The first ride: Canadice and Hemlock lakes

After a few months of talking, I finally got my Finger Lakes ride underway on Sunday with Canadice and Hemlock lakes.
Canadice (the smaller, eastern one) and Hemlock are right side-by-side, south of Rochester and between Honeoye and Conesus lakes. They're best known as the water source for the city of Rochester. The water flows completely via gravity about 30 miles north to Cobb's Hill and Highland reservoirs, then again via gravity to taps throughout the city.
Because we drink from them, it's especially important that they be kept free of pollution. As such, they're the only two lakes with absolutely no development along the shorelines. New York state owns all the land in the area, including an extensive state forest. It's a really great place for a hike.

As I mentioned earlier, I called on my friend Buddy Nyhof for the ride. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we were enjoying catching up with each other so much that we hardly noticed the first climb going south on Bald Hill Road on our way around Hemlock. Because of the fact that the shorelines are undeveloped, we couldn't actually see the lake for our entire circuit around it, but the day was pleasant enough without it.
We had one very steep hill coming back around the south end of Hemlock, but otherwise finished the first, longer part of the ride in pretty good shape. We stopped back at Hemlock Lake Park for lunch and a rest, then got going on what was supposedly the easier half of the day, the much-shorter Canadice Lake.
We had to go back up Bald Hill Road again, and we noticed right away that the climb we'd tackled without a sweat a few hours earlier felt a lot steeper the second time around. We weren't chit-chatting quite as much on our way up. It was only a few miles, though, and we then were treated with a long coast down a mostly empty road on the hillside and then a beautiful path on the east side of Canadice, where there is an access road right near the water.
The last few miles were on Purcell Hill Road. Actually, almost every road we rode on had the word 'hill' in the name, and Purcell Hill came by it honestly. After about 40 miles of up-and-down riding, we had a monster of an up-hill a few miles from the end of the day.
I won't speak for Buddy, but I almost died.
After that it was an easy coast back to the park and our car. It took a little longer than we planned for the 45 miles, but we had a great time. Unfortunately, I deleted the GoPro video off my computer like an idiot, but we did take this selfie video.

I'm taking a hiatus for a few weeks before my next ride: Honeoye Lake on June 11. I hope to be joined by some friends from the Democrat and Chronicle newsroom.
While I'm gone, please have a look at my GoFundMe page and consider donating to the Nurse-Family Partnership, helping create strong families through early intervention.

The first two lakes, with a ringer

I'll be honest - I'm a little anxious about some of these Finger Lakes rides. There are three less than 20 miles (Conesus, Honeoye, Otisco) and another handful that are only moderately hilly or fairly short. But I've never done any real hard riding, so looking at the topographical profiles on some of the longer routes gives me visions of long walks up a hill, pushing my bike like a chump.

So in the name of confronting my fears, I decided to change up my initial schedule and put the hilliest ride first. That's Canadice and Hemlock lakes (so I also get the benefit of crossing two of the 11 off at once). According to MapMyRide, the first nine miles going south on Marrowback Road will be the steepest of the whole summer.

It's not a ride for anyone; I decided to call in the big guns, my high school friend Buddy Nyhof. The good thing about having him for a partner is that he won't be too worried about a dinky little hill in Livingston County. That's because he already did one of these summer charity bike ride things - from Washington state to Maine, a total of 3,400 miles. He raised more than $7,000 for recycling and sustainability in the Fairport Central School District, where he's a teacher. He's kind of a force of nature.

(I'm also obligated to point out that he had a memorable appearance on The Price Is Right.)

Buddy and I will be riding Sunday, May 22. I'll be using the next week to get ready. Once we finish, I'll have a post with photos, maybe video and a recap.

If you find this interesting, please visit my GoFundMe page and make a donation to Nurse-Family Partnership, which connects nurses with poor first-time moms to help them through pregnancy and the first two years of the baby's life.

Why Nurse-Family Partnership?

When I first had the idea of doing a bike ride around the Finger Lakes, I didn't think of it as a fundraiser. It was simply that I'd just bought my first new bike in many years (a sweet matte black Specialized Diverge) and I wanted to take it for a spin. Once it occurred to me, though, there was still the matter of deciding where to direct the money. I thought about it quite a bit before deciding, so I thought I'd explain why I eventually chose Nurse-Family Partnership.
My first thought was to do something having to do with either cycling or education, since that's what I report on for the Democrat and Chronicle. There are several cool local bicycling-related organizations, most prominently R Community Bikes. If you haven't heard of them, take a look. They take donated bicycles, tune them up and give them away for free to people in Rochester. They also sell some of the nicer bikes to help fund the enterprise; I bought one a few years ago for basic commuting after my previous bike was stolen.
The idea is to provide reliable transportation for adults, and some fun for kids. They do free repairs and serve a huge demand. Go down Hudson Avenue one Saturday morning when they're doing the giveaway and look at how long the line is to get an idea of the need. They also recently began modifying bikes for people with disabilities, which I wrote about.
There are also a lot of education-related charities, many of which I've written about at one time or another. Most of them are properly speaking charities supporting kids on the periphery of their actual in-school education. There were two ideas that stuck with me: Nurse-Family Partnership and Dreamkeepers, a scholarship program at Monroe Community College that provides a few final dollars to help keep students from dropping out for financial reasons. I've talked to a number of Rochester students who have had to quit college because they couldn't afford a few hundred dollars for books, class fees or food - this program helps with that.
I described Nurse-Family Partnership in my GoFundMe page, but in brief, it connects first-time, low-income mothers (mostly teenagers) with a nurse for the first two years of their child's life, making sure they have the skills and access to resources they need. So it ended up a decision between an intervention early in life or one early in adulthood. I went back and forth before choosing the former, in part because I thought it would inspire more people to donate. I hope that's the case!