The BonTon Roulet, now in its 13th year, is an annual event hosted by the Auburn and Cortland YMCAs. This weeklong event now draws about 500 riders from all over the US for seven days of cycling, camaraderie, good food and the occasional bottle of local wine.
Riders began arriving yesterday, 25 July at the fairgrounds in Cortland, NY south of Syracuse. The photo above is the CamptTel tents that were set up when we arrived. About a quarter of the riders use the Camptel services since it makes the work of camping so much easier, since they provide the tents, set them up for you and each day when you arrive from a day of cycling your tent is ready with an air mattress, a camp chair and a fresh towel. And then, in the morning, all you have to do is load your gear into the truck for transport to the next camping site and they break down the tents and move them to the next campground. Very cool. The other half of the riders either provide their own tents or stay in local hotels or motels.
This morning breakfast began at 5:30 and just before 8:00 the riders gathered for the morning meeting. We started the mass start with a police escort out of town. Tandems, recumbent bikes, fat tires, hybrids and road racers.
Above is Geoff, from the NYCC (with hand over his heart for the Star Spangled Banner.) He is also riding with a Garmin 705 and I had just finished transferring the day’s ride to his unit using the wireless function of the GPS. Also, very cool.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9871261
Here is the link to the day’s ride.Basically 109 km in four and a half hours including two long rest stops and a stop in Ithaca to get a sandwich at Subway for when the ride ended.
This is a Google Earth view of the route and gives a good shot of why they are called the Finger Lakes
When we arrived in Treman State Park outside of Ithaca, the tents were set up.
Here is my tent, camp chair and bike.
The guys that I was riding with made good time and so, when we arrived, there were a lot of bags that had been unloaded from the trucks waiting to be picked up. This was good because those of us using the CampTel service did not have to set up our tent and could head straight to the Shower Truck.
No lines since most of the riders were still out on the road or setting up their tents.
So, great first day. No real problems except at the first rest stop where some idiot wasn’t letting people grab food off the table until they had first used the hand sanitizer. I was furious. Talk about rigid, over-reacting country hicks afraid of germs! Thankfully they were not requiring the use of the hand sanitizer at the next rest stop.
Somehow the organizers have things working almost flawlessly from the first day. You really only notice that there is an incredible amount of organization when something doesn’t go right, but today things ran smooth.
Tomorrow we are off for another 101 km, hopefully with a few less hills.
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