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Chautauqua Trail
adelheid_p  had been planning to go to a weekend camping event at Brushwood, NY and, since September was here and the weather was cooling off, she wanted me to come along to provide thermal support. Yes, I give off a lot of heat and she keeps me around to keep her warm. I had little interest in the other activities that would be going on at Brushwood but found that the Chautauqua Rail Trail was only a few miles away in Sherman. I would spend my Saturday riding that trail to Brocton and back.

The first task was getting out of town on Friday. After work, I would meet her at the Second Avenue parking lot, I would throw my bike on the rack, we would cut through the Armstrong Tunnel and cut over to the Veteran's Bridge. It was an absolute nightmare. One complete light cycle would allow one car through the intersection. It took a hour to get from the Armstrong Tunnel to the bridge. If I had stayed on my bike after leaving work I could have been home 15 miles away in the time it took us in our car to get the mile across town.

The more baffling thing is that commuters put up with this crap every day and think it's acceptable. That it's normal to waste a hour sitting in traffic when in the same amount of time they could walk across town to a parking lot on the outskirts. They could probably bicycle home in the same amount of time. Are they lazy? Are they stupid? Are they so immersed in the automobile culture that they can even conceive of doing it any other way? In any case, I felt sorry for them for the work they trap themselves in and sorry for myself for not realizing what I was in for and finding a better way to get out of town. Hell, I could have ridden home, met adelheid_p there and then run out to the turnpike in Monroeville and not lost much more time than I did in town. Lessons learned.

The rest of the day was uneventful and as expected. We arrived in New York well after dark, signed in, paid the camping fee and set up the tent. adelheid_p brought her "princess and the pea" air mattress (nearly a foot thick) and I forgot the thin Therm-a-Rest mattress. I'd be sleeping on the cold, hard ground.

Chautauqua Rails-to-trails

On Saturday morning, after not sleeping very well, I ignored the alarm going of at 6:30. Dozed for another half hour and was up out on the road by 7:30. It was about 4 miles on the road from the Brushwood campground to the trailhead in Sherman. The Chautauqua Trail winds its way north from there following the Pennsylvania Railroad alignment, In many ways, nothing much has been done with the trail in the 25 years since it was abandoned by the railroad. Sure, there are signs and the rail is gone but the surface has not been managed or graded in any way. Some places are grassy, others are dirt or gravel. Along the wetlands just north of Sherman the concrete ties poke out through the dirt.

Concrete ties? My initial assumption was that concrete rather than wooden ties were used because of the surrounding wetlands and perhaps because of the "lake effect" coming off of Erie. Some research suggests that economic and materials availability issues may have been more the impetus to using concrete rather than wood. In either case, it's a brutal surface to try to ride a bicycle over.

There are three sections along the trail where local property owners have reclaimed the alignment from the railroad and you must take to the road to get to the next segment. To the trail group's credit, they have done a good job of placing signs directing people to the next segment.

There are a number of short bridges along the trail. These bridges apparently have their original decking and 25 years of disuse have allowed them to deteriorate. The wood has started to rot and on the bridge just before Mayville a large piece of wood is set over what I imagine is a sizable hole.

Mayville in the off-season is a bit of a ghost town. The Mayville Station (a national historic landmark) has a museum and the offices of the Chautauqua Rails-to-Trails that are apparently only open weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Being here in late September, the doors are locked up tight. The tourist paddlewheel is wrapped in plastic. The docks and parking lots are empty.

As the trail continues northward, it's condition gets more spotty. There is a long section that is raw ballast with only some grass trying to break through. Then, there's a section that has a very soft gravel. I'm sure it's great for walking, it's tough on a bike. There is a very short section of pavement behind a school.

I got all the way to the northern end of the trail where it ends at the Norfolk & Western active rail near Brocton. The last little section had garbage, appliances and all the detritus of a redneck dumping ground. It was at about that time that adelheid_p called me asking when I would be back. It had taken me 5 hours to get this far, with stops for photography and geocaching along the way. I figured it would take me a little over three hours to get back.

I began by getting off the trail. As this Northern end was the worst trail surface, I took the road to Brocton and turned south, bypassing a few miles of trail. When I returned to the trail, I realized just how much a climb up the bluff it was. In addition, with the trail surface as it was my speed dropped to something around 7 miles an hour. That wouldn't do at all.

After Mayville, I abandoned the trail and took to the road again. Even though the road had plenty of ups and downs, I could make better time. Climbing a hill I would still be at the 7 mph that I was doing on the trail but on the other side of the hill I could get up to 20 or 25 mph and make up time.

Several times during my ride, I had come across some dogs who made a fuss and ran at me. The two black labs were not aggressive, just playfully territorial. But on the road I passed a house and the pug came roaring across the highway after me with murder on its little pushed in face. He chased me for a surprisingly long time before eventually turning back, satisfied that he had run off yet another bicyclist.

Finally, I arrived back at Brushwood. People were impressed that I had ridden 60 miles. Under the trail conditions, I was, too.

adelheid_p has been talking abot going back during the summer for some big festival but has been a bit hesitant to take a week to do it. I suggested that I could sort-of join her by riding up and then going to Buffalo to ride the Erie Canal Towpath. It's 380 miles from Buffalo to Albany and I couldn't do that out and back in a week but I could do half of that.

Plenty of time to work on that.