The Home Straight...

With less than 200 miles to go until we reach our final destination, New York, I think it's fair to say that we're well and truly on the home straight...so this should be the last blog until then.

Niagara vineyards

After our week long jaunt over the border, we re-entered the US last Tuesday, but not before visiting a few Canadian vineyards for some wine sampling and purchasing, and of course visiting the mighty Niagara Falls.  Instead of being lured into the many money extracting commerical ventures on offer next to the falls to all the gauping tourists, we chose to drink a bottle of wine that had been purchased at an earlier vineyard.   A fine vantage point to sip down a splendid bottle of wine, albeit in paper cups from Tim Horton's, (Canada's answer to Starbucks) what a wonderful afternoon in the sun that was.   I've since learnt it's illegal to drink in public in Canada

which makes it even more wonderful in my eyes.  The falls themselves are not as high as most people think, being around 50m high, but that doesn't detract from the spectacle of an incredible amount of water pouring over the edge every second, generating huge mist clouds and a relentless rumble of thunder.

Maiden of the Mist, Niagara Falls

I mentioned the deteriorating weather in the last blog, and how autumn was obviously on the horizon.  Well, I can definitely confirm that autumn has now arrived.  In the last week we've had more cold days than warm days, and more rain than sun, which is a bit shit to cycle in.  The temperature dropped to a balmy 12oC last Thursday and wearing all our clothes on the bike makes us realise how far we've come in time and distance since those days 2 months ago in Nevada and Utah when we couldn't cycle past midday due to the oppressive heat.  As Andy has lost a considerable amount of his clothing along the way, he has had to buy some rather interesting new leggings from Walmart.  New York state and Pennsylvania now have a leopard amongst their local population.  An upside to the dimishing temperatures is that we're now starting to see the leaves change colour on the trees to beautiful golden reds and browns, and they're now being scattered allover the roads, which makes a very pretty sight, when we're not cycling in the rain.

Steep and fast descents

Pennsylvania has meant the long awaited return of the hill to our daily ride, and the hills here, whilst not being especially high, are definitely very steep.  This means some slow ascents for a few miles, but some very fast descents on the other side.  I equalled my top speed of 45.4mph the other day, and was a bit annoyed not to break it but seeing as my tyres are more or less on their last legs, and my brakes are pretty much gone too, best not to push it too much.

There are also lots of Amish families around here, which I didn't really know anything about before.  They are basically families, generally of German origin, that have shunned modern technology and try to live as they did 100 or so years ago, before the mobile phone, car, fridge etc came to exist.  I say that, but there are splits within the Amish community, and some families have indeed welcomed certain inventions into their daily lives more than others.  If they need to go somewhere which maybe a bit too far for their horse and cart to go to, or they don't quite have the time, they'll call a non-Amish person up (presumably on an iPhone), and arrange to get driven there.  Make of that what you will.  This got me thinking of just how the respective communities decide what they will and won't allow into their daily lives, I can just imagine the meeting of the Church leaders, looking through a catalogue, or maybe even on a computer projector, and them speaking to their congregations afterwards,

Amish Farms

"This year the Amish leadership, after a long, passionate and protracted debate, has reached the difficult decision that our way of life would be untendable without this new invention, and we have therefore reluctantly decided to allow...the iPad onto our list of approved items for daily use."
That would all be in their Pennsylvanian-Dutch dialect, but you get the idea.  In a way, with them having all the modern technology, it just makes it more like a big game of fancy dress really, but they see it as necessary to preserve their "way of life" in the long run I suppose.  It does however make our day more interesting when instead of being overtaken by a pick up truck, we're overtaken by a horse and cart, and then having to weave our way round lots of horse shit on the side of the road.


We've also been encountering some fairly angry dogs over the last week.  I'm not sure what it is about being on a bike that dogs don't like, or that arouses their attention more than at cars or motorbikes, but as soon as we cycle within 50m or so of a house, the dogs are up straight away barking at us very aggressively.  Maybe they're hungry and want to eat us, or they like the look of our bikes and fancy a ride, or we're the only people that travel on these rural roads and the dogs haven't seen anyone for days, I don't know.  Amish families do seem to have more than their fair share of wild dogs however, which do also have a tendency to chase us.  This has led to some interesting episodes where Andy maybe ahead of me, I see him suddenly speed up, and realise that's because a big alsation is at his legs, and then have the conundrum as to what to do myself...do I wait for the dog to go back to the garden, or try and go super fast and catch it unaware, but being only a few metres away from me.  The adrenaline gets pumping I can tell you, and dogs run fairly fast aswell.  My legs are still attached to my body, upto now.

Washington DC

Once again, the hospitality and kindness we've received in Canada and the US has been overwhelming.  Tim and Linda near Niagra Falls, and Tony, on the American side of the border were both on Warm Showers and put us up for the night.  At the weekend, we stayed in a valley near Penn State University at Willa's family's farm, who I met whilst she was on her year abroad in Leeds, and we're currently staying with Tom and Anna-Mary, some bikers we met whilst in Wyoming.  They gave us their details, and as we're a bit ahead of schedule, we came to Lancaster to see them.   They used to own a restaurant so have been feeding us like Kings, and very kindly drove us to Washington today. We've had a wonderful day walking round the sights and trying to spot Barack and Michelle, we think we saw his helicopter fly over.  Whatever people around the world say or think about Americans, one thing you cannot doubt whatsoever is their friendliness and generosity, a true credit to their country in every sense of the word, and I cannot emphasise how much more enjoyable and entertaining they've made this trip for both myself and Andy.  Wonderful, wonderful people.


So, this should be the last post before I can look back on it all and feel bloody proud of myself!  It's been one hell of an adventure, and we're very nearly done.  It's good to be finishing on the East Coast as opposed to the West I think.  Everything on this side is a bit more familar to us, as it was obviously settled more so by our European ancestors than by say, the Hispanics in California.  So it's nice to see place names such as Lancaster and York, red brick houses, and older buildings in general.  There's just more of a historic feel to the place, which when coming from England, is something you don't appreciate when there, but as soon as you leave, you realise how old our country really is.  I'll be back there before too long though, next Friday in fact, not really looking forward to it!