Baldwinsville to Verona, NY

45 miles. We essentially completed our bypass of Syracuse today, which worked out fine. There was still a significant amount of traffic, but thanks to those famously outrageously high New York taxes there was a wide paved shoulder almost the entire route.

We met a couple from Canada today who asked a lot of questions about our trip but who acted like people made our type of trip frequently. They were in their mid-70s but were full of life and looked at least 10 years younger. He had several bikes and had just completed a 150 mile (two day) charity ride. Most amazingly, he was still playing on a rugby team! Are you kidding me? The discussion encouraged us to think we may be able to do this kind of thing longer than what we had assumed.

We stopped at a C-store in Lakeport to take a break and pick up a few things for lunch. We had planned to eat on the shore of Oneida Lake, and asked the clerk if we could get there by going down a side road across from the place. She told us that lakefront property was private, and the guy who owned it would chase us away as he was "evil". She directed us to a park a few miles further down Route 31, which was just great. Another confirmation that it pays to ask a local.

We are in Verona tonight, which is a little town northeast of Oneida. It is unremarkable except that there is a casino here, another one of those built by an Indian tribe. Casinos seem to have spread all over the country now and yet there seems to be no market saturation point, even in this stagnant economy. Gambling is not the sort of entertainment that we care for, but we don't have a problem with it either if it does not become obsessive. It would be interesting to learn what percentage of a typical casino's revenue comes from compulsive gamblers. I suspect it is high.