Finger Lakes

with Susan Lowery and David Bayley

John's brother, David, came over from Ireland to visit us for several weeks in July and August of 2005. Poor lad flew in from cool wet Ireland to a brutal heat wave here. In his first week the temperatures topped 95F every day. We showed no mercy and had him out riding long hilly rides every day.

Susan had been talking about various rides in the Finger Lakes for a while. We did some research, looking at routes for various organized events and also contacted Mark Frank, organizer of Quadzilla. He was a wealth of information and provided us with many maps and cue sheets and lots of advice. Sadly we did not hook up with Mark on this trip, but hope to on another.

The area is absolutely gorgeous, or as Ithaca t-shirts say, gorges. The terrain can be intimidating, lots of short intense climbing, and just constant up and down. The views out over the lakes from the ridges were incredible. And the heat - well they kept telling us it was unusual.

Susan provided a van for transport, so we could do unladen day trips. We first headed out to the Hudson Valley and did a few rides there, and then onto Ithaca, where we based ourselves for two nights. Each day, we'd do a loop ride and then travel to another town. It's nice sometimes to ride with minimal weight. We'd initially talked about doing some camping, but the temperatures had us seeking our air conditioning every night!