Day 5: Utica NY, to Port Byron NY

Today I rode 91.4 miles from Utica NY, to Port Byron NY with 1483 feet of climbing. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

It's the end of day five. Today I rode 91.4 miles from the west side of Utica, New York to Port Byron, New York. Today I climbed 1,483 feet. Nice. So little. Today's riding was pretty much completely on the do I even know the name? New York Trail, which rides west from Albany along the Erie Canal, pretty much with no elevation change per the canal's geography, all the way to Buffalo. I was just singing the old Erie Canal songs from my childhood the whole day. There was not much shade. That was a big lament of the morning. The canal was on my left side towards the sun in the south. And so the sun arced over the trees that were removed by 70 or 80 feet on the other side of the canal and onto the path. So I was roasting very early on this morning, which was a big bummer. Um I listened to music for the first time today, which is not something I do very often if the roads are busy or the riding involves a lot of concentration or certainly listening. But today on the canal paths, it was just me buzzing by people on their town bikes and walkers. And I was boomboxing and singing along to my songs, which got some amused looks from several people that I passed. But I think most people got a kick out of it. Towards the middle of the day, I entered Syracuse, New York, which was a real maze, trying to find the right path. And I met Jans right before, who's a German uh cyclist visiting, riding from up in Nova Scotia down to Key West, Florida. And um, we had fun figuring it out together. Uh it was fun to chat with him, and yeah, definitely the slowest part of the day, but also most enjoyable. We stopped at one point at a bike shop together, and neither of us purchased anything because we were so overwhelmed just stepping in there. The heat in the middle of the day when we stopped was uh was a lot, but they had cold water, and that was great. Um the afternoon, it it rained, and that really sucked. Uh I got a flat again, but just a really minuscule flat in my rear tire, and it was leaking air super slowly. So every five miles I'd have to pull over for the last 20 miles and pump it back up. And um, doing that in the rain and getting rained on and all the chafing that was increasing uh was just really miserable for the last hour and a half, two hours. But today I'm staying with a warm showers host, um, Mike and Mary, who have been very kind. I got to take a shower, which was definitely very important for my body. Do some laundry, which is great. And um camped in their backyard under a big oak tree, which is really beautiful. Um there's another uh cyclist here named Nick. He showed up a lot later than me. Um and yeah, that's kind of been the day. I'm not sure I can remember anything else. In total, over the first five days, I think I've gone 525 miles, something like that, which is uh maybe a little over one-tenth of the 4,300 miles of the registered adventure cycling northern tier route, which is kind of my loose construct for where I'll be riding, but I won't be exact. Um anyway, it's just kind of crazy to think about the trip being potentially one tenth of the way done. And uh yeah, that helps put into perspective some of the suffering that has been going on. That was my day. Bye.