Saturday, the 14th of August greeted us with a sunny sky and pleasant temperatures. After the rain of the past two weeks, it felt like paradise. T
he engineering that went into the locks of the Erie Canal amazed me. In Lockport, for example, the Flight of Five Locks carried the water over the Niagara Escarpment, a drop of sixty feet in about two city blocks. Originally built in 1824, the locks have been restored and now carry traffic up and down the cliffs that, not far away, run under Niagara Falls. Continue reading
Breaking Out 2021: the Erie Canal Trail and New York City
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Natural Tunnel State Park, Thursday the 6th of May. I woke at dawn and dozed until 08:30. The Duty Ranger I had spoken to on the phone showed up while I was breaking camp. Perhaps because they are so happy to be vaccinated and able to talk to people, the rangers were very sociable. He told me that I could pay at the Park Office on the way out, which was more convenient than finding the station in the Lovers’ Leap campground. 
The week after receiving my first dose of the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19, I rode to Chippokes Plantation State Park (see: 
On Monday, 8 March 2021, I wheeled my loaded bicycle into the lift and went down to the street. Glorious, blazing sunshine in a cloudless sky, the temperature in the low teens (°C). The weather forecast was as close to ideal as it could get for the first day on the road since the Pandemic Pedalling of 2020. Although a headwind was forecast for both days of my outing, it proved to be almost a dead calm. 
The Freewheeling Freelancer 