To Hammondsport - The Road to Rome, Part One: America - CycleBlaze

July 13, 2021

To Hammondsport

For a fairly long ride and one we were worried about because of the weather, this turned out to be a surprisingly easy day.  Faced with the triple threat of heat, humidity and thunderstorms, we got off to an early start again.

The ride dividend neatly into thirds.  After a virtually flat ride southeast to Dansville along Canaseraga Creek, we climbed through a roughly thousand foot saddle before dropping to the Cohocton River and then following it for the rest of the way to Hammondsport.  We were aided by a mild tailwind for the first half of the ride, which was appreciated when it boosted us up the divide; but once over the top the wind shifted and we pushed into it the rest of the way.

We were lucky on weather again, in that it stayed dry nearly the whole way except for a brief, mild shower around Dansville.  Definitely hot and humid though.  My underwear were drenched by the time we summited the divide, and I suffered from chafing the rest of the way.  I’ll have to start applying talcum powder at the beginnings of our rides when it’s humid like this.

We arrived in Hammondsport about 12:30, too early to check in at our hotel, so we elected to take lunch indoors and away from the sun at the Timberstone Grill as our main meal.  An hour later we pulled up to our motel and heard the first rumblings of thunder in the distance.

Leaving Mount Morris. The purplish storefront is the Leaning Tower, just so you know.
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Patrick O'HaraMight I suggest chamois cream for your derriere problem, Scott?
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3 years ago
Scott AndersonTo Patrick O'HaraCould. It’s what Rocky uses, but in my experience talcum powder works better.
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3 years ago
Heading southeast on Sonyea Road (Route 36). A bit busy for the first few miles until reaching the interstate exchange, very quiet afterwards.
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I couldn’t discover anything about this interesting building other than that it was built in 1900. Tiny Sonyea is interesting though. Established in 1837 as the only Shaker community in western New York, it later was the site of Craig Colony for Epileptics - I’d never heard that they were institutionalized. Now, a prison.
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For the first 15 miles we enjoy a flat, easy ride following the course of Canaseraga Creek.
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Some cows with a purpose, north of Dansville.
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Racpat’s dream home?
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Looking across Canaseraga Creek. That ridge opposite that we’ve been paralleling for the last ten miles is worrisome. At some point we need to pass over or through it.
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Well, not as bad as all that, as we cut across the ridge through a gap. Looking back down toward Dansforth, after a climb of of about 700’.
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Through the divide. Easy going from here - all downhill and flat - if you don’t consider the headwind we’ve picked up.
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We’ve dropped into the Cohocton River Valley, which we’ll follow nearly all the rest of the way to Hammondsport.
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The old, long unused Cohocton train depot - built in 1885 to replace the original one built in 1852 after it burned down.
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Won’t be legible for much longer.
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In Wallace, a village left behind when the new interstate highway bypassed it. From its website, the birdhouses are built from materials from old barns and come with a pedigree.
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Near Wallace. It doesn’t look like this one will be torn down and recycled into birdhouses any time soon.
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We’re a couple of years too late. The Caboose Motel went under a few years ago.
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It would have been a unique experience. Apparently the rooms came with a sound system so you could listen to the sound of trains lulling you to sleep.
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Leaving the Cohocton Valley we drop the last two miles into Hammondsport.
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Video sound track: Out in the Country, by Three Dog Night

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Ride stats today: 54 miles, 1,900’; for the tour: 1,712 miles, 46,200’

Today's ride: 54 miles (87 km)
Total: 1,712 miles (2,755 km)

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