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SASA: Day 1: Elmira

Posted Sept. 26, 2006, 2:11 a.m.

Hi everyone, we’re finally on the road! Today, after many hugs and goodbyes for our dear mother, we left Searsburg and headed south toward the PA border.

All was well and good—the hillsides showing a few hints of fall, a light breeze, back roads with only a few cars, lots of yummy snacks from the co-op—until (a) my chain fell off and (b) when I called out to Daniel to wait up, he tried to turn around and managed to break one of his downtube shifter mounts off (see the pictures!).

(Daniel’s defense: Here Toby makes me sound like a very competent cyclist… maybe I could have done better, but understand that this downtube shifter was a little weird. It was offset 45 degrees from the normal stop position and when I mounted it I didn’t see the problem with having it stop below rather than above the downtube (well, there’s the incompetency), the problem, turns out, is that when you’re in the granny climbing a hill and you go to turn around the fork hits the shifter, a fork that doesn’t turn came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I rolled towards the opposite edge of the road and a steep slope, add a shoddily brazed shifter knub, courtesy of yours truly (me), to the mild panic, and off comes the knub, maybe better than rolling off the road.)

We continued on our way, conveniently ending up (but not quite where we expected) in Elmira. We found Kingsbury’s Cyclery in no time and purchased a clamp-on shifter replacement for $5. The owner of the shop (Paul) told us about a good camping spot not far away, virtually in downtown Elmira!

The campsite turned out to be among some trees across the levee (i.e., in the flood zone) of the river, but it worked quite well for our purposes.

Dinner was a bit rushed and not so good: tomato soup (canned) with couscous and black beans (all mixed together)...not recommended.