Visiting the St. Lawrence Valley SPCA

Like last year, we complete our visits to SPCAs and animal shelters in Ogdensburg with the St. Lawrence Valley SPCA. This shelter had great success with the Pedaling4Paws effort last year and it became a prototype for this year as we used the idea of creating individualized press releases for the media and unique posters summarizing the ride and the needs of the specific SPCA in a given geography. We also created unique donation labels for each place we visited and it seems to be working, albeit never as well or as fast as we’d like. Here we are posing at the entrance and with the Stillman Volvo XC-90.

We are also happy to say that the Ogdensburg Journal already published a story about the ride (though the word processor that reporter Benny Fairchild used must have been an i-phone like what I use for the blogging because our ride was named “Peddling 4 Paws”) and that we hope the results will be equally as positive as last year!

The visit was fun and we saw plenty of beautiful animals ready to be adopted. In fact, while we were feasting on a great lunch provided for us, we saw a fellow bring in two dogs. Of course, we did a tour of their shelter and this is a very nice facility that strives to keep the animals in large cages, giving the healthy ones access to the outdoors and giving play time to all of them. The animals may prefer being adopted but they are certainly well taken care of.

You can see for yourself in these few photos and notice Gary with his friend Raina!

That’s it for now. We’ll do a recap of the day shortly and update the blog to add more detail either tonight or early next week.

We Made It to the Border!

5 Days, 500+ Miles and we made it to the US-Canada border! The best news for today is that the speed stayed around 23 mph for the entire 65 miles thanks to the terrain and tailwind!! Here we are with our now signature “Raising our bikes” pose and the border/bridge in the distance!

It always feels good to ride but finishing a long distance fundraising event like this is also very, very rewarding. We won’t celebrate just yet because we still want to visit the St. Lawrence Valley SPCA, but we did celebrate a little as the riding brought us to the border.

More soon!

A Rest Stop in Hammond

Even short rides have a rest stop when you are Pedaling4Paws! Ours was at mile 40 in the town of Hammond. We has no issues other than wet roads out of Watertown and a slight delay to allow a hers of cattle to cross the road. Fortunately, we were able to find a path between the droppings…

We made great time after leaving the SPCA with a 22.4 mph average thanks to relatively flat terrain and a slight tail wind.

The stop was pretty short and no photos or blogging as we were concerned about the weather. Next stop is the border!

Visiting the Jefferson County SPCA

Our first visit this morning is to the Jefferson County SPCA in Watertown. We visited this SPCA last year and were met by a reporter from YNN. We also found the facility to be run by a family with Angel Munsen heading up the place.

This year, our visit is with John and Suzie.

The animals that are here are still cute as can be and though different from last year, their needs remain the same – they are looking for good homes and kind souls who can donate time, money, or certain goods. Hopefully our friends in the Watertown area can help out and once we get back, I will update this blog with additional information.

Day Five – The Last Day – Begins

Our last day is a relatively short one but it has us scheduled for two SPCA visits. The first will be the Jefferson County SPCA at 8:30AM and the second will be at or before 1:30pm At the St. Lawrence Valley SPCA in Ogdensburg, our final destination. Like last year, the plan is to get to the border and then go to the SPCA. Hopefully the weather will behave better than the 50+ degree rain we rode in last year… Here’s what it looks like now.

Anyway, breakfast is at the hotel and in a huge area that probably doubles as reception hall.

Soon we will hit the road!

On a related note, Mike now has to fly to the west coast for business in Sunday, so we had to change plans with Yves Dupont for the Ogdensburg arrival. The bottom line, shortly after we finish visiting with the SPCA, we will be heading back to Mike’s place in Marcellus. It’s too bad that we won’t be able to spend much time with Yves this year, but he said, “No problem, there’s a Bluegrass Concert I can now go to!” What a trooper!!

Day 5 – The Quick Summary

Day one includes a relatively short 65.6 miles and 1,503 feet of climbing from Watertown to Ogdensburg. Our pace may be relatively quick, especially if the winds are to our back. Once we start riding this route, we’ll be updating the blog roughly every two hours.