Which Finger Lake should you bike around?

Last week, a woman with the local Nurse-Family Partnership named Holly Beaston came downtown to the newspaper so I could give her a check for my final fundraising amount. After the GoFundMe fees, it came to about $2,975, so I topped it off to $3,000, which was my goal to start with. Witness:

So, that's that. All finished. Thank you to everyone who helped me.

I'll just do one last thing here before I sign off for good. A lot of people have said to me this summer that they'd like to ride around at least one Finger Lake themselves. They ask me which they should do. Now that I've got some first-hand knowledge, I thought I'd describe each of them briefly here, in case you want to go out for a ride before the weather turns.

Here are my 10 rides, subjectively ranked from easiest to hardest. (There are 11 lakes, but I did Canadice and Hemlock together.)

By the way, you can go to mapmyride.com/routes and search any of the lake names, and you'll get some detail on the mileage and climbing for each of them, as well as directions. That's what I did. You can do the same sort of thing with Google topographical maps. Just search "Seneca Lake topographical map," for example, and it comes right up. Click the cycling icon as your mode of transportation and it gives you the hilliness details.

My rankings, from easiest to hardest:

10) Honeoye Lake - 18 miles, 279 feet in elevation gain. This one was really quite pleasant. At a very leisurely pace, it took us about 90 minutes to finish. No real climbing at all. A great ride to get your feet wet.

9) Conesus Lake - 19 miles, 407 feet in elevation gain. Conesus is maybe a little more up-and-down than Honeoye, but pretty much the same thing. Less than two hours for certain, no real hills. Hugs the lake a little more closely than Honeoye.

8) Owasco Lake - 31 miles, 1,206 feet in elevation gain. If you're a more or less regular cyclist with a bicycle in fair shape, Owasco will be a fun ride for you. The hills are gradual and traffic is minimal. Nice views of the water.

7) Otisco Lake - 17 miles, 726 feet in elevation gain. By the numbers, Otisco is no harder than Honeoye or Conesus, and in fact it's easy enough for about 16.5 miles. It felt much harder, though, because of a short but very steep incline on Moon Hill Road. It was the only spot that really defeated me the entire summer. That being said - you could easily dismount and walk up in 15 minutes, and be on your way again.

6) Skaneateles Lake - 40 miles, 1,864 feet in elevation gain. I would say those first four lakes make up one category among the 10 rides. They're a perfectly fine starting point for a recreational cyclist. Skaneateles, Keuka and Canandaigua are a step up. The riding on Skaneateles isn't a lot more rigorous, but there's some extra distance. There were one or two longish, moderate climbs, but still nothing too bad. A very beautiful stretch of riding on the south/southwest end of the lake.

5) Keuka Lake - 59 miles, 2,149 feet in elevation gain. As I mentioned in my write-up, this was my favorite ride. The views were great and you mostly avoid heavy traffic. There are three towns along the way, so it's easy to break the ride up. The distance is the only real challenge, but if 59 miles seems long, you can shortcut across the bluff (the land between the prongs of the Y) and shorten it by 15 miles or so.

4) Canandaigua Lake - 42 miles, 1,334 feet in elevation gain. This is a ride you can really customize to your own liking. On the west side, there are a number of options for where you ascend from the shore to the ridge. We took probably the easiest one, but there are a number of others. Bopple Hill Road is semi-legendary as the steepest ride in the region; I could only marvel at it from the car. Canandaigua is probably the worst ride in terms of having to share the road with cars and trucks.

3) Cayuga Lake - 93 miles, 2,180 feet in elevation gain. This one requires some explanation. I'm ranking them the way I did them. In this case, that means riding from just south of Seneca Falls around to just northwest of Ithaca in one day, then finishing on the second day. That's about 60 and 35 miles on the two days. The first day has some pretty challenging climbs; the second day is quite pleasant. I should note that if we were considering this as a one-day ride like the others, it would be the hardest.

2) Seneca Lake - 79 miles, 1,767 feet in elevation gain.  This is a pretty uncomplicated ride. It's just very frickin' long. Not too hilly. Nice to see all the wineries. Very long.

1) Canadice and Hemlock lakes - 43 miles, 3,010 feet in elevation gain. This was my first ride; it feels like a long time ago. The distance isn't too bad, and in fact it only took us maybe four hours to finish, as I recall. But you'll note that the figure-eight around Canadice and Hemlock has about 50 percent more elevation gain than Cayuga in less than half the distance. That means a lot of climbing, including one very big push in the last few miles. This and Seneca Lake were the two rides where I truly felt out of gas at the end.

I hope everyone who enjoys riding their bike will consider tackling one or two of these, as it suits your ability and equipment. And thanks for following my blog posts!

Cayuga Lake - mission accomplished

***Please visit my fundraising page here***

The best part of this project - besides all the money for a good cause - has been getting to spend most of a Saturday or Sunday with a lot of friends and family I don't see as often as I'd like to. I haven't had a good long talk with my high school friend Buddy Nyhof or my cousin Matt Gracie for ages. John Forbush and David Riley gave me some parenting tips. My sister Laura rode up and down Skaneateles Lake in the rain without a complaint.

I guess it's pretty standard adult behavior to fall away from spending time with people you care about, and to regret it. But the most shameful example for me is that even though I live within walking distance of two of my best and oldest friends, Mark Wyand and John Fornof, I sometimes go a month or two without seeing them. It's stupid.

So, for the final and longest lake of my summer, I got the two of them to ride along with me, and to split it into two days with a night camping at Taughannock Falls State Park in between. That was this weekend. We went 93 miles around Cayuga Lake; when we finished Sunday morning, it meant the end of my little adventure.

The first day was long and hot. We broke it up with a dip in the water near Ithaca, then a great meal at the Ithaca Beer Co. brewhouse. Mark's girlfriend Zeynep came up huge, bringing our camping gear up to the site in the evening then coming in the morning with bagels and to take our heavy stuff back again.

The second day was short and rainy. I meant to jump in the lake at the end of the ride - I was soaked through anyway, and it would have been a fun video for the blog, after I bailed on my original promise to post videos of every ride. But the water up at that end was not very appealing, and we decided instead to go for breakfast at a diner in Waterloo. It was the smarter choice.

So, that's it. I finished all the lakes and I raised my $3,000 (though I'd be grateful for late donations). I'll have two wrap-up posts in the next week or two, then stop cluttering your Facebook feeds for a while.

Keuka Lake

Time's running out to donate to Nurse-Family Partnership!

I'm getting toward the end of my summer adventure; on Saturday I finished my 10th lake out of 11, going 59 miles around Keuka Lake.

This was the trip I had to cancel back in June due to a family health emergency that, thankfully, turned OK. My friend John Forbush and I rescheduled for this weekend and set out from his house with the sun just barely up.

John became a dad a year or so ago, so we had plenty to talk about on the drive out to Branchport and as we began our ride. There was supposed to be heavy rain, but again I got lucky - we didn't see a drop of it.

I wonder - if there were a survey of western and central New Yorkers of their favorite Finger Lake, which would come out on top? I would guess it would be among Keuka, Skaneateles and Canandaigua, and I have a feeling Keuka would be first, for a few reasons.

It's big enough that a lot of people are familiar with it, and it has vacation cottages and permanent residences spread along a good portion of the shoreline (unlike Skaneateles or Honeoye, for instance, where they're mostly clustered at the north end). And of course, its unique Y shape means there are many more views of the water from angles you don't get elsewhere.

Put all that together with fine weather, moderate hilliness and good company, and I'd say this was my most enjoyable ride of the summer. It was long enough to be challenging but not as grueling as 80-mile Seneca Lake. The main road on the east side had a lot of truck traffic, but it is paralleled most of the way with sheltered roads for cottages that were perfect for quiet riding.

It's hard to believe I only have one more ride, but it's a big one. Cayuga Lake is the largest lake by circumference, between 90 or 100 miles depending on the route you take. I'll be tackling it in two days next weekend with two of my oldest friends.

Please click here to donate to my fundraiser.

Hitting my fundraising goal

When I created my GoFundMe page, I wasn't sure what to set for my goal. I've never done this sort of thing before, and my friends and family seem to occupy the usual spectrum between stingy and generous. I set it at $3,000, or a little less than $300 per lake.

For a while there, it didn't seem like I was going to make it - and I was OK with that. Since the number was arbitrary in the first place, I was just happy to be contributing something, even if it was only $1,000. That still goes a long way for a young woman and baby in need.

If you look at the page now, I'm at $2,501 (thanks to Ben Jacob for the only donation not in a $5 increment). But in fact, today I went over my $3,000 goal, thanks to my job.

We have quarterly awards for various things at the Democrat and Chronicle. One of the categories is called "Making Rochester Great." It goes to people who do a lot of community service and what not.

The important thing is that it comes with a $500 donation from the D&C to a charity of the person's choice. So today, I was very proud to win the award - for the second time now - and direct the $500 to Nurse-Family Partnership, putting me at $3,001. I'm not sure if the company will agree to send it to my GoFundMe or just cut a check directly to the organization, so it may not show up, but the money is there.

I'm not terribly comfortable writing a post about winning an award, but I'm doing it for two reasons. 

First, while the award was for things I've done mostly off the clock, the most important aspect of my job is being in a position to improve my community, and to shine a light on others who do so. In the last few months, that has included writing about a program that gets city kids out into the woods; a profile of a Honduran refugee who managed to graduate high school in three years despite arriving here with no English at age 16; and an investigation into mistreatment of some of the most vulnerable students in Rochester, those with disabilities. If I couldn't write about that sort of thing, I wouldn't much like being a journalist.

Second, I really appreciate working for a company that places value in the right things. The newspaper/online media/whatever industry is a turbulent place right now - maybe you saw John Oliver talking about it a few days ago - but we're still doing important work, and the D&C and other papers like it are still informing and inspiring people in every city in the country. The D&C doesn't have as much cash lying around as it used to, but it still puts aside thousands of dollars a year to support important causes like this one.

So, thanks to my bosses for the generous donation, and to everyone else who helped me get to my goal. And if you have any extra cash left and you don't yet subscribe to your local newspaper, give it a thought.

Canandaigua Lake

Thanks for reading, and please donate to Nurse-Family Partnership!

Smart cyclist that I am, I backloaded my summer of biking with a few of the more difficult lakes; Canandaigua is one of them. If you've ever been to Bristol Harbour - or Bristol Mountain, for that matter - you know the west side of Canandaigua Lake has some hills.

I went out there this Saturday with my cousin, Matt Gracie, who left his house in Buffalo well before the sun came up to meet me in the Wegmans parking lot at 7:30 a.m. Matt is not only the tallest rider of the summer - he's got me by two inches - but one of the most experienced cyclists. He does plenty of road and mountain bike riding and has commuted across the Canadian border on two wheels. I didn't even know that was a thing.

As with nearly every ride, we had impeccable weather. It was pleasantly cool to start the morning with no clouds at all. We went counter-clockwise, starting with the worst climbing of the day on Seneca Point Road. That got a little sweaty, but for the next few hours it was smooth riding. We also got a nice surprise at the end of our 42 miles, as my (our) Aunt Michelle and my mom treated us to a lunch of very good Mexican food at Rio Tomatlan in downtown Canandaigua.

I'd also like to thank Matt for his generous donation to my GoFundMe. I set my goal at $3,000 somewhat arbitrarily when I began, but now we're just a few hundred dollars away from meeting it. If you haven't donated yet and you've got a few dollars to spare, it would go to a great cause.

This Saturday I go to Keuka Lake with my good friend John Forbush. This is the lake that got derailed earlier this summer, you may remember, when my father had emergency heart surgery. He's doing great, so there won't be any excuses this time.

Otisco Lake

Please donate at my GoFundMe page!

In all the excitement over the baby news, I accidentally let a week and a half go by without writing up my ride around Otisco Lake.

If it was going to happen to any lake, I could have told you it would be Otisco. It's a pretty under-the-radar body of water. It's the easternmost Finger Lake and one of the smallest, just 18 miles around. Even in Syracuse, people are more likely to go to Skaneateles than Otisco. And the largest town there is Marietta, which is, well, not a large town.

Otisco is also the only Finger Lake I've never even set eyes on before this summer, so I was excited for the ride. My partner was Scott MacPherson, a good friend I met when he and my wife Kat attended law school at Syracuse University together.

Now, Scott is a staff attorney at Volunteer Legal Services Project, which is another of those crucial services that you may never have heard of. It provides free legal counsel to people who couldn't otherwise afford it. It's really good work that he's doing there.

Our weather was really good, and since it's a pretty short lake I assumed we'd just breeze right around. My map indicated one little hill, but nothing alarming. Right?

Something I've learned from experience: roads with the word "hill" in them are not kind to cyclists. Moon Hill Road at the southwest end of Otisco is a case in point. The climb was barely half a mile long but rose at an 18 percent grade, which is significantly more than I've seen on Hemlock, Seneca or anywhere else.

This is how I got up: ride for 200 feet; topple off my bike gasping for air; sit on the side of the road for five minutes; repeat. It took a lot of repetitions. So many that Scott, who had the good sense to walk his bike up, texted me from the top of the hill letting me know he'd wait for me.

Thanks, Scott!

After that little hiccup, we had a beautiful ride the rest of the way around. It was a great day on an out-of-the way lake. I hope to go back again.

Now I'm caught up on the blog, with just three lakes left. Coming up next: Canandaigua Lake, this Saturday. I can't help but noticing a lot of the roads are named after hills.

Skaneateles Lake

Please donate to my fundraiser for Nurse-Family Partnership! Only three lakes left!

A sampling of reactions to the fact that my sister Laura was going to be riding around Skaneateles Lake this weekend:

My (our) mother: "If she can't make it, what are you going to do?"
My wife: "Should I come and wait in Skaneateles just in case?"
Her husband: "I don't know, maybe she's been training, but every day when I come home the bike is in the same place."

Family of haters! Forty-five miles and several hours later, I can report that Laura is not only still alive, but made it around the entire lake without being towed or driven. Good job, Laura!

It was all the more impressive because, for the first time this summer, I had some bad weather. It was bright enough when we started down East Lake Road, but after about an hour it started to drizzle, then rain lightly, then freaking rain a lot. Cold rain. It didn't help when A) the "town" of Scott at the south end of the lake turned out not to be a thing at all, so we couldn't take a break anywhere indoors; or B) when a friendly mailman sent us down the wrong road for two miles during peak rainfall.

We were rewarded once we rounded the lake, though, with a stretch of beautiful vacation houses on Glen Haven Road on the southwest shore. They were tucked into the heavily wooded hillside in an amazing variety of construction. I'd never been down there before, even when I worked in Skaneateles, but it's definitely on my list for a return visit.

The rain let up after about two hours and we had a nice ride back into town. Now that Skaneateles is finished, I've got just three lakes left: Canandaigua next weekend, Keuka the following and Cayuga the one after that.

Thanks for reading and please donate!