 I'm Ryan and I'm Allie. After falling in love, we decided to ride bikes across America. Collecting love advice along the way. This is Love Cycles. No flatties, no laddies, no cruddies. Oh this is a great spot you have here. Oh here comes the attack dog. Good morning bud. Hi Steve. Go wake up Allie. Steve is happy. So what are we making here Rick? A Canadian double smoked cam and some Canadian Aunt Jemima pancakes. It looks like a bottle of alcohol. Yep it does. Looks very fancy and delicious. Oh you have more pancakes you shouldn't have. Oh yes, so excited. Steve look at the camera. Steve look at the camera. We don't want to say goodbye you guys. But you have 75 miles to do today. Yes we do. We have to get going. Thank you so much for your generosity. Oh no problem. It was a pleasure to have you. Yeah very interesting. In one moment we were kind of totally screwed. We got to the town. There were no restaurants. We bought a bunch of junk food at the gas station and then 10 minutes later we were in your backyard. There you go. It felt like home. Allie and Canada. Where's the flag right here right? No crashes. No whammies. No flatties. We are riding a high. That was so incredible. Thank you Rick and Joyce. Viva Canada. I love meeting people in that way. Life just kind of puts you right where you need to be right at the right time and that's exactly what happened last night. And all these people that we're meeting are they're so incredible and just reminds you that most humans are like that. Most humans are pretty incredible and yeah we've all got our issues and most of us are very different and there are so many people out there who on the outside maybe you don't know that you'd have a deep connection with but the randomness of these encounters really reminds me of how how much beauty there is and all the individual humans around us. We're riding extra fast today because we're going to Niagara Falls. We stopped here at a little farm off the side of the road and they have loads of fresh fruit and what'd we buy? We bought some peaches and plums. Peaches and plums. Not ice cream. This is nuts. I was expecting big waterfalls but not all this. Dinosaurs are cool though. You don't see that every day do you? That is pretty darn cool. We made it all the way to Niagara Falls and this is quite the treat for the end of today. This is something I've always wanted to see. A beautiful waterfall and it's also really cool to see all these people here just appreciating the power and beauty of nature. It's kind of crazy the way that we humans gravitate towards these. It's been transported. We are definitely not in the middle of nowhere corn fields today. It's quite the contrast but we're enjoying it. There's lots of ice cream around and that's fun. Oh boy we get to be tourists now which is kind of fun. Getting on the hornblower. All of our friends in Canada said the Canada side is the best so that's why we did not cross the border. Gonna go see Niagara Falls. I imagine being a kid on this boat is a little scary because if you lose your mom or dad it's hard to find it because everybody's wearing the same thing. American side of Niagara Falls. USA. USA. USA. It feels really cool. That's the power. The awesome natural power. Waterfalls make everybody happy. Everybody. You can't go to a waterfall and be bummed out. Dang is right. Let's cross the border. Let's go into America. Let's get on the Siri Canal trail and get out into the nature. Camping. I know. Yeah. We were just saying that being in cities is hard for us. We're so used to sleeping under the stars and being outside of nature that we're becoming hermits. We don't want to be in cities. We're riding from Oregon all the way to New York City. Oh my god. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. That is pretty. This is probably the most beautiful border crossing in the world. The benefits of riding a bike. Sliding right between all of the cars. There it is. New York. Oh the jump. I forgot the jump. I'm going to put the camera back down. Canal trail. We're going to be following it for like 350 miles which is awesome. It is really beautiful down here and it is I think a really varied trail. It's going to be exciting going through lots of historic towns and upstate New York and beautiful countryside so I just see what it holds. I grew up in New York and moved out when I was 16. I didn't quite get to explore New York that much on my own so I'm really excited to have some time with it moving through at this slow pace and seeing where I grew up. It already feels like home. It's warm and it's humid and it's beautiful and lush and green. Every town there's usually some sort of a sign with a bit of history and it's very interesting to stop. This one says the Erie Canal traverses miles of lush farmland in upstate New York, aiding the growth of what was to become New York's largest industry agriculture. The Erie Canal made it possible for Orleans County farmers to ship their produce to distant markets making New York an important exporter of agricultural goods. Nolesville that's where we're at was known as having the best coopers along the Erie Canal. Coopers are big barrels made of oak and those barrels packed with apples were shipped as far as Africa. Isn't that wild to think about? 1905, New York apples going all the way to Africa. Hey, this looks like a good spot for the tent. We don't quite know the rules on camping here. It says the trail closes at dusk which probably means they don't want people camping around here but we're gonna do it anyway. This right here is way better than any of the hotels we've had on this entire trip. It feels so good and we just jumped in the canal. I didn't film it because we went naked. It felt so good. It is one of those perfect summer evenings. Morning. I made you breakfast. It's Nutella and peanut butter on really old tortillas. This is the last of our Nutella, the big jar we bought in Nebraska. Can you believe the last of that long? Here we go. Erie Canal day two, Allie. Yes, Ryan. No. No crashes, no whammies. It's gonna be a beautiful day out here today. The sun is high in the sky. The flowers are blooming. The trail is nice and flat. It's so beautiful out here. Peacefulness. There's not a whole lot of people out here. You don't have the noise of traffic and cars and wow what a beautiful spot. Good morning geese. Hello. Today is going to be fun because an old friend from Boulder is going to join us for a little bit of riding. He's a family friend. His name is John and he's going to meet us up here in a town called Pittsburgh, not Pittsburgh and he's going to ride with us for a little bit. It's always good to see a familiar face from home. You know what time it is. I feel like this is a soothing way to start this beautiful day. We're here in this beautiful location on the Erie Canal and yeah, just want to, you know, look good. All right, here's a new sign, the nation's bread basket. The Erie Canal dramatically lowered the price of shipping goods from the western territories to the Atlantic coast. New York became the state of ports leading to the early industrialization of villages like Spencer Port. Skilled craftsmen, businessmen and professionals settled in these bustling communities helping to develop the prosperity of the Erie Canal corridor. As pioneers passed through the gateway to the west, the wealth of the empire state soon spread throughout the nation. Dun dun dun. Oh, that's so beautiful. The sunflowers have some love advice. What's that? Always turn together towards the sun. We enjoyed the corn fields, but the sunflower fields are way better. We are currently going through Rochester, New York. You wouldn't know it because the canal trail avoids all of the busy streets, which I love. And wow, look at that view. Good to see you, my man. What a good surprise. Ah, so we found John. I can't believe it. Hey, hey, what's up, John? So this is a great family connection. His wife was my elementary school art teacher, and one of his sons was my little brother's best friend. And they live in Boulder. They have a cabin out here? Yes, have a cabin out here. Yes, and we watched Ryan run around in a purple cape through high school. Yes. You know, I got some spirit. You know what I'm saying? Also, you viewers might know of John's work because a lot of my videos are filmed in my house, and you've probably seen some of his paintings. They're awesome. And look, boobies. So change of plans. We were going to ride bikes with John pretty much all day, but then we went to lunch and he's like, you know what? We could put your bikes in the van and we could drive down to our cottage on the lake and you could swim in the lake. And we're like, okay, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. So that's what we're gonna do. So this is when I was a young man. This is what I called Miss Shively. She was my art teacher. She taught me how to do awesome pinch pots with clay. Yeah. I'm glad you remember something. Yeah, something important. And she, we're all gonna get in this van and go down to the lake. Yay! What's up, John? Yeah! How'd you get started? How'd this love story start? When I saw John, I knew I was gonna marry him. He was in one of my art classes at CSU and it was like, I think I'm gonna marry that guy. He didn't know it. I didn't even know him. But I thought, well... I just wanted her to have my babies. Because she's tall? Well, I just knew that she would be a great mother. And how old were you when you met? How long has this been going on? I was 24 and you were 22. 22 and then we got married at 23 and 25. And now it's been 42 years later. For love though, I was thinking about that after you'd brought that up. And I really think there needs to be a spark. I really think a lot of times, if you don't have a spark and it gets boring, that it, you know, it's fine. But it's really a lot more fun when there's, you're not quite sure what's gonna happen. You're my sparks. You reevaluate, continually reevaluate as you go through life, you know, the relationship. And find really positive things. Well, you search constantly. And you search and find really positive things. That's right. And so the, there's the fact of before children, because we were four and a half years before we had children. So there is a lot going on then. And then after children, you're just scrambling and raising children and making ends meet. And then after that, towards the end of our raising our children, we realized that we didn't want to be alone, right? That we didn't want to be home alone. And all of a sudden, our youngest son leaves and we don't know each other without children. And so we decided a year before that our youngest son left that we would go ahead and start doing things together. So start scuba diving, start doing things. So he figured out things that would take us actually good places. And scuba diving was one of the things that we got certified and then started diving and just taking us on more adventures. Right. Yep. Yep. So we just kind of have to keep figuring out how we can keep connecting. And then I do believe you have to have good family values that common family family values of some sort that that keep pulling you back to the basic, you know, the basic, which is basically loving. You're both artists. Talk about both being, you know, creative people and did that play a role in your love to give a create together? You know, we did create together and found out very early on that we should never ever do it again. That doesn't work. We also don't play, we're never partners playing card games or yeah, no. Yeah, exactly. We don't do it again. Or tennis. No. No, we don't. No. We're always on lots of teams. We're not partners. Yeah. Yeah. But for art, you know, I think we both can appreciate what the other person is doing. And so that part is good. And then also we can appreciate as a nice, it's, it's, it's part of who we are. When you argue, argue about present topics, don't bring up things in the past. He said, leave the past alone and leave the past dead. And talk about and argue about the thing that you're angry about right now, or you just don't agree upon. You know, often when we talk about, oh, in a relationship, you should never want to change anyone. Yeah. Right. But there's almost a fine line there, right? Like, how do you figure out how to do things in ways that work with each other without asking the other person to change? All right. That's a, that's a good question. You know, I think one thing is you, you, you know how to move around each other, just walking around each other, you know, when you get up in the morning, it's like courtesy, politeness, you know, those kind of things that you have to be thinking of the other person and you can't just go bulldozing into the coffee pot and say, mine, get, get out of my way. You know, I mean, if they're standing there, if they're getting a fork out of a drawer, if they're getting all these kind of things, you, you change yourself by losing a tad bit of independence that way. But you do that out of respect and out of courtesy. I think we started off our relationship when we were so young that we both kind of were still figuring out who we were too and who we wanted to be. So I think we kind of worked together because John certainly brought out, because I was kind of more of a rule follower and he brought out the, just let's try this. And as much as I'd like, I don't think I want to, but I would try it and it really wasn't that bad. And then I think I kind of thrown him down maybe a little bit to follow some rules. She was very routine. I was not. Yeah, yeah. So I think as you get, or as you get 42 years and you get older, you start to look alike. Thank you guys. That was great. And thanks for housing us. Oh, and thank you for stopping by.