Day 41--Sugar Shack

Erie, PA to Hamburg, NY
Miles: 80.5
Time: 4:59
Average: 16.1 mph
Est Calories: 5,546
Ascent: 1,820 ft

I was looking forward to this day back in Indiana. I was well aware of what challanges Ohio had in stall for us having live there, and gone to college there. And, I had ridden part of this area with the Anchor House ride in the past, as well as the fact that the Anchor House ride in two weeks was expected to cross the XC route somewhere near Canadagua this year.

The day started out damp and chilly. This was one of the few days that I wore my rain jacket. Others often wore their jackets in the mornings and shedded them toward the afternoon. Depending on the weather, I would bare up to the chilly weather in the mornings, sans jacket, if I expected to see warmer weather in the afternoons. This was not one of those days, and in fact I wore my jacket all day.

This was essentially a flat day. Gentle rollers effidence the 1,820 of elevation covered over the 80 miles. During the early part of the ride, we stopped at the "Sugar Shack", which was a friend of Hank's. This is a lady the makes her own sauces. Everything is grown and picked by hand, and made by her. She often sells the sauces that people use for everything from sauce on pancakes, to flavor in their teas. She had little cups that she put a dollup of ice cream in, and we picked the sauce we wanted to taste that she would pour on it. It would have been so easy to just stay there and get sick eating all the sweets. This was a small nugget of a jewel, with a great lady, doing extroidinary things with natural products. Thanks to Hank for showing us this place.

Having grown up along lake Erie, I asked the lady if she was loosing any land to the lake. I hit a nerve. She had just been at the tax office the past week to argue that they were charging her taxes on property that was sitting in the lake. She claimed that she had lost over 300 feet over many years, and that she was still being charged property taxes based on the survey of when she bought the place. I wish her good luck with the tax man, the lake, and success with her humble, honorable, healthy Sugar Shack.

Near the end of the day, Champ and Hank stopped to take one of those "huh" pictures of a giant advertising statue at some pottery store, and Sue and I continued on. We rolled on together to the hotel, stopping at the last minute for lunch where we ran into Willie. It was a nice day with a nice pace, getting us into the hotel relatively early in the day, sometime around 2pm, even with the stops thrown in. It was just what the doctor ordered, and just what I expected. See ya...............