August 24th, 2006
Leg 3: Lockport to Brockport, New York
Mileage today: 41
Total mileage to date: 126
Weather: Overcast with a fairly strong headwind
Spirits: Indomitable :)
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How could we have a better start to our day than the delicious omelettes and great conversation provided to us by Wayne? Thursday was our 3rd day of riding, and the first to pass without a broken spoke - hooray! Lib, Wingman, Wayne, & Sam - fueled up after omelettes and ready to head to the bike shop for more repairs!

We had a slow start in the morning, waiting for the closest bike shop to open at 11 am, getting my spoke fixed (they didn't have the right type of wheel to replace the one I have), and getting to work on arranging some lodging for the evening. I pulled out my Ride For World Health planning expertise and called the Rochester Visitor Center to get the phone number of some local churches, hoping we could ask them if they had any congregation members who wouldn't mind putting up two female cyclists in their backyard. The cosmos is doing a mighty fine job of getting us into the most interesting possible scenarios - the woman at the first church I called phoned back with directions to the home of a dear dear angel named Selene, who reminds me absolutely of the fictional character Mrs. Pigglewiggle I read about as a child, hoping she were real. Selene met us at the door of the delightful Victorian home she and her husband Arthur occupy, showing us down the driveway to the patch of grass beside an old red barn garage and inviting us to use the pool, shower, and bathrooms, and to help ourselves to English muffins "or anything else you can find. The backdoor is open - we haven't had a key for 20 years - this is a CRAZY house!!" she chuckled, and excused herself to go answer the phone... she works as a coordinator for foreign exchange students and has been up to her eyeballs rushing to place 13 students from all over the world with host families.
Sam and I popped our tent up in the backyard and then laughed at ourselves as we tried to do our stretching and ab workout inside tiny Harriet the Habitat to escape from the mosquitoes. We felt amazing after our hot showers, and gawked at this miraculous house. The bathroom is outfitted with an antique washbasin, and trinkets and treats cover every imaginable surface of the house. I looked up in the kitchen only to find the ceiling covered with foreign bills and coins in every imaginable currency, glued there by exchange students or Selene & Arthur themselves after returning from their own travels. Cigar boxes full of marbles on the coffee table, chocolate bars peeping out from crowded bookshelves in the library, mason jars fulls of M&Ms, which Selene explained is because M&Ms are "universal. Every kid in the world knows what M&Ms are!" And with all the people coming in and out of this house, we believe her! As Sam and I went to bed last night, both of us we in a state of semi-schock that we've ended up in this miraculous house which seems to have the same crazy ambience we experienced together at the Gesundheit Institute... every step of the way opens into new and incredible people, a web of connections just waiting to be discovered.