Kyle joined me this year for my annual ride to Niagara Falls. Every mid-October for the past few years I’ve been riding to Niagara Falls on my own, but it was a lot of fun riding with someone today. I haven’t known Kyle for long, but we had a great time.
Another change from the past few rides is that instead of riding up the U.S. side of the Niagara River and over Grand Island, we rode on the Canadian side, which was a much better ride (thanks to Scott for the suggestion). Now I’m super patriotic, but the fact is that the Canadian side of the Niagara River is in better condition than the U.S. side. That, and crossing the Grand Island bridges is a big pain, because you have to walk your bike over them, and that adds a lot of time to the ride.
What a beautiful day it was. Not too cold, just a nice brisk Fall day.
Took a bunch of pictures with my phone, and tried to take some helmet-cam videos, but my helmet cam is being stupid, and I tried taking photos with my digital camera, but the batteries won’t last for more than a few shots (not sure why).
There were a lot of pedestrians, dog walkers, a couple rollerbladers, and a few other bicyclists, too, along the way. We passed one guy who was taking a break from riding his recumbent bike, and we stopped in front of a historic set of wheels that look like they were probably used for moving a cannon around (Kyle took photos of that with his camera, so when he sends me copies, I’ll post them too).
There were so many tourists at Niagara Falls, it was hard to find an open spot on the railing to look over the edge into the river. But when we did find a spot for a view, it was plain to see that very few people visit the U.S. side of the falls. Obviously the view is better looking AT the U.S. side of the falls than looking FROM that side.
My total miles for today was about 60 miles, I am guessing. About 15 of that was just riding to and from work. The temperature was 50 when we got started, and went up to 53 about mid-way through the ride, and then dropped down to 48 by the time I got home.
This is near the water intake for the Ontario hydro-electric plant.
There was a great rainbow over the falls.
Oh yeah, one other big improvement over last year was that there was NO OCTOBER SURPRISE STORM.