thing.  No wonder she can’t quite make it!

We get off the train and find our way to the baggage area downstairs.  Again, everyone is very helpful.  We get our bikes out of the boxes – and they are fine.  While Choche puts the bikes back together, I go in search of a map of Albany.  We made reservations at the Red Carpet Inn, but have no idea how to get there.  Fortunately, I find a map of the city in the gift store – and it turns out to be $6.00 well spent. 

When we first leave the train station, we have to cross a long bridge with lots of traffic.  There is a barrier between us and the traffic – but it is still quite frightening for me.  I haven’t ridden much in traffic, and it is very distracting to have cars whizzing by me.  Once we are over the bridge, we manage to find the Erie Canal Trail, using the map of Albany and the map in our Erie Canal book.   We ride along the trail a little ways before we get off onto city streets to look for the hotel. 

All the people we encounter in Albany are very helpful, with one exception.  There is a policeman who passes us on a bicycle and we ask him if the road we are on is Manning Road.  A simple yes/no question, right?  His answer – I can’t talk right now…  Fortunately the people in the street are much more helpful and we manage to make it to the hotel without any problems.  Martin checks us into the hotel and recommends Shining Rainbow for carry out.  The room is reasonably priced, clean and comfortable.  And the food from Shining Rainbow is exquisite!  Check it out - http://www.shiningrainbow.com/ !  We order steamed pot stickers and chicken with Chinese broccoli.  Yum!  Little slices of fresh ginger make it perfect – the real thing. 

With a comfortable bed, our bikes by our sides, four miles of riding done, and satisfied bellies, we fall asleep feeling at peace.

Low bridge ev'-ry bod-y down,
Low bridge for we're com-in to a town,
And you al-ways know your neighbor,
You'll always know your pal,
If you've ev-er navigated on the Er-ie can-al

Day 1 – Albany to Fultonville

Learning to Stop Without Falling

We are up early and on the road in good time.  Thursday – Day 1 of the bike tour.  Our target is Fultonville – a little over 60 miles away.  Riding out the hotel parking lot, we notice a guy pulling a bike out of his room.  Choche stays to chat while I check out and then go back to join in.  Dave and Anne are doing the Northern Tier route – and they have their own blog site.  Check it out - https://sites.google.com/site/pedalstory/.   It’s great to find kindred spirits out on the trail already!

We get back to the trail fairly easily.  Again, people are very helpful in giving us directions.  We are delighted to be riding alongside the canal on a paved trail with lovely views and great weather.  The trail only lasts a little while, though, and we are out on the road into Watervliet, where we stop for a McBreakfast – Senior coffee and egg mcmuffin.  The trail through town is a little confusing, and we find that the route to follow isn’t always well marked.  But without too much trouble, we are back on the paved bike trail within a few miles.  We pass a sign for Cohoes Falls and almost decide to turn back to take a look at it – but it looks like a pretty steep hill down, which means a pretty steep ride back up.  So we opt to keep riding.  About five miles later, we admit to each other that we wish we would have taken the trek down the hill.  But there will always be more to see – and that’s okay.

Somewhere before we get to Schenectady, I take my first fall.  Choche stops to look at a sign along the trail, and I try to stop quickly.  I have been having real problems stopping with the panniers, so this was bound to happen.  The problem is that I am stopping by putting one foot down and leaning the bike to that side.  That works okay (but not great) without panniers.  With the panniers – the weight pulls me over onto the path.   Fortunately I have thick skin and manage to survive the fall with only a couple of bruises.  Choche takes the time to teach me how to stop.  I put my right foot all the way down on the pedal, brake and stay on the bike as it slows down.  When it is almost stopped I stand up on the right foot.  And then when it is totally stopped, I step forward with the left foot.  This keeps the bike upright and the weight doesn’t shift and pull me over.  I am delighted to learn how to stop without falling – if I can just remember to follow the process!  I take one more fall later in the day, but fortunately this time I fall to the right, onto the grass, for a very soft landing. 

The Best Little Italian Deli

We are really hungry when we get to Schenectady, so the Italian eateries that we encounter on Jay Street (as soon as the trail ends and throws us onto city streets) are like an answer to a prayer.  We ask a person in the street which is the best place to eat, and they point to Civitello’s - http://civitellos.com/.  There is a nice little outdoor eating area – a perfect place to park our bikes while we eat at the outdoor tables.  We order a sandwich, a bag of chips and sodas and then wait outside.  In no time at all, they deliver a huge sandwich made with fresh homemade Italian bread and lots of turkey and Fontana cheese.  Delicious and big enough to fill us up even though we are splitting it.  More people arrive, some of them bikers. We can see now what a popular place it is.  And very reasonably priced!  While Choche chats with the bikers, I work on getting us a place to stay for the night.  We’ve decided we can make it as far as Fultonville – a little over 60 miles for the day.  I call a Travel Lodge listed in our guidebook, and it rings so many times I almost hang up.  The man who answers is hard to understand and I have some misgivings until he explains that he recently had a stroke and requests my patience.  No problem, I say, and reserve a room.

Before we leave, I go back in and buy some Italian cookies for the road.  They’ll make a welcome treat later in the day.  People are very friendly, and interested in knowing where we are coming from and how far we are riding.  Civitello’s is a great place.  Check it out if you are ever in Schenectady!

Dead Ends and Lack of Signs

We are only on roads for a little while in Schenectady before we are back on a nice paved trail.  We ride along enjoying the scenery for a few miles when suddenly we come to a dead end.  There are railroad tracks without a path over them, although it looks as though people have scrambled up the embankment and drug their bikes across.  I’m a little reluctant to do that, and so we follow a foot path through the woods to see if that will bring us out somewhere more reasonable.  No luck there.  So we go to our guidebook to try to figure it out, and find that there is an “other off-road trail” that dead ends, and decide we must have somehow ended up on it.  So we retrace our path for a couple of miles.  We meet a young woman who is also trying to find the trail, going towards the dead end.  She is local and just trying to get back to where she parked her car, and can’t find any markers on the road.  She decides to keep heading towards the dead end, and we keep going back to see if we can pick up the trail.  Thanks goodness Choche has good intuition (his Scottish sixth sense, his mother says) and leads us up a road that has no sign but seems to go in the right direction.  Eventually, we find markers for the Canal Trail on one of the roads.  Just as we decide we have found our way, we meet up with the young woman we left on the other trail.  She had dragged her bike across the tracks and ended up the same place we’d gotten to.

This problem of lack of trail signs is one we continue to encounter as we make our way along the Erie Canal Trail.  We aren’t sure whether the signs have been removed, or were never there to begin with.  A lot of the trail is on roads, and most of the rest of the way to Fultonville we are on highways.  But the traffic isn’t too bad and we make good time.  Just before we get to Fultonville, we pick up the bicycle trail again.  This time it is stone dust, not paved.  This is what we will ride on most of the rest of the way.  It isn’t nearly as nice as the paved trail, and slows us down a bit.

The Worst Night on the Road

The sun is on its way down when we pull into Fultonville.  We aren’t sure which road to take into Fultonville – another problem we encounter frequently.  The maps in the guidebook aren’t very clear about which street to take to get off the trail into a town.  We would have loved to see signs along the trail letting us know which street to take to get into a town, and better yet what services were available on that street.  (Especially anyplace that sells ice cream cones.)  Anyway, we guess at a street and find a nice young man walking his dog, who directs us to the road with the hotels and restaurants. 

Fultonville looks like kind of a depressed area.  We pass a huge truck stop and several run down motels, and keep looking for the Travel Lodge, but there is none in sight.  When we get to the address where it should be, we find an Econo Lodge instead.  No problem, we think – it just changed affiliation.  “Be nice” Choche advices, as I go in to check in while he watches the bikes.  It must be his intuition at work again.

The man who took my reservation isn’t there.  Instead there is a woman – very grouchy, very unkempt, very unprofessional.  It takes a while to get checked in, because the computer isn’t working right she says.  She informs me that the machine that programs the key cards isn’t working, so she will have to let us in and out of our room.  I ask for ice for Choche’s knee, and she tells me she’ll have to get it for us.  I remember Choche’s advice, and am as pleasant as I can be.

We are relieved to get into our room.  It smells kind of musty and the shower doesn’t drain, but there is a view of the river out the back window so we try to tell ourselves we are paying for a lakeside room.  (This room isn’t cheap – it’s more than the Red Carpet Inn in Albany was.)  After my shower, I go back to the desk to ask for ice.  No one is there, so I ring the bell.  The woman comes out with a scowl on her face, but does get me ice when I request it.  We decide to order out, and try our luck with Chinese again.  It is edible, but just barely.  We are thankful we are so tired after 64 miles on the bikes, because in spite of the room we are able to sleep well.  We don’t even realize until the next morning that the back door is unlocked.

We'd better look round for a job old gal,
Fif-teen miles - on the Er-ie can-al,
You bet your life I wouldn't part with Sal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
Giddap 'there gal we've passed that lock,
We'll make Rome fore six o'clock,
So, it's one more trip and then we'll go,
Right back home to Buff-a-lo OH