FLCC> Tioughnioga River Valley Sunday ride notes

[John Dennis]

Last Sunday's joint club ride with the Onondaga Cycling Club started in a
small park near Preble, NY, under louringly overcast skies.   Gary Hodges
and Mike Richter had driven north on 281 from Cortland through Homer, but
were running late, and then became a tad disoriented within shouting
distance of the park entrance. But, Andrejs, as dean of the FLCC diplomatic
corps, managed to hold the stamping throngs of Onondaga riders in
place until Gary and Mike drove up and got out looking a tad flustered.
Then, as about 20 pairs of restless eyes watched, Gary and Mike put on their
shoes, helmets and gloves, they then put on their front wheels, they
pumped their tires, and they checked their gear. At last, the starting horn
was sounded.

After we rolled out and began conversing with the Onondagaites we learned
that they normally depart on rides promptly and that this ride was only one
of 180 in their portfolio.  See http://onondagacyclingclub.org/maps for the
entire list.  A given ride has to be very popular to be ridden more than
once every five years. Wow, I was impressed and already
feeling...ah...inadequate.  Here we FLCCers had caused these good people to
roll out late AND we had less than 40 maps of rides on our club web site.
Luckily, noone asked how many we had.

But, of course, we were from just a little cluster of towns straddling the
intriguing and not altogether plumbed cusp of the Cheaspeake and St.
Lawrence watersheds. The Onondagaite city of Syracuse was a good ten miles
north of this watershed divide and so residents there couldn't be expected
to feel the same wander map-free creative tensions known to exist in
headwaters of our remote and terrain-challenged part of the regional
landscape.  And, if I may share this in confidence....one cluster of FLCC
riders discovered that the OCC map of our route was too restrictive.  The
artist--yes, it was hand-drawn--had sheared off most of the adjoining
roadways and road names.  Thus, when Gary, Mike, David Sahn, and I overshot
a designated turn onto East River Crossing by at least half a mile, we had
to dither about whether to forge ahead--sans map--and hope there was
another route across the East Branch of the Tioughnioga or to crimp our
pride and retrace our route back to that missed turn.

Taylor Valley is one of the least populated and indeed lovely stretchs of
landscape I've seen on any summer ride. The valley is small and intimate,
wooded and close at hand but not cloying.  Postage-stamp-sized road-side
cemeteries are still staving off the surrounding forest some generations
after the former residents of this valley moved on or under.  We first rode
the Taylor Valley Road south along the east side of the north-flowing
Cheningo Creek and then--after a short interlude--we picked up the east bank
of Mallory Brook and followed that south southeast to Route 26. Goldenrod
was in bloom as was purple loosestrife and Japanese knotweed (false bamboo
or Fallopia japonica).

By the time we got to an icecream stand Andrejs had recommended opposite an
intersection with Rte 23, we realized that the OCC riders had all taken the
43-mile short route.  Mike, Gary, David, and I opted to do the 76-mile long
route through Whitney Point and back through Cortland on Rte 11.   Andrejs
and another FLCCer opted to return via Telephone Road. Rte 26 took us south
along the east side of the Otselic River, through Willet and from Cortland
County into Broome County. We got views of the 4-mile-long Whitney Point
Reservoir, a reservoir I never knew existed despite driving through Whitney
Point for decades.  Following a flood in the area in the mid-30s that
severely damaged the town, President Franklin Roosevelt visited the area to
inauguate a dam built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. With the
exception of David, who is not a dam person, we made a short detour out to
see the dam and its control structures.

In Whitney Point, we stopped for Florentine pizza and Florentine pasta at a
great Italian restaurant at the main intersection in town. There we learned
that the Whitney automobile has been produced in Whitney Point in 1901. The
Otselic meets the Tioughnioga at Whitney Point and we followed the latter
upstream all the way back to Cortland along Rte 11 and then to Homer and
Preble on 281.

Thanks to Andrejs for setting up this joint ride.

John
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