Rochester- Day 2

It’s easy to forget that Covid is still circulating and continues to be a potentially deadly and disabling disease. I caught it for the first time at the end of March of this year. I would preferred not to catch it again . One of the things that I do help me evaluate risk is to monitor CO2 levels indoors. Outside air has about 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. Good indoor ventilation can lower the risk of infection because it reduces and degrades aerosols in the air.

Additionally, CO2 above 1000ppm can harm well-being, causing headaches, fatigue, and lack of attention, so good ventilation is desirable even in the absence of disease.

When we entered the hotel room, where presumably no one had been breathing out for some period of time , the level was above 1500. By the morning it was over 3000.

I went to bed with a headache, but it was even worse when I woke up. And, interestingly, my Fitbit which measures my breathing rate, indicated it was almost 50% higher than my personal average.

We ate a breakfast of oatmeal, fruit, and tea in the room, and then prepared to ride our bikes to Sacred Heart Cathedral. On our way out, we stopped at the front desk and explained the situation with the poor ventilation. An easy way to improve ventilation is to open a window, but the window in the room was locked. We asked if we could check the air quality in a different room, and potentially move there, or for the window to be unlocked so we could get fresh air into the room that we were occupying. They agreed to look into it. When we returned, the window was open and the air quality had improved dramatically. We kept the window open the rest of the time we stayed there.

I had planned a route along the Genesee Riverway Trail, and then some local streets. Our bikes were still in the van in the parking garage. We ran into a problem right away coming out off the parking garage ramp. The route indicated we should go left, but there was a centre median and we could only go right. Given that we were on bikes, and not in a car, we should have just lifted our bikes over the median and proceeded to the left, but I turned right, and proceeded to try to make corrections, and kept running into one-way streets in the opposite direction to which we wanted to go. Fortunately, I was able to see the route, and where we were in relation to it, on my phone, because I was using Ride with GPS. We crossed over the river, to the side where the cathedral is, so we proceeded to ride on the road, the rest of the way north, and planned to return on the trail.

Some of the roads had painted bike lanes, but mostly we didn’t have a cycling infrastructure. However, the roads were lightly travelled by motor vehicles, especially by the standards of what are used to in Brampton on a Friday morning. The heat and humidity were already oppressive.

The route quickly transitioned to larger roads and lower density building as we travelled north.

We saw some interesting architecture along the way.

Rochester reminds me of Buffalo, which I visited with Alun in 2015, and with Michael in 2019. Frederick Law Olmsted was involved in urban park landscape architecture in both cities, as well as designing Central Park in New York City, and Mont-Royal in Montreal, among many other projects.

Additionally, Rochester and Buffalo are both cities that peaked at a much higher population level than they currently have, so they feel somewhat empty. Rochester reached 332,000 people in 1950, but has declined to only 210,000 today. Buffalo peaked at 580,000 in 1950 and currently has only 277,000.

Sacred Heart was built between 1925 and 1927. The building was extensively renovated in the early 2000s.

The streets around the cathedral, were lovely to ride on, with medium to large old homes, and trees meeting over the street. It was only a short ride to the Genesee Riverway Trail.

At one point, the signage on the trail, directed bikes on to a local residential road, but we stayed on the trail, which became a rough pathway, but we managed. Shortly after that, I recognized a park that Patti and I had visited when we were here. We crossed the road and descended a steep hill, and were treated to this view of the Genesee Lower Falls.

We then continued down the hill to find our way blocked from this river crossing. Unfortunately, the map layer that I planned the route on was unaware of the closure.

It was a hot sweaty ride back up to the road where there was a detour sign which we had missed on our way down. We were treated to another view of the falls from the bridge over the river.

The detour caused us to pass the Kodak Hawkeye plant, which was a 785,000 square-foot plant sitting on over 12 acres which has been vacant since 2011. The local paper published an article in 2018, indicating that the plant was to be sold and re-developed, but it wasn’t obvious while riding past it that anything has happened yet.

We passed a beautiful mural by KaeLyn Rich.

Then we passed the massive Genesee Brewery complex which included a brewpub, which we took note of as a possible location for dinner.

The heat had only gotten worse as the morning progressed causing me to switch my bike helmet for a sun hat.

We went to Bite Rochester, a café in the old Xerox complex, for lunch.

There were no bike racks outside, but they allowed us to bring our bikes in.

While waiting for the food to be prepared, I wandered around the bridges that connected the café to the office building.

I’ve seen a lot of these bikes in and around the building which I assume are available to residents of the building.

After a few minutes of exploring, I tried to retrace my footsteps, but discovered that one of the sets of doors I had gone through was locked. I had to go back into the main building, down the elevators, and out through the lobby we were in last night, and walk back to the restaurant outside.

Parcel 5 is a park and event space in the area which used to have a local department store on it.

Riding often helps dissipate my headaches, but with the hot, humid air it persisted. So we decided to return to the hotel for a swim. The pool was on the fourth floor with a view of the city. We swam, and then lounged. It almost felt like an afternoon at a resort down south.

On our way to dinner we returned to the Rochester Public library because I wanted to see what it was like inside. Unfortunately, since we had been there yesterday evening, a notice appeared on the door indicating they were closing early. The library isn’t open on weekends so we missed our opportunity.

We walked past Andrews Terrace, which we could see from our hotel, a large, interesting, looking apartment, building with river views, for the elderly, and disabled, which is a rent geared to income building. It was built in 1975 and was intended to draw middle income residents back downtown.

This mural was created in 2012 by the German street artist duo Herakut, as part of their Giant Storybook Project. The characters in the mural can be seen on murals in cities around the world in different scenes.

Our walk to dinner took us across a portion of the inner loop that is slated to be removed.

Dinner was on the balcony at the Genesee Brewpub. It was a pleasant location overlooking the Genesee River High Falls, and the Pont de Rennes bridge, which Patti and I rode our bikes across, but is currently closed for renovations.