Reunion Saturday

The morning started in utter confusion in the hotel dining room. I'm guessing that the normal breakfast hours start at maybe 6:30 or 7:00. But this bunch of riders is an early morning crew. People were milling about at 5:45 looking for a meal and the one poor girl assigned to get everything ready was literally running for her life. Cereal was out but no milk; syrup was there but nothing out to make the waffles...etc, etc. She did eventually get everything out and everybody was pretty cool about the situation but for awhile it looked like we would all need to head out to Denny's.
I was halfway through my breakfast when a familiar face came over to our table. Don Behrens who had ridden on the Maine/Florida ride lives in this area and he got up early, rode to the hotel and was going to ride with me/us to the first SAG stop. He is good guy and a very good rider so after the surprise of seeing him and getting reacquainted I was very happy to have his company for the first thirty miles. We did, of course, get some photos and this time included Jan and Hank who we missed on Monday when Larry joined us. We also got a photo with Tracy and Tom Dunn who of course were also on the ride.
And the second reunion of the day was at  the second SAG where Beverly and Scott who also on the Maine to Florida ride were there to greet us. Again we spent a bit of time exchanging stories and insisting that we all looked pretty good before I had to get back on the bike and get on my way.
Hamburg is basically a small town suburb of Buffalo and it was one of several pretty little towns that we rode through this morning. We rode down streets with well kept older homes, the kind that have real front porches that people sit on looking over their lawns and watching the world go by. We got out on highway 20 and headed into what was mostly country for the rest of the way. The vineyards of yesterday gave way to mostly dairy farms with lots and lots of cows and, naturally, that wonderful smell that all those cows and their byproducts produce. Not entirely unpleasant but I'm happy it is confined to the farms and isn't part of my backyard. The countryside was nice but not particularly inspiring so I did not take a lot of photos.
The main thrust of the day from a riding standpoint was that, first, it was another long day - I logged 94 miles. And it was again a day of hills. With a couple of exceptions where the gradient hit 16 and 17 % they were not that steep but were long climbs and came at us one right after another. That makes the downhills lots of fun but they are not any work at all and of course are also over much more quickly than the climbs where the speed will drop to 7 or 8 mph or less if it is a steep hill. I can remember very few stretches today where we had any significant stretches of straight level cycling. It was low gear to crest a hill, ride it down and go right back up again. For the day my Garmin showed a little over 4700 feet of climbing. We also had a fairly hot and humid day today although we were blessed with a pretty nice tailwind most of the way. I stopped with four others at a roadside ice cream shop about 5 miles out of Canandaigua and a root beer float never tasted so good.
Tonight's dinner was a different kind of treat. There is a huge Wegmans right across from the hotel and that was our scheduled dinner stop for tonight. Most of the riders had never heard of Wegmans let alone actually experience one and they were totally overwhelmed with the choices for meals. And even I, who  is very familiar with our Princeton Wegmans was surprised with the size and variety of prepared food/meals that were available. The meal was terrific and they even allow the sale of beer and wine to go with the meal - again, nice end to a challenging but fun day. Tomorrow it is on to Syracuse and we have a short day, 68 miles. We will get up and hour later and get a little more sleep - yea!