I biked out of Harborcreek continuing along Hwy 20 towards New York.  The first two miles were all down hill, I didn’t need to peddle at all.  Plus it was a cooler morning than previous days, but skies were threatening rain.  On both sides of the road are rows and rows and rows of grape vineyards.  There are grape vineyards as far as the eye can see.  For about 60 miles, there was nothing but grapes.

            As I biked toward a vegetable stand, I heard what sounded like a shotgun.  I had guessed that it was intended to scare away birds.  I stopped at the vegetable stand and Anna confirmed the blast was to scare birds from the sweet corn fields.  It goes off about every 15 minutes.  She also told me the grape vines were primarily Concord and Niagara.  Since she was from a grape producing area, I asked her if she knew why if wine is made in both red and white colors, how come grape jelly is only made in red color.  Anna did not know, but guessed that Niagara grapes did not make good jelly.

            Shortly I arrived at the New York state line.  I stopped for a blueberry sundae, and while stopped got a call from my insurance agent.  Before I left on my bike trip, I thought I had taken care of all bills that would be due in June and July while I was gone.  But I missed my car insurance.  It had now lapsed and I needed to get a fax to her that I had no claims during the last several days to reinstate it.  The next city up the road was Westfield, NY.  I stopped at the Key Bank there and asked Linda if I could receive and sent a fax.  She was very kind to do this, so that got taken care of.

            A little further down the road, I met JoAnn.  She was walking her bike, so fully loaded with bags of stuff there was no room for her to ride.  She was heading for Long Island, New York.  Joann had started out from South Carolina about a year ago, and headed to Florida and then back up north to New York.  She said didn’t walk the entire way, sometimes she gets rides from people.

            By the time I arrived at Silver Creek, New York, the sun was coming out.  I had missed the rain, and it had been a cooler day today.  I stopped at the Am Vets Club for a beer.  There I met Ken Ditcher.  Ken is a WWII veteran of the Navy and served on a submarine in the South Pacific around the Midway Islands.  He is 84 and was awarded the Bronze Star for his service.  The submarine crew had kept in contact over the years, and he is now the last survivor.  After the war, he worked 30 years as a tool and die maker at the Ford Buffalo Stamping Plant.

            Out of Sliver Creek I biked toward Buffalo on Hwy 5, and found a Best Western at Lackawanna.  I called a couple motels in Buffalo and fond some where filled for the night, and others more expensive, so I checked in here for the night, already having gone 80 miles for the day.  I suppose Buffalo gets a lot of Niagara Falls tourists in the summer.