T1 Day 55 (Keelin)

 Day 55: 7/31/2023


We woke up in the morning to a lovely greeting from Lily the dog… sooooo excited that the guests from last night were still here !!! We got ready and had a fabulous breakfast prepared by Kayla’s friend’s partner David … basically our personal chef this morning!!! We got on our way shortly after and stopped in Pittsford at the flagship Wegman’s grocery store. For anyone that doesn’t know Wegman’s you need to make a trip to upstate new york!!! It made me so nostalgic for the times my soccer team at St. Lawrence used to go to Wegman’s after games in the Rochester area. We got some snacks and stood in awe inside for a moment and then headed on our way to Syracuse via the Empire State trail that follows the Erie Canal. At about 11 am, we were met with a short burst of very hard rain. We took shelter for a few minutes and then continued on… unfortunately the trail on this part of the route was gravel and dirt winding through the trees…. This means that we were very quickly COVERED in mud. Mud caked on everywhere made for some very unhappy campers and some slippery conditions that definitely slowed us down. At some point in the morning Liz got another flat tire! Darn it !! We forgot to buy her new tubes at the last bike shop so she put in a tube she had patched up and we crossed our fingers- Another thing that slowed us down. After lunch we knew we had to step it up a bit because we wanted to get in at a decent hour. The gravel trail was pretty discontinuous this afternoon meaning that the signage brought us out to the road for a while. All of a sudden I hear Kayla yell “GLASS!!!!!!” (presumably from a car accident) and then I hear my a loud pop and feel sealant projectile spraying out from my rear tire. My first flat of the trip… happening in a very dramatic way. Liz was behind me and we yelled out to Kayla in front of us to stop. We tried to spin the tire and get the sealant to plug the hole but quickly realized this was far too big of a puncture. Kayla whipped out her plug thingies (they look like little rubber worms… so i’ll call them worms) We followed the directions but the worm just wouldn’t stick !!! Finally we got it positioned where we thought it would stay and we started biking onwards (another thing slowing us down). About 5 miles up the road i hear the plug come loose and sealant is again spraying everywhere from my tire. UGH!!!!!!! We try the worm plug one more time but realize that the hole is just too big. More like a gash actually. We put a tube in my tire (I was tubeless before) and we keep biking onward. And when I say “we put a tube in and keep biking”…. remember that taking the wheel off, taking the tire off, putting the tube in, pumping it up, putting the wheel back on…. takes about half an hour or more! Another thing that slowed us down. We eventually started laughing at the fact that the day before our rest days just really seem to test our limits !!! We had put our heads down and were pedaling hard to get to our destination as quickly as possible when we see this man standing in one of the parking lots off the trail. I was leading and thought “hmm maybe he’s gunna ask us where we’re headed” when I hear Kayla go “Grandpa!!!! What are you doing here!!!” Kayla was planning on staying with her grandpa for the night but had no idea he was going to surprise us on the trail before we arrived!!! It was so sweet to be greeted by family with cookies and water and gave us the extra push we needed to get into the city. When we finally turned off the Erie Canal trail to enter Syracuse to get to my best friend from college’s parent’s house (where Liz and I were going to spend the night), we realized that the trail dumped us at the bottom of a MASSIVE hill… I hear Kayla turn the corner behind me and just go “YOUVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME”. You can’t help but laugh in those moments because it’s just our silly luck. Finally we arrived at the Dorfman’s house where they were inside chatting it up with Kayla’s grandpa. Lots of food and snacks and such a nice reunion for me with a people that had become a second family for me while in college. Kayla headed home with her grandpa and Liz and I stayed up and listened to one of my friend’s sisters play the guitar and sing with her friends. It was a sweet wholesome end to a few hard days of biking. Excited to sleep in tomorrow :)!!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

T1 Day 21 (Kayla)

 6/27/23 C2C - day 21 - 1000 miles!! At 9:30am this morning we officially crossed our 1,000th mile!! It was a relatively unremarkable point somewhere in Montana, but it was a very meaningful point to us. As 3 women who had never biked more than 70 miles in a day, and had just purchased our bikes last year, we all felt a sense of disbelief and pride at the fact that we were out here doing this and had made it this far. It has been such a wild ride to bike 1,000 miles, both mentally and physically, I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 2,000!  Back to today - We woke up this morning after a poor night of sleep due to the sound of highway traffic and the light from a street lamp right above our tents. I resorted to sleeping with my buff over my eyes while Liz tried rolling her hat down over her eyes. Then we started our day in my favorite fashion, diner food! The diner was perfectly located next to the RV park, so it was only logical that we stop in. Of course we had to ge...
Read more

T1 Day 19 (Keelin)

 6/25/2023 Okay everybody. Sit down and buckle up because we have a wild tale to tell you. Our day started off very leisurely as our original plan was just 50 miles and about 1,500 feet of elevation gain- simple, right??? Well that’s what we thought too… in fact we thought that it was just tooooo simple. After eating breakfast in the RV park laundry room that we had commandeered for charging our devices and meals, we were in no rush to start our day. We had a nice SPEEDY 25 mile ride to Shelby where we all thought… hey. if that’s how it’s gunna be (all flat, little bit of tailwind), we can definitely make it to Great Falls!! Great falls was our planned destination for tomorrow night- 112 miles away from Cut Bank where we started this morning. This, I believe, is where the Great Falls seed was planted in our determined minds. We carried on to Conrad, our original planned destination- was pretty uneventful to get there… some dirt road and some mild climbs but nothing really happened....
Read more

T2 Day 52 (Maura)

 Schenectady, NY to Lee, MA In Schenectady, we woke up at Eric’s (our amazing warm shower host) beautiful old home. It was basically a mansion from the 1700s that has been since converted into apartment units. From the front it looks like a tall brick town house, but from the back windows it overlooks the original yard, ivy-covered shed, large stone walls, patio garden, and greenhouse. The 6th mayor of New York apparently lived here! You can feel the rich history not only in this house but in the town as a whole. We had homemade yogurt parfaits by the kitchen balcony before we set off to a nearby coffee shop that Eric recommended called Arthur’s market. It was so cute! We got some great coffee and sandwiches to go. I also bought a tote bag that has prints of different shapes of pasta on it so that’s gonna be a wardrobe staple for sure when I get back. Eventually we hit the road for real and headed on towards Lee, Mass. Unfortunately we had been low key dreading this day because it ...
Read more