FLCC> Lake Como Sunday Ride

[Brenda Smith]

Never fear Misty, I will write a report!!  Although....  for reasons
you'll read below, my report will be slightly different than the ride
everyone else took....

There were a few glitches in today's ride.  It started at home about
45 minutes before the ride when my internet connection refused to
work, and I was unable to print off a cue sheet for the ride.  Knowing
that several of my usual riding partners were away on the weekend tour
(how did that go, btw?), this made me a little uncomfortable.  But,
when I pulled into the parking lot at HSBC, I saw Clif (with one "f"),
so I felt better.  Soon I saw Eva, Jason, and Rob from the Thursday
rides arrive, so that made me feel even better.  And then Eva was good
enough to give me an extra cue sheet, so then my discomfort was
completely relieved.

Everything was going along just fine until Clif noticed that his tires
were too soft and we stopped on 366 to pump them back up.  This took
us about 5 minutes, but from this point on, we never saw the group(s)
again.  We continued out Upper Creek road onto Fall Creek, reveling in
the lack of traffic and the beautiful creek.  It was sometime during
this stretch that I informed Clif that Fall Creek originates from Lake
Como, and thus Cornell gets it's water supply from Lake Como--I
learned this one day not too long ago when I was bored enough to read
the annual Cornell water quality report.  Anyway, after a pleasant
ride down Fall Creek Rd., we arrived in McLean.

At this point, Clif and I decided that sticking to the normal route
was not exciting enough, and we were going to wander aimlessly and
scout out some new roads for the club to ride.  Okay, what really
happened is we looked for a Lafayette Rd off to the left, as indicated
on the cue sheet, but somehow we missed it.  We continued up McLean
Rd. and ended up nearly riding into Cortland.  We took a left onto
Fairview Dr. until we hit rt 222.  We took a left and decided to stop
and ask a gentleman mowing his lawn if he knew a "back" route to
Moravia, so we wouldn't have to go all the way into Groton.  He
suggested we head down Sears Rd., which was just before his house, and
head down (or rather, UP!) some other roads.

About a half mile down the road, we were accosted by a big 'ole German
Shepard type dog.  I saw it come running out of a garage on our right
and saw a rope tied to its collar.  "Oh, Phew!!" I said out loud.  But
then I realized that the dog was still running toward me and the rope
did not seem to be attached to anything at the other end!!!  "Oh
no!!!"  Well, there were some other words that ran through my mind,
but they're not appropriate for here.  The dog kept coming after me,
and I didn't really have the energy to try to outrun it, so I stopped.
 I put my bike between me and it, but it came around the bike to my
left side, and I felt its tongue swipe a wide path down my leg.  !!!!
But apparently it didn't like the taste of my sunscreen (the spray-on
kind that I imagine tastes as bad as it smells!!) as it turned away.
I waited until it got to the edge of its lawn and started to ride
away, but he came after me again.  Luckily a mini-van coming from the
other direction realized my plight and laid on the horn as she went
by.  The dog went back to its garage, and I was finally able to catch
up to Clif, who was waiting up the road a bit.  Time to buy some Halt!
and start carrying it with me, I guess.

We soon turned right onto McCloy Rd. and began a rather arduous 1.5
mile climb up to Hatfield Rd., where we took a left and were rewarded
with a sweet descent onto Hinman Rd., and finally we were back on the
map, so to speak, having finally found a road on the cue sheet.  We
were soon on the namesake of the ride, cranking by the lovely Lake
Como, which looked very inviting to two hot and sweaty cyclists...  We
turned left onto Dresserville Rd., which is another lovely road.  It
follows some other creek, and at one section of road, the dropoff down
to the creek was rather far, probably about a 100ft.  But there was a
lot of shade on the road, too, so that was nice.  Finally we reached
Moravia, and stopped at the convenience store for subs.  My turkey sub
was much better than the Cliff bars I had planned on eating!!!

We decided to take one of the "lesser evil" routes back to Ithaca, not
wanting to deal with the climb up Long Hill Rd.:  rt 38 to Locke, make
a right on 90, and come back via Creek, Breed, and Van Ostrand Rds.
Creek Rd. was the nicest of this bunch, rolling past a large swamp.  I
dragged pretty majorly until we hit Van Ostrand road, suffering from
post-lunch, "I wanna take a nap!" cries emanating from somewhere
within my mind and legs.  But finally once we got a ways down Van
Ostrand rd., my body began to re-energize, and we maintained a fairly
decent pace back to Ithaca.  Clif and I loaded our bikes up and headed
down to Purity to indulge in some post-ride reward.  We felt we'd
earned it.  :)