Remnantbox’s Weblog

Right now we are spending a couple of weeks near Buffalo, New York.  My sister-in-law, and her husband are big on biking, so they talked us into going on a bike ride with them.  No problem, riiiight!!!  The trail was on the Niagara River, below the falls.  It went along the gorge where you can get a spectacular view of the whirlpool.

The bike path is really half of a highway that has been converted into a double biking lane (left and right traffic, just like cars), and a walking lane.  The first part of the ride was great.  A slight downhill.  Then we came to an incline, up and over a bridge.  I got a good running start, and got up enough speed to make it about halfway up.  I geared down, and struggled to the top.  It was hard, but I made it.

I thought the worst was over, and enjoyed the downhill on the other side of the bridge.  Then we went around a curve, and guess what was in front of us.  You got it, another incline.  I hadn’t caught my breath from the first one yet, and not being used to biking, I had used my breaks on the downhill because I had been afraid of going to fast, and hadn’t wanted to loose control.  I should have chanced it.  Now I had no room to gain any speed for the uphill, and so about halfway up the incline I had to get off my bike and walk.

Of course, the in-laws are experienced bikers, so when they saw me walking the bike, they immediatly thought something had gone wrong with the bike.  They shouted back at me from the top of the incline
“Did the chain come off?”.  I yelled back “No, I just ran out of steam.”  When I finally get to the top of the hill brother-in-law says “You should have geared down.”  I had geared down, there is only so much gearing down one can do.  When you get down to bike at snail speed, legs at racing speed, it’s easier for me to walk the bike.

At the top of the incline was the park where you can walk out and view the whirlpool.  We parked the bikes, and walked down to the overlook.  It’s a spectacular site.  The water is continually swirling, and as we watched we could see funnels forming in the river below.  It would suck the water down, move ahead a few feet, and then become swirling river again.  This happened several times in the few minutes that we were watching it.  They even have tour boats that take you right up to the whirlpool area.  When one of them was below us we could really see how large the whirlpools were.  The boats probably held about 20 people, and any one of the forming whirlpools could have sucked them in if they had gotten to close.  It was really quite a site to see.

Break time was over, and it was time to go back to biking.  I will have to insert here, that peddling uphill is not the worst part of biking.  After struggling to get as far up the second hill as I could, I began to wish I had padded my seat with 3 or 4 inches of foam, and we had only come about 1/4 of the trip we had planned.  I used to ride horses, and saddle soars are nothing compared to bike seat soars.  Well we got back on the bikes, and continued on up the path.  It was another gradual downhill, so I stood on my pedals as much as possible.  Then we got to the end of the bike path, and it was time to turn around and go back.

I did fairly well on the way back.  The slight downhill on the way were now slight inclines, and on the steep incline after the bridge was now a steep downhill befored the bridge, and I used the brake as little as possible, and so I was able to make it over halfway up the incline before I had to start struggling, but I persevered, and stayed on the bike all the way to the top.

We finally got back to the parking lot where we had started out, but that was only half of the trip.  Now we continued on, and headed for Goat Island.  This part was a little harder, as we had to navigate through all the people that had come to see the American Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls,  go on the Maid of the Mist, or go inside the falls, and come out on the board walk they have built below the 2 falls.

We parked our bikes again, and went to see the Falls close up from Luna Island, which sets between the 2 falls.  I have seen it several time before, but I always wonder if the first person to discover it was also the first person to loose there life going over the falls.  The water going over hits the rocks below so hard that mist from the collision sprays back  over the top from which it originated.  Looking over the Bridal Veil Falls you can see the people below in there yellow slickers.  Sometimes you will see a few of them with there slickers off, enjoying getting wet from the mist.  Looking up the river, we could see a portion of the Horseshoe Falls which spans from the American side of the river to the Canadian side.

It is interesting to see how the 2 countries view the falls.  On the American side with the exception of the Maid of the Mist, and the Boardwalk, the land around the falls area is all public park.  On the Canadian side it has all been built up into tourist attractions, and only a few areas have been left open for veiwing the falls, and you have to pay to park somewhere and then walk quite a ways to even do that,  but there are a lot more things to do besides see the falls.

Falls veiwing done we hopped back on our bikes, every one but me that is, by this time my legs were so tired I had to lay my bike on the ground to put one leg on the other side, and then pick it back up.  We proceeded along the path on Goat Island until we came to the American side of Horse Shoe Falls.  We stopped, but I didn’t have the energy to get off and back on the bike, and the path was close enough I could see the falls fairly well.  My husband went and took a few pictures, and then we continued on.  Another short bridge, and gradual incline until we got to the turn around, and then the slight downhill, and by this time I was pretty much standing up on the bike for the whole downhill.  One last steep incline which I didn’t even try to climb, I layed my bike down, got off,  picked up the bike, and walked to the top, layed the bike down, stepped one leg over, picked the bike back up, and finally we got back to the parking lot again.

I hardly had enough energy left to drag myself up into the pickup truck.  It was a nice trip, but next time I’m padding the seat.