Day 14 Lost and Found

Navigation by Advevture Cycling maps is an art. As Fred said, and I paraphrase, "you have to get into their mind set. Figure out how to walk in their moccasins as you interpret it." Ok. I buy it. Gay is an awesome navigator. He has a sense about how they operate. He doesn't move forward unless he knows where he is and what his next step should be. Sounds simple until you try to match directions with reality and a rotten sense of direction. (Note to deceased father: Sorry Pop. That gene skipped my DNA code.)
Now. Just follow art 15 until you reach the canal trail and take it to Buffalo. No problemo. Fine until you almost pass over the canal because of all the road work and traffic in the area. When we do backtrack and find our way to the trail, riding along was bliss. Oh wait. The trail splits off. This stays by the river, follow that. It turns in another odd direction. Ok this feels right. Oh look. There's someone to ask for help. Go this way and follow these arrows? Cool. Wonder around and find our way back and saw the same guy. He corrected his earlier "helpful" suggestion. Oh we are really on track now. And so it went. FOREVER. Talked to a few people, even a pair of firemen. No help. We finally put our heads together between the AC map and Google maps to find our way. I'm too embarrassed to tell you how many miles, yes miles, we went out of our way and how much time we lost. Time to move on, folks. Nothing to see here.
The Canal trail, not the river or the green trails, by the way, was largely hard packed sand. Yes, that same evil stuff that has already caused me a lot of grief so far. This time it was pretty firm and friendly. It was interspersed with paved areas near roads. But, occasionally sand would pile up and/or develop soft treacherous spots. On several occasions, I was tooling along, minding my own business then, "Gotcha!" My wheel/s would fall prey to sand traps. Options were: simply fall over, fall over into gravel, plunge into the cana or make a save and keep on keeping on. Rubber side down. With gale force headwinds, all of these were a distinct possibility.  The latter was how Fred and I both managed to continue.
Seriously . The winds were blowing hard into our faces making forward progress... a bit challenging . The entire ride. That's ok. It's still better that ME, VT, or HH grades.
Numerous little drawbridges along the way at virtually every little, or big town along the way. We stopped for Texas Barbque along the way. A fun little bike shop surfaced too. He had pretty high end inventory considering his lonely outpost.
We stopped in Medina for the night. It's not the same without the 3rd stooge but Fred and I are getting along just fine.
Less than 35 miles to Niagra Falls and Canada.
We're about 750 miles into our journey.
Cheers. KPW