Rest day in Buffalo: Is this the end?

October 21, 2016

The sky continued to cry steadily. I walked around, looking at buildings, and got soaked.

Buffalo really is an underrated city; the buildings look fantastic. And regular people get to live in those stunning old houses. I don't know why the rest of New York has nothing good to say about Buffalo.

City Hall, a great Art Deco building. The elevators even come with operating instructions advising that the elevator might stop to pick up additional passengers.

I didn't want to go back out in the rain, so this was taken from the hostel.

Arriving here felt a lot like an endpoint, even though I'm not back where I started and still have three days of biking left. I can't shake the feeling that my trip is over.

I'm not feeling well and have developed a cough. It's not terrible (yet), but I do feel a bit run down.

A lot of my gear is falling apart. The latest casualty is my off-bike pants, which are too loose to stay up with the zipper and button (because the fabric lost its shape with age), so I've been relying on the drawstring in the waistband. That snapped in half yesterday and I've been reduced to pinching the excess waistband fabric with a binder clip. It's not working very well.

I checked the weather forecast and the situaton became far worse: they're calling for winds from the northwest of 40 km/hr gusting to 60 km/hr. This for at least two days, though not quite as strong the whole time, sometimes as gentle as 30 gusting to 50.

With the exhausting ride to Ithaca still fresh in my mind, and my intended route taking me roughly northwest for the next two days, I knew I had a problem. Something had to give. I pondered my options.

Wait a couple days in Buffalo. This is a good option, but I don't have time. I have to be in Toronto on the 25th.

Accept defeat, cross the border, and find transport to Mississauga. I don't want to do this so close to the end of my tour. (Sure, I skipped 25 km in Algonquin but that was pre-meditated and was done so I could canoe and not get my bicycle stolen. This would be different.)

Accept defeat, cross the border, and ride to Toronto along the lake, cutting down on distance and climbing. Only slightly better but feels like a crappy way to end the tour.

Continue with my original plan, be miserable, and ride into the wind until I'm too exhausted to continue, probably not completing the route and almost certainly arriving in Toronto half-dead. I'd say the problem with this option is obvious.

I'm not happy with this. I'm so close. But with my time restriction, there's no good solution.

Or is there...?

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