Bikes, Boats and Automobiles: Cycling the Erie Canal 2024 (Part 1)

It’s no secret that I am a fan of all things transportation. Of course this is one of the ties that bind me to this site, and it’s something that I think I share with quite a few readers.  I’m also a fan and student of the history of technology, which is as much the history of the people who create, use and are affected by technology as it is about the technology itself. Tossing all of this together, what could be a better activity for me than to spend a week immersed at the ground level in transport, social and cultural history?

So that’s what I did for a little over a week earlier this month on an end-to-end cycling tour of the Erie Canal.

Probably any U.S. reader (and no-doubt many international readers as well) will know the basic facts about New York’s Erie Canal.  First created in the 1820s, the canal linked the Atlantic Ocean (via the Hudson River) with the Great Lakes.  Somewhat like a natural transportation “hub” (in the sense of a modern airline hub), canals and rudimentary roads came together at the Great Lakes and allowed transport of goods and cargo – via other connected canals and roads – to points far from the Lakes. One of the largest and longest of these canals was the Erie Canal which linked the Port of New York (down river on the Hudson from the start of the Erie Canal in Albany, NY) to Lake Erie at Buffalo, NY. The Erie Canal took advantage of the only water-level break in the Appalachian mountain range south of Canada and therefore became the first and only way to move cargo by water (necessary in pre-railroad days) from the east coast into the nation’s interior.

The Erie canal solidified the prominence of New York City as the nation’s preeminent commercial port (at least through the 19th century) and it vastly enabled westward expansion of the U.S. by providing a route for supplying mid-western migrants and for bringing the products of mid-west farms and industries to market back east as well as internationally through the Port of NY.

 

The very apt trope used in American History texts is that the Erie Canal was “America’s First Superhighway”.

For those readers wishing to get directly to the logistical details of this expedition on their own, you are directed to Parks and Trails New York, the non-profit group that organizes the annual Erie Canal trip. It’s in its 26th year now and has gotten better each year so far as being able to stay more on trail versus road. This year, the trip was about 85% on trail. Most of that trail is part of New York’s 750 mile Empire State Trail. The Erie Canalway Trail at 360 miles is the east-west arm of the Empire State Trail. The north-south trail is composed of the Champlain Valley Trail (Canadian border to Albany) and the Hudson Valley Trail (Albany to the tip of Manhattan).

Wait, That Still Exists?

You may be thinking what I thought when I first heard of this trip.  “Wait, the Erie Canal?  That’s 200 years old.  It can’t possibly still exist!”

At best, I figured that what remained of the canal would look like this. Obviously filled in long ago, with maybe some bridges – like this original Whipple patent truss bridge – still standing to give a clue as to what once existed in that spot.

It’s transportation-adjacent (as so much in this series is going to be), but the Whipple bridge deserves special mention for being the first “scientifically-designed” truss bridge based on the calculated stresses in its iron trusses.  The Whipple bridges, traditionally associated with the Erie Canal, are the basis for the “low bridge, everybody down” line in the popular song about the Canal.  These bridges don’t move, so boats passing under would often barely clear their underside and those individuals on deck needed to duck and lay down so as not to get bonked.

Anyway, if you assumed that the Canal in 2024 was more about archeology than navigation, you’d be wrong, like me.  The Erie canal – at least in its modern incarnation (more about that as we go along) – is fully navigable from Albany to Buffalo and generally looks more like the picture above than a grassy ditch. Plus, there’s a cyclable towpath along the vast majority of it.  And that, is what I signed up to ride.

Logistics

My plan for this trip was to drive to Albany and then catch a tour-organized shuttle to Buffalo.  The cycling tour starts in Buffalo, so my car would be waiting for me in Albany at the end of the trip. Parking in a city parking garage was arranged by the tour.

Also part of the plan for this trip was to go on the trip with my friend Roger from Northern Virginia – he who also figured in my post about driving 1600 miles to pick up a car part in North Carolina. Roger is always keen for adventure and is absolutely a fan of history and bicycles…the two necessary preconditions for this trip. He wouldn’t have time to drive to MA to pick me up and then on to Buffalo to start the trip, but rather would drive directly to Buffalo. We’d coordinate our schedules on the bike tour so that we’d both be doing the same things each day.  Riding together and working more or less together.

As a bit of explanation and clarification, on this trip Roger and I were going as “volunteers”. The tour functioned with about 100 volunteers (who worked under the direction of a very small number of paid staff), and those who volunteered to stay with the tour for the entire duration would get to participate cost-free. There are a large number of volunteer roles for this ride – everything from truck drivers to what are essentially roustabouts – but the role Roger and I targeted was “Car SAG”. If you’ve not been on an organized cycling trip before, you may not be familiar with the term, but “SAG” means “Support and Gear” and it’s the person/persons who travel along with the tour to provide support to riders on the trail.  The Cycle the Erie Canal tour has both bike SAGs (who bike along with cyclists to provide support) and car SAGs. Car SAGs for this tour alternate their riding with driving/SAG duties. On the days you’re biking, another SAG is driving your car and doing Car SAG duty. And then you switch for the next day. This was an attractive option for me since I was a bit concerned about being able to cover the entire 360 mile distance at the ride’s pace at my age. My goal was tourism and history, not feats of strength (Festivus being many months away). I shouldn’t probably have worried about that as I’ll discuss later, but let’s just say that the ability to combine biking with driving was attractive in and of itself. To be able to do it all for free, what’s not to like?

As a Car SAG, I should have been able to drive to the start of the tour (Buffalo) and then do my ride/drive combination so that my car and I reached the finish (Albany) at the same time. And that was the plan except for….wait for it….a standard transmission.  The only 2 cars available to me for this tour both have manual transmissions, and the tour organizers announced that only cars with automatics would be accepted on the tour. This supposedly was due to the fact that “no one knows how to drive manuals any more” and therefore they could not guarantee that there would be another Car SAG who could drive my car on my biking days. But not to worry, there were more Car SAG volunteers with cars than there were people to switch off with on riding days, so it would not be a problem for me to still CAR Sag without my own car. I’d drive someone else’s car on my driving days. Cool.  So this is kind of turning into a rental (or at least loaner) car experience too.  More to write about I figured.

Correctly.

Getting There

The drive to Albany from my home in Massachusetts at 4am on a Saturday was in a stormy deluge and not at all promising for a bike trip. Fortunately, the rain stopped and the skies cleared just as I got to Albany.

 

After unloading my bike and stuff, I put the car into the garage for 8 days.

As this helpful sign pointed out, technically the start of my trip was also the end of the trip.

This year, the tour attracted around 525 riders. I’m not sure how many like me started in Albany (everyone else started in Buffalo), but there were a lot. Enough to fill two of these big box trucks with bikes.

There was also a lot of luggage. As a supported tour, the basic arrangement is that riders’ gear – that includes clothing, tents, etc. – is transported from each day’s camp to the next camp so riders can bike reasonably unencumbered.  When I’ve done cycling trips before, I’ve had to lug all of my gear on the bike.  This tour was certainly luxurious compared to previous experiences.  It also (as I now learned and discovered) foolishly encouraged in me a certain degree of unnecessary over-packing.  Ironic for me…the guy who hasn’t checked a bag on an airplane in a dozen years and whose much touted motto is “There’s nothing that you could bring with you that you can’t get when you’re there.”  For some reason I lost that logic this time.

Soon enough, all of us Albany to Buffalo shuttle-riders were loaded onto 3 coaches and headed down the Thruway (I-90) to Buffalo.  This is a trip that I’ve made frequently in the past 5 years (since sending a kid to be a student, and now grad student, at the University of Rochester). I’m always driving on those trips, and so I very much appreciated the ability coach travel afforded to see the scenery from a different perspective. The familiar was already looking like a whole new experience.

The coaches made a “rest stop” between Albany and Buffalo. I mean, this is a thing? Are there people who expect their journey to stop every 2 hours so that they can get out of the vehicle?  I am already experiencing strange new worlds on this trip as we stopped only a couple of hours into the (what I consider a very short) trip for “rest”.

Fun Comes in Different Sizes

To make this unexpected downtime worthwhile, I figured I’d capture some CC moments…and this juxtaposition of a late 1980s Suzuki Samurai and a Dodge Ram pickup fit the bill.  My mom had a 1988 Samurai just like this but in green and with the fabric roof usually on.  She gave her Samurai a name. Godzilla. She alternated between driving Godzilla and the 1971 Chrysler Town and Country wagon (until the wagon met its demise about 4 years later). I’m not sure if she saw the irony in daily driving two such automotive extremes, sort of like the Samurai and Ram that I found in NY. I definitely saw the irony or humor in her driving situation; but being at that age – immediately post-college, feeling much more grown up than I was, and absolutely too cool for parents — I never bothered to point that out to her and to share a good laugh. This is something I regret 40 years later.

This Dodge truck and Samurai seem so very different and yet somehow still kindred spirits.  Both are clearly prized by their owners as aspects of self-expression and outdoor joy. Finding them and realizing that they’d be a fine sharable on CC was a good omen this early in the trip.

After duly noting that it simply wouldn’t be a truck stop without meat on rollers, it was back on the coach and on to Buffalo.

It’s Not Going To Be A Hardship Tour

Probably the first indication that this wasn’t exactly going to be a hardship tour was the wine and cheese reception after check in. Local NY wineries had made generous donations.  It would become abundantly clear as this tour rolled on that towns, businesses, etc. across the state and particularly along the tour’s route perceive having 500 reasonably well-heeled cyclists coming through their town as a major opportunity to build awareness and expand tourism. Excellent idea and more power to them. NY has world-class wines and the Bully Hill – the vineyard supporting this aspect of the event – is one of the best.  IMO.

While our first night at a private school in Buffalo was a bit more deluxe than some of the upcoming venues, it still featured camping, communal showers, and the constant passing of trains all night long. If it wasn’t obvious, the Erie Canal footprint is also a prime east-west railroad route across NY state.

First the boats, then the trains, then the cars. I-90 also follows the Canal and railroad corridor.

My Conveyance

I ride a Giant Cypress LX. I like to think of it as the Volvo Station Wagon of the bicycle world.

It’s not the fastest. It’s not the lightest. It’s certainly not the coolest new bike.

But it’s incredibly sturdy, gets the job done and is simple to repair if necessary.  It’s easy to get on to (like the Volvo, you just climb on/in and go). It has disc brakes on both wheels…something unusual for a bike of this age. It’s incredibly quiet and rattle-free (ok, so maybe that’s where it diverges from the Volvo analogy). It also doesn’t have much for a functional electrical system.

I’ve slightly modified it over time. I’ve replaced the shock-absorbing seat with a more conventional seat; although I might go back to the bouncy granny seat after this ride before the next one. I also keep changing the pedals from flat to clips to cages depending on how klutzy I am feeling at any particular riding event. Pedals are an important biking matter. The worst cyclist accident on this trip – involving a rider who unfortunately broke their arm in 3 places – had to do with someone making the mistake of using new clip pedals that they were not familiar with. Serious stuff.

For this trip, the only additional accessory I added was a cell phone handlebar mount. iPhones having been invented since I originally purchased this bike.

On the Road

Breakfasts are a big thing on this tour. Without boring you with my endless food photos, I’ll just say that the one constant is the bananas. Always the bananas.

After the mandatory bananas, I set out from Buffalo on a riding (versus driving) day. Having no real advance warning about the tour route (not that there wasn’t information, but there’s the question of my actually having paid attention to any of the vast amount of information I was provided while in a state of panic over the prospect of taking a full week off of paid work), I lucked out by establishing my ride/drive schedule with riding on days 1, 3, 5 and 7.  This managed to avoid the one over-60-mile ride (day 2) and a nasty mostly road and uphill ride in 90+ degree temperatures (day 4).

One of the great features of this tour was the fact that we were accompanied by historians from the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. Derek and Steph (above and below) took turns riding with us and stationing themselves at our morning and afternoon rest stops to provide on-the-way commentary about the various historical aspects of the Canal and adjacent landscape that we were passing through. Derek was easily identifiable in the crowd of cyclists by the Hawaiian shirt he’d be wearing.  Steph would be wearing something else.

I admire their jobs and am more than a little bit jealous. If I had decided to attempt to get a job directly related to what I did in graduate school (American Cultural History/History of Technology with a secondary in Public History), I’d very likely be doing what Derek and Steph are doing. I just have to opine that these folks have really scored amazingly big in the career market.

The actual Erie Canal starts just outside of Buffalo.  In fact, the Canal – particularly in its modern, third, iteration as the “Erie Barge Canal” – is not a single ditch or channel that runs from Albany to Buffalo. It is actually a system that strings together travel on rivers and lakes and man-made channels (which is where the locks are). This is also the reason why riding the Erie Canal route on a bike is not just about riding on a towpath. There are places where the canal path is actually in a river or lake. In those cases, the bike route diverges onto adjacent roads. Of course if you were covering the route in a boat, you’d be on the water the whole time from Buffalo to Albany.

The biking was organized so that there was always an  “am” and “pm” rest stop.  These were in addition to places where the Canal Museum historians would pull off the trail and highlight some particularly relevant piece of local Canal history.  That generally happened every dozen miles or so and of course stopping at any of these things was entirely optional, and only possible if you wanted to pace your ride to when Derek or Steph set out from camp (generally 7:30am each day). There were absolutely some riders who would hit the trail at 6am, do their 60 miles to that evening’s camp by 10 or 11am and then engage in who knows what for the rest of the day. I don’t know where the fun is in that for 8 days, but to each their own.

Generally, riders would leave camp each morning between 7 and 8am and then the last riders would get into the next camp by 3 or 4pm.  That tended to keep riders spread out on the trail and gave most folks a leisurely enough pace to stop for history, rest stops, and lunch.  This was not an event designed solely for hardcore athletes, or at least those interested primarily in the athletic accomplishment, such as it might be, of riding a bicycle 50 to 60 miles a day.

It also wasn’t entirely designed around the healthiest possible snacks at break times.  On the other hand, I think most people will excuse the occasional Milano if it comes after a morning spent biking.

And for those wanting the non-Pringles/Fig Newton alternative, there was fruit-a-plenty.

The am and pm rest stops were also staffed by tour volunteers.  These volunteers biked to their rest stop post so as to get there before other riders arrived. Jim the Water Melon Man staffed the pm rest stop (meaning, he’d have to get roughly 3/4 of the way down a day’s route approximately by noon in order to have things set up before most riders would reach his location). That’s a lot of riding mostly non-stop.

Jim, it must be noted, is 84 years old and has been doing this tour every year for about a dozen years.

He says that his “secret” is that he bikes every single day all year long. Not usually for a tremendous distance, but he says it’s the consistency that counts.  I’ll go with that because there’s really not going to be much arguing with an 84 year old dude who bikes nearly every day of the year in upstate NY.

Who knew that Gatorade came in concentrated form in a pump bottle, just like gear oil or differential fluid? Well, I didn’t.

History Is Everywhere

Everywhere one turned on this trip there was history. I was particularly interested in the automotive and transportation history, but if I had gone with an interest in any other technology – say, optics – I would likely have found as much to see. I didn’t know that there was a Lockport, NY GM plant that to this day produces radiators (and lots of other components). Now I do and someday I’ll go back to see more of that.

Lockport – a mid-day point on tour day 1 – was also the place to get up close to a set of actual canal locks.  The tour included a boat ride that takes you through locks 34 and 35 of the modern canal.  These are along side of a restoration of two original (from 1849) locks from the first iteration canal.  This highlights the fact that the modern (1918) canal and the earlier canal iterations (original 1825 and enlarged 1862 versions) share much of the same footprint. Lockport is a particularly challenging piece of geography to transit and therefore it has what is referred to as a “flight” of locks.  This is a series of locks running in succession to raise (or lower) boats more than could be done in a single lock.  Originally, Lockport had a flight of 5 locks.  Modern locks are larger and therefore fewer are required than was the case with older canal versions.

One of the points hammered down in the Lockport cruise narration is the fact that all of the operations around flooding and evacuating water in locks (the process by which they work) is accomplished solely by gravity. None of this happens via pumps. This may not be something obvious to the casual observer, but it’s how all canals have historically operated, and is why there have been transportation canals (and therefore locks) for centuries before anyone invented any type of mechanically driven pump.  This is all a non-motorized technology. Water moving by gravity. Boats floating and being pulled by the current or if moving against the current, horses and mules.

In a pinch, in 2024, cargo could still move by barge from the Hudson River to, say (at least) Cleveland or Detroit with no electricity, no fossil fuels, and just mule-power, wind and human muscle power to open and close the lock gates (something that I’m sure is still possible if necessary). Something to think about.

The first camp site out of Buffalo was at a local (Medina, NY) middle school. This would be typical for most camps. For me this was sort of a busman’s holiday. I spend much of my time working in and around public school buildings. It just figures that my vacation would be to sleep on the lawns of schools across NY state.

Driving Days

On my Car SAG driving days, I made my way in a Mazda 3 hatchback. This is the car of another seasoned Cycle the Erie Canal participant who has done the tour for some 15 years.

A fairly constant life of having the hatch open and close with a bike rack on the back has given the hatch a certain patina. Fortunately this was earned over time and clearly didn’t happen all at once (and therefore was not something that I needed to worry about). I never actually checked what year this Mazda was, but I think it’s a third generation, pre-facelift, car. So, 2013 or 2014? I rented one much like this some years ago and was duly impressed by the driving dynamics and overall performance. I recall noting that this car could be equipped with a manual transmission and remember thinking “OK, I could live with this.”.

I’d stand by that opinion after spending a few days with this Mazda 3. The controls for the entertainment system remain irritating and confusing, but that really was my only gripe. This one seems to be holding together well for 165K miles. It will be holding together even better once it gets the brake fluid flush that it needed (I checked because of a mushy pedal and found nasty dark brown fluid). I informed the owner and hopefully that gets taken care of a.s.a.p.. I’d have done it myself on the trip if only I’d not forgotten to bring my Motive Pressure Bleeder…one of the few things I seemed to have neglected to pack. (Joke. Kind of.)

Just for good measure, the other vehicle I knew on this trip (although I didn’t have to drive it) was Roger’s Camry. The notable thing about this car is that it may be the only Camry I know (including my jacked up version also known as a Highlander) that doesn’t have a large and famous Camry corner dent.

Driving days started with a morning meeting where our intrepid leader – John – would give us an overview of the day’s route with the emphasis on intersections along the way that would require our attention. That attention would come in the form of one or more of us Car SAGs standing at the intersection (or sometimes another cycling hazard such as gravel washout) and doing what basically amounted to crossing guard duty.

Finally, half a century later, I finally sort of realized my goal of becoming a Patrol.

With a day-glow mesh vest and a big orange flag, I can now check another transportation-adjacent box off my list.

This is about as clumped together as riders tended to get on this tour. Monitoring the passage of roughly 500 cyclists through an intersection would take a couple of hours. So, generally my flagging days would consist of watching one intersection in the morning and sometimes another in the afternoon. In-between time would be spent driving to places along the day’s route to pick up riders in varying degrees of mechanical (or sometimes physical) collapse. I picked up a lot of folks with flat tires who had no patch kits or spare tubes and therefore needed to be taken to the bike mechanics stationed at one of the rest stops or that day’s camp. I also transported some riders who’d simply had enough riding that day for one reason or another. Mostly I spent a lot of time asking every rider I saw how they were doing and giving a big thumb’s up when the answer was (usually) “OK!”.  By the end of the tour, I conservatively estimate that I’d had some level of interaction with about 75% of the riders.

I found that standing at intersections with a big orange flag, talking to people about oncoming traffic conditions…or asking if they want to go to the hospital…tends to make them remember you; and therefore striking up conversations later in camp about other things was particularly easy.

This is not a job for the shy, anxious, or anyone who is adverse to talking to other people. On the other hand, I spent over a week striking up conversations about just about anything. Topics included Houston’s Art Car museum with someone who had a St. Arnold’s Brewery cycling shirt; the improbabilities of (and moral pitfalls associated with) humans ever living on Mars for extended periods of time…with a rocket scientist; the danger of tick-borne illness and how much it stinks to get that one where you become allergic to red meat; educational program evaluation with another program evaluator; the “rules” for coming up with ridiculous names for pleasure boats; and it went on and on.

Sometimes though it was quiet and the biker traffic monitoring just allowed for another opportunity to watch the Canal in operation.

 

Or, to ponder the curious job of “writing historical markers”.  I saw a lot of historical markers over the week, and it occurred to me that someone has to actually have the job of authoring these things.  And you wonder whether there’s a concerted effort to weed out – or perhaps encourage (that would be my goal) – those authors who have some kind of beef with the past and/or particular individuals.  There is absolutely no reason why historical markers need to be dull.

Traffic monitoring in Rochester was a bit of a challenge. Highlights of this urban crossing included a car that had its exhaust system held on with (I kid you not) blue painter’s tape (A big long piece that came out from under the rear bumper and adhered all the way up the rear window to the roof. More tape, More better.) and a car that had the clear impression of a human head on the windshield, made from the outside. I gave that one a wide berth.

When I thought I’d pretty much seen it all that afternoon, up came a dump truck making a horrible grinding noise that I soon discovered was due to the fact that the tongue on the trailer was dragging on the pavement and making a big old groove. Then the whole thing collapsed right in the bike path crossing.

Yup, the trailer hitch on the dump truck simply broke off.  Boom.  This necessitated much confused head-scratching from the driver – who emerged asking “What happened!?!” – and a quick reaction from my flagging buddy who stayed to direct traffic while I ran down the trail a ways to warn bikers that there was a big honking truck directly in their path and they’d need to dismount to walk around the end of it.

Bikers among you know, but otherwise I’ll say, that cyclists tend to not want to dismount. I’ve seen particularly skilled bikers manage to stay mounted and do a little skitter thing at red lights just to stay on the bike and ready to go as soon as the light changes. Telling people to GET OFF NOW is really an exercise in authority, but it was the only safe thing to do when there was a gigantic obstruction directly in their path that they’d have to stop and walk around.

More Camp Details

Even though I was all about this trip for its 19th century history, let’s face it this is 2024 and we humans need our devices.  Charging was a necessity and each night’s camp had 4 or 5 of these double-sided shoe-bag things set up as charging stations. Keeping with my inability to get away from school, I’ll note that these same arrangements of shoe-bags (without the power strips running down the middle) are commonplace in most schools for sequestering student phones in those classrooms where the teacher has decided that students should not be in possession of their devices during class.

Another charging necessity related to e-bikes. I never got a firm number, but there seemed to be perhaps as many as 100 e-bikes on this tour. The tour provided e-bike charging stations at each camp and these were usually powered by a small collection of inverter generators. The rule was that the e-bike battery charging station had to shut down each night at 9pm since even inverter generators make some noise and it was important to try to quiet things down as much as possible each night so that campers could get some sleep.

The e-bike charging station provided additional opportunities for charging devices of one sort or another. This is from the one night that camp was at a location where there was actual AC power to the camp location.  The generator volunteers were happy that night as they didn’t need to attend to the generators or rush to get everything charged by 9pm.

Camp also sometimes included a massage station.  As I’ve said, this was not a hardship tour.

Best of all of the amenities in my opinion was the “Shower Truck”.  Of the 7 camping nights, we had the shower truck for at least 5 nights.

I would have definitely spent time interviewing the shower truck operator if I had been able to find that person. Somehow though it seemed that he (?) used the time when the showers were operating as his time for sleeping or doing something else (the cab of the truck had closed curtains…I checked). Therefore I never encountered the operator. The operation seemed to be pretty basic, at least to someone whose house operates off of well water. I recognize the big blue pressure tank just like the one I have in my basement and of course the generator necessary to operate the pump. The system connected to a fire hydrant and the everything drained to a big storm drain.  I am assuming that there were a series of tankless electric hot water heaters in there somewhere.

The whole thing worked wonderfully…particularly at the end of a long day riding or flagging in 90 degree heat and humidity.

Some of our camps were in more attractive locations than others. This was at a very nice community center/park in Fairport, NY.

Of Mormons and Motorcars

Day 3 of the tour brought us through Palmyra, NY, the birthplace of the Mormon religion.  It is in Palmyra at a site called “Hill Cumorah”, also known as “Mormon Hill” by non-Latter-Day Saints. It was on Hill Cumorah/Morman Hill that in 1820 a 14 year old Joseph Smith was reportedly first visited by God and Jesus, and then 3 years later by an angel who directed him to dig up a set of gold plates. Smith later took what was allegedly written on these alleged plates and turned that into the Book of Mormon. At which point the Mormons (or more correctly, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) were off to the races. Well, except for Smith, who running a very short race, was murdered in 1844 by an angry (and demonstrably intolerant of polygamy) mob in Illinois. This was a nasty turn for Smith, but one that turned out to be good for his followers who – taking the temperature of the decidedly hostile (and apparently fervently monogamous) local population – proceeded to move on with their replacement leader, Brigham Young, to Utah where things have subsequently worked out much better for Smith’s ancestors.

We wanted to go visit Hill Cumorah, which is a few miles from the tour route and surely some cyclists did take that detour. For us though, it was uphill and anyway there’s nothing to actually see. In fact, Joseph Smith himself didn’t actually “see” the alleged golden plates; rather he viewed them through a special “seer stone in the bottom of his hat“; and the angel (who may or may not have been named “Moroni”, unless he was named “Nephi”, which Smith also floated as a possibility) took back the plates after Smith translated them from their original “reformed Egyptian” (unless it was Hebrew, Mayan pictographs, or some other language that Smith himself created) into the text that any of us can find in a paperback book bedside in every Marriott hotel room.

It’s all rather confusing, and feeling a bit like Arthur in that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we made the decision to just bike on having noted another piece of significant American history passing beneath our wheels.

Obviously in New York they can still have a few good things.

I mentioned flat tires, and yes there were a lot of these. I brought 4 extra tubes, but had no flats. Roger was not so lucky. But he’s a really good tire changer and was also packing tubes so he managed to get his flat fixed in sort order (while I chatted with the Bike SAG who of course pulled up next to us to ask “Everything OK? You guys got this?”…which we did.).

Rolling on air again, our next stop was Newark, NY where it seemed like the entire civic apparatus of the town had positioned itself along the bike trail to welcome and inform the touring cyclists. The town’s welcome kiosk featured lots of cold water, apples from local growers, some nifty key chains and most significantly a whole separate table that hosted the Director of the local historical society and another fellow who was eager to tell us (or at least me) about what he considered to be Newark’s most significant historical fact…and that is that more than a century ago it was the home of the Mora Motorcar Company.

Mora was a car-maker that functioned for roughly 4 years from 1906 until 1910. It’s unclear as to how many cars the Newark-based Mora factory produced, but there are at present only 2 that are known to exist. One is the one in these pictures from the web.  It’s not in the Newark Historical Society, but is owned by a collector somewhere in the area.

For those who are interested, there is a very (very) lengthy article on Mora Motorcars on coachbuilt.com. It’s a fascinating story of how yet another business was created out of conflict with a larger, more established, and intellectual-property-hungry corporation.  In this case, Rochester’s Eastman Kodak Company and (its pretty much bonkers founder) George Eastman. In our next chapter, we’ll learn about another similar situation which turned out better for a company in conflict with Schenectady’s General Electric Company (and its megalomaniacal founder, Thomas Edison).

 

While Newark’s historical society does not have a Mora, it has recently been fortunate enough to secure a sample of Mora’s related vehicle, the Browniekar.  The Browniekar was produced by a Mora subsidiary, the Omar Motor Company, also in Newark.  “Omar” simply being an anagram of “Mora”. The Browniekar’s claim to fame is that it was a car produced for children.

Yes, that’s a “kiddie car”, although in fact it was not much different from any “adult” car produced at the time. It was marketed as a way to acquaint youngsters who had an interest in mechanical things with the skills of driving.  Sounds good to me. Its single cylinder engine could propel the thing to 10mph…which really wasn’t all that shoddy in 1910.  Built only for one year, the Browniekar was quite successful due to Omar/Mora’s strategy of making the car a contest premium. Kids all over the country in 1910 entered raffles and sweepstakes in order to win Browniekars…just like most of us probably would have done.

At between $150 and $175 (in 1910 dollars), not many kids were rich enough to outright purchase their own Browniekars. 15 year old Buster Keaton was an exception since by 1910 he was already an established vaudeville star and had disposable income. Here he is with his brother Harry (aka “Jingles”) in his Browniekar.

By the way, Buster Keaton is an entirely fascinating person aside from being a Browniekar owner. It therefore only makes sense that he’d eventually make an appearance in this epic (sorry…I promise the next chapter will be half this length) historical story. If anyone’s interested in Keaton, I recommend a recent biography by film critic Dana Stevens – Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century. Stevens does a terrific job showing how the twists and turns of Keaton’s life paralleled changes in the entertainment industry/popular culture during the first 3/4 of the 20th century.

Ironically, on the day the tour passed through Newark, the actual Historical Society was closed, so all the helpful folks could do was to point at the building and tell us to come back someday and see the exhibits. I hope to be back someday to see their newly-acquired Browniekar in person.

Moving on, and since we’d spent so much time in Newark talking to the Historical Society folks about the Mora and the Browniekar and the various connections between Mora and the Eastman Kodak company, we found that we were bringing up the very end of the riding pack. So, why not stop and spend time at the Peppermint Museum in Lyons, NY.  Lyons being the epicenter of the 19th century peppermint industry. Thanks to Lyons and the Erie Canal, there is a peppermint oil industry. This is good news to users of incense, candies (You know, I think what this song needs is More Cowbell!), and probably Little Tree car air fresheners – worldwide.

Ultimately we got an hour of education on how peppermint oil is produced and how its use spread worldwide due to H.G. Hotchkiss being able to export it from Lyons via the Erie Canal.  Oh, and since it was lunchtime, the museum people had ordered pizza and insisted that Roger and I stay for that as well.

Almost done with the day’s riding, the trail took us next to Clyde, NY which has a fascinating story about how it was a major glass producing city (before passing the torch to nearby Corning) and may have figured prominently in the development of the Mason jar. I say “may have” because there is much confusion and intrigue around the history of Mason jars. Who would have thought?

And who would have thought that a bunch of cyclists riding through town would have brought out the Clyde church ladies to open up the church, serve up a bunch of sandwiches and a mountain of baked goods, all in return for our filling out a little card saying where we’re from so that they could hang it on a display in the church’s front hall.

But that’s what happened.

Stay tuned for part 2, which now that we’re done with some of the logistical explanation will be shorter than this rather lengthy post. The next chapter will feature the Wizard of Oz, actual tornadoes, more curbside classics and horses.

Yes, horses.

Sadly, there is no Peppermint Little Tree car air freshener fragrance. For some reason they have a “No Smoking” scent, but have entirely passed over the minty holiday goodness of peppermint. I suppose we could start a Santa-themed write-in campaign…

Full official information on the Parks & Trails New York Cycling the Erie Canal trip can be found on the Parks & Trails website.