For the immersive experience: You’ll need a friend for this one. Sit on your spinning bike (in the sun, or a sauna if it’s cloudy) and pedal. Pedal until you can’t stand it any more until you can’t tell if the pain in your body or the pain in your mind is worse. Pedal until all you can think about is stopping. Resting. Even if you have to pass out or fall off or suffer a minor injury. Then instruct your friend to force you to keep going. Keep going until there is nothing left in your mind. Keep going until you are the bike, and the bike is pedaling you and you are pedaling it and pedaling is all there is in the world.This is what always happens on my third day of a trip. Usually I make it through, and sometimes I don’t. If I’m gonna throw in the towel, I almost always decide on the third day. When I stop there’s always a “good” reason.
Going across Florida - the bridges in Mississippi and Louisiana were too dangerous, there were too many alligators, too many drunk drivers, too many swamps. Cleveland to Pittsburgh - on the third day I tore both of my Achilles’ tendons. Okay, this one might be valid. It hurt a lot, and took months to recover, but I’m convinced I could have finished. Instead I was close enough to home to call for a rescue. I’m glad I can say that I’ve pushed through the wall more times than not, and overwhelmingly the reason is because of other people. Whether they are behind, beside, or ahead of me. warmshowers.org got me through it going to Seattle. People were expecting me in just a couple days, and those people sent me along with encouragement toward the next people. Or random people on the roadside would feed me lunch or give me money or advice and push me along a little bit farther Other people weren’t so outwardly supportive. One good friend bet me that I wouldn’t last 20 days. By the time 20 days hit and I proved her wrong I had no desire to go back. (Though I did later daydream that I’d break my arm and be forced to stop) Know that it’s going to suck at some point. And when you hit the wall, find the people who will push you through to the other side where there is no pain, only bike. Note: This is the fifth day of the Erie Canal trip. The day I wanted to quit was, predictably, the third day. Not during the construction zone, but just after when we got back on a particularly crappy stretch of trail. I even looked up train tickets home.
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For the immersive experience: Lay in a hammock most of the day drinking a milkshake. Then jump up, put on a sweatshirt and bike uphill for 2 hours.Today was our second shortest day that we have planned. It’s also the coolest. We started from a good night’s sleep in a hotel and had a quick ride into Syracuse. We did have to bike through Solvay, and that kind of sucked, but for the most part it was alright.
Especially since we we had Strong Hearts milkshakes to look forward to. The “chicken” salad sandwich and tofurkey club sandwiches were both fantastic. But really you go to Strong Hearts for the milkshakes. Out of the dozens, we picked just two, the Cesar Chavez (coffee and chocolate) and the Jill Phipps (banana and peanut butter). Delicious! Sarah Button and Michael joined us for lunch and caught me up on the big Syracuse news (bike lane on Erie Blvd???!!!). Then an after a lightning quick spin around ESF we rode off to Green Lakes. The campsite is a mile or so uphill (why do they always do that?) and we are surrounded by a sea of RV’s. But at least we’ve got enough trees to hang some hammocks. For the immersive experience: increase the resistance of your spinner, set it near some (literally) smoking hot asphalt.There is nothing in the world of cycling slower and more frustrating than biking on a bike trail. It’s impossible to know if you’re actually going anywhere. “Have we seen that bridge already? Is this the same town we were just in? Is there any end to this? Pretty much. Basically. And no. So I was very excited to see that most of our day was going to be on roads. And they were glorious. We cruised nearly effortlessly through 20 miles of rolling, country roads. Yeah, it was hot and we were sweaty, but it was such a relief! We biked past montezuma wildlife refuge, through cute small towns, and even “The Paradise of Mosquitoes” on good road, choppy road, and new road. And very new road. It still had that new road smell. It it was so new, in fact, that it was still being made as we road on it. We were very likely the first bikes to ever grace that asphalt. The flagger let us in at the end of a line and radioed ahead “There’s three of them” and off we went, sticking to the tar the whole way. You see, a new road is like riding on glass, but a new road is something different entirely. It’s sticky, messy, hot, and painful. One bit of luck is the paver was at the bottom of a hill so the going was a little easier through the plume of tar smoke. Before heading up the next hill past the steam rollers and asphalt trucks. Before to long, we popped out the other side listening to the slap slap slap slap slap of tar stuck to our tires and sidled in to the port Byron diner for some pie and rice pudding. And water It was still better than a trail. For the immersive experience: place your spinning bike in the kitchen, bake 6 pies one-at-a-timeWhat a great night we had! Kristy, Travis, and Linden have an amazing thing in their house. Central air. So we spent a gloriously pleasant night, playing games, mowing the driveway, hanging out, waiting for a corpse flower to bloom. You know, the things you do. And we went to bed cool as cucumbers for a nice deep sleep before starting our ride. I don’t know about my travel companions, but I completely forgot that heat is a thing.
Until I stepped outside Still, it didn’t seem that bad at 8AM, but by the time we got to the trail, my thermometer was registering 90 degrees. But what can you do? We pushed on for 60 miles and the only shade has been bridges over the canal and the temperature doesn’t really change under them. I should stop whining. The shade under a bridge is way better than fixing my two flats of the day in the full sun. (Pro tip: never ask a touring cyclist how many flats they’ve had) we really did have a lovely day. We saw a modern lock operating next to a restored original style lock with boats going through each. We’ve met some nice people, shared some beers, learned some history, got exercise, had fun, and biked our butts off (not literally, don’t worry) And we sweated during all of it. New tour, New websitethe bags are all packed and we’re ready to head out. tomorrow Mo, my dad, and myself are heading up to Buffalo to start out along the Erie Canal towpath. Now that the essentials like hammocks and unicorn socks and ramen noodles that won’t get eaten are packed up, it’s time to dust off the twotiredbike twitter and blog.
I checked out out the old Wordpress site twotiredbike.wordpress.com where my old stories sit around. It’s illegible on a phone, and Wordpress just generally sucks, so here we are. At least I’m not linking to my live journal I suppose. So so follow along as we bike into the distant past, before even MySpace on the historic Erie Canal. |