Day 6

Stats
Net Elevation gain: 203 ft.
Average Speed: 8.4 mph
Top Speed: 38.6 mph
Time spent biking: about 6 ½ hours
Total time for the day's travels: about 11 hours
Miles biked today: 54.6
Total for trip: 275 miles

For breakfast this morning, we ate local flavored yogurt (raspberry, strawberry, and orange) with granola. While packing up our gear and getting ready to ride, a fellow camper, a boy of maybe eight years came over and asked Jenny, “Is that a motorcycle or a bike?” Satisfied with the answer, he ran back to tell the rest of his family (“It's a BIKE!”), who we later gave a card with our blog on it, so they could follow along on our trip. What fun! We get all kinds of questions and comments about our bike each day. It's fun that people feel comfortable coming up to ask questions and talk with us. We love it!

Getting going in the morning is sometimes slow.

Once again, it rained today. For the 5th day out of 6 so far, it has rained for at least part of the day. Since in rained only in the morning this time, much of our gear actually dried up in the afternoon while strapped to the top of the bags on the rear rack. Anything that is really damp or wet, we like to strap on rather than pack into the bags because the wet can be spread inside the bags to other things that were dry.

We stopped for brunch at a little country store. We get to see so many different versions of “country store” while passing through the smaller towns, and we enjoy that very much. This instance offered a tasty Chicken Parmesan sub! We also ate a delicious brownie and drank some mango juice from Snapple. (Side note: It is really hard to find good juice in the small towns and it usually isn't an option. Snapple is okay, but if you want something besides that or orange juice or apple juice from the soda companies, good luck!)

Today we saw another great blue heron. It flew off before we could snap a picture, but it was standing in the shallows of a river we crossed in the morning. We also saw a couple trains today! We like seeing trains; there's just something about them that is intriguing or exciting.

Jenny takes a silly picture using the bike mirror while we stop for a short rest.

The terrain today was wonderful. We were riding in the river valleys most of the day, and it makes a huge difference, especially for this bike. We may be super slow up the big hills, but we can make decent progress in the valleys, even when we're gaining elevation.

One of the many lovely views from today.

Another wonderful thing we discovered today was that singing makes the miles (and small hills) speed by! We don't always know all the words to songs, but we try and see how many of the words we can remember. We've been singing songs by Bill Staines, Billy Joel, Kate Wolf, and any other songs we can think of, like The Star Spangled Banner. This is why we wanted the tandem, so we can talk and sing together without difficulty. Of course, when we're huffing and puffing from the more significant hills, singing is more difficult no matter what you do!

As we neared Binghamton, our road turned into a large interstate highway. We decided to give it a try, and continued riding on it the few more miles into the city, instead of trying to find an alternate road that would take us the way we wanted to go. We were a little nervous at first, but the few miles biking on the highway were actually quite pleasant. We had a big shoulder to ourselves and followed a large river on our right, so the grade of the road was mostly flat. People seemed to be aware that we were there and tried to move over to give us more room.

Binghamton was not the most attractive city. Most of what we traveled through was run down and a lot of places were for sale or vacant. We were looking for a cafe to stop and rest, and hopefully be able to go on line to look up directions. We found one after coming into the city from the north and turning west on Route 17C. They claimed to have the best sweet potato fries in the city, so we got some, along with two cups of fresh squeezed lemonade. The Internet connection was slow and therefore frustrating to use, but it did eventually prove to be useful in helping us determine our end destination...and the sweet potato fries were really good.

When we left the cafe, it was after 5 P.M. and we were both feeling cranky and tired. We made one more stop before we left Binghamton, this time for some groceries. Jenny went into the store and picked out yummy food: cucumber, blueberries, granola, soy milk, avocado, and nectarine.

We were glad to leave the city of Binghampton.

The road to get to the campground went straight up. It looked like a hill that you would expect to find in Seattle, WA, or San Fransisco, CA. We went slowly, but we made it to the top. We took a few stops on the way up to talk with people out in their yards about our bike and our trip, and also just to take breaks. When we got to the top we had climbed up 400 ft in just 1 1/8 miles! Eesh.

We biked up this!

We made it to the campground and set up our tent, took a shower, made a meal, and went to bed. We had gotten a bit of sun, which might have sped up our exhaustion.

Note: We are planning to write another “Questions Answered” post to answer a bunch of questions that have been asked in the comments. We love the questions, and all the comments. They are the first thing we look at when we stop someplace with Internet! Thank you so much for all your support!

Day 2

Stats
Net Elevation gain: approximately -100 ft.
Average Speed: 7.1 mph
Top Speed: 36.7 mph
Time spent biking: 6 hours 20 minutes
Total time for the day's travels: 12 hours
Miles biked today: 46.2
Total for trip: 99.9

We got off to a late start today, but still managed to get quite a bit of biking in. Brett cooked a delicious breakfast of eggs with onion, garlic, and cheese, plus toast and orange juice while Jenny worked on packing up. After breakfast we spent a while on the Internet posting Day 1 and didn't end up pulling out of the driveway until 9:55 A.M. as Robert and Theresa waved us off. What a pleasure to have met them.

It didn't take us long to see more wildlife. Today we saw lots of birds, and not just the run-of-the-mill varieties. We saw a cedar waxwing, an oriole chasing a crow, a great blue heron flying higher than usual, and many goldfinches.

It also didn't take us long to ride into more of the storm front, and in fact we were riding wet and in our raincoats much of the day. Once you are wet, there's not much you can do as a cyclist, and so we just keep pedaling through the rain. Sometimes it's unpleasant, once in a while it's actually fun or pleasant, but mostly it's just 'enh'. We weren't happy that it rained both of our first two days, but we know it will even out over the long weeks/months ahead.

Despite the late start, we made good time in the morning, mostly because we were headed downhill in general (to the Hudson River). We crossed the Hudson via the pedestrian walkway on the Dunn Memorial Bridge. We biked the whole thing, even the steep incline down after the sign that said not to. The drum brake on our bike came in handy there.

Riding down the hill into Albany, NY.

We are about to cross the bridge over the Hudson River.

We made it!

It was kind of fun to ride through Albany, New York's capital city. We didn't take the main roads, though. We took small ones, including one by the waterfront that ended at the train tracks and started again on the other side. A car would have no choice but to go around. A bicycle, even one as large as ours has more options! We crossed the tracks with our bike and continued on. One street we turned on to was ridiculously steep. We made it up after about 45 seconds of hard pedaling in our easiest gear, and were very proud of ourselves. We saw lots of poor folks, but almost all of them waved or smiled as we passed. We also saw some beautiful old apartment buildings that have been well cared for.

Not more than 2 minutes after we carried our bike over the rail tracks, we looked back and there was a train! It was going very slowly, but still, we were glad we crossed when we did.

Perhaps the best part of our day was stopping in a cafe on the outskirts of Albany called Perk Ups. It was a quiet shop, but it had tasty soup, yummy sandwiches, desserts, and Internet. We stayed in there a while, as the rain continued to fall (and not lightly). We caught up on our email and such, tried to get warm (as we were still wet, but not getting warm from pedaling), and just rested.

Just as we pulled away, though, we heard the tell-tale sound of a flat tire: PSSSsssssssssssssssss... This time it wasn't the front tire giving us trouble, but the back tire was totally flat. We both had much learning to do in changing it. We had (embarrassingly) never taken off the rear wheel on our Screamer before, so we took a lot longer than usual to get the wheel off and discover the problem (the tube was blown at the valve stem, though we also found a gash in the tire tread that might allow road debris to reach the inner tube), and a very long time figuring how to put the rear wheel back on after we put in a new tube. Despite the frustration of having mechanical problems two days in a row, we were able to work on fixing the problem and learn about the bike while still being really patient and nice to each other.

Fixing another flat tire. It took a long time.

Valuable skills were learned, but time was lost. The time was 6:15 and we were afraid we might not reach our destination (Thompson's Lake State Park) in time to check in, as the caretaker was leaving about 9:30 P.M. Also, one nice lady we spoke to told us we were going to “climb the mountain” on the road we had picked. It took us a LONG time to climb the mountain and it was dark by the time we thought we must surely be only a few miles from Thompson's Lake State Park. It was was also still raining (lightly, but still, our moral was fading because of it).

While still several miles away (we didn't know just how many), the park attendant drove by and said that he was leaving for the night, but that we were welcome to stay the night there anyway. We pedaled onwards through Thatcher State Park, but by now the darkness was complete and we were very tired. A few miles later, a nice man stopped and asked if we wanted a lift to the campground. He said he lived right near it, but we declined, thinking it would be only a few more minutes/miles. Of course, it took us close to another half hour to get a few more mile because of the hills. At that point, the man who had stopped before passed us again and turned into his driveway. As we were waving and passing, he got out of his car and yelled for us to stop, saying that he had something for us. He walked over and handed us a half dozen eggs! After talking with him for a few more minutes, we found out that our park was only a mile down the road, but he offered to let us camp in his backyard instead. That's what we did. Dennis was so nice. He helped us find a flat place to pitch our tent, gave us a light to use, and even ran out an extension cord from his garage so that we could charge our headlight.

We pitched the tent and set up our sleeping mats, snacked on some food and went to bed. By that time it was after 10 P.M. -- what a long day.

Day 1

Stats
Net Elevation gain: approximately 900 ft.
Average Speed: 7.3 mph
Top Speed: 40.1 mph
Time spent biking: 7 hours 20 minutes
Total time for the day's travels: 12 hours
Miles biked today: 53.8 miles
Total for trip: 53.8 miles

We did it! We put down our busy lives and biked away from Northampton, MA. We had a little entourage of friends accompanying us when we pulled away from Franklin St. at 7:56 A.M.. Guy and Selena turned back after the first significant hill out of town because they both had appointments to keep, but it was so much fun to have them along for a few miles. Spartan continued on and biked through a few towns with us (17 miles in total). When he too parted with us, it was both sad and exciting. We were finally on our own, but it was daunting to do this huge thing (bike across the country) alone.

Brett puts the finishing touches on our homemade "license plate" for the back of our bike.

We had lunch today at The Old Creamery cafe. They had yummy food to eat, and Jenny had been curious to go into the establishment for quite some time. We took a piece of quiche for later. When later came, that ham onion portobello quiche was the best thing!

What a lovely place to stop for lunch!

Soon after we left the cafe, we noticed the winds picking up and the dark clouds rolling in. We held out until it started to pour, and then we dug out our raincoats for their first use. The rain was pretty cold, and the winds in that first storm were gusty, but we made it through and it stopped after a little while. We had more rain a little later and sprinkles on and off all day, but really the weather was beautiful. We kept remarking on the stunning clouds, and there was much sun and blue sky.

Wet, but happy.

We have heard from several sources that the Berkshires are perhaps the hardest, steepest, hilliest day of the trip across the country. If that's true, good, because those are monster hills. To make it clear, we pedaled upwards for miles at a time at least three separate times today. Some of those times we would have mild inclines to break our ascent, but nothing to really give us a break. We rarely worried about being able to pedal up the hills because we have low gearing on the bike, but the hills really did take a toll on our bodies. Tonight we are sore, and we knew from before the half-way point that it was going to be a tiring day. We just hope that tomorrow won't be significantly affected by the exhaustion of tonight.

We made it out of the Pioneer Valley!

One of the best things about traveling by bicycle as opposed to automobile is observing wildlife from the road. We heard woodpeckers we would never have heard in a car. We saw numerous pretty wildflowers. We saw a fox (with cubs!) just hanging around in a field. We were so inspired by seeing the fox, by seeing something that you can only see if you are outside doing something very different than what we tend to do in our normal, everyday lives.

This mama fox was playing with her cubs on the rock when we noticed them. The cubs stayed out of sight once they noticed us watching them. What a treat to see!

Not that today was perfect. At about 4:30, Brett noticed a different sound coming from the front wheel. The front tire had blown a hole in its sidewall for an inch along the rim. Although the tube was seemingly intact, it wouldn't stay so for long if we didn't take action. Brett deflated the tire and with the help of Bill H., a super kind fellow bicyclist, we put some cardboard between the tube and the tire's sidewall. With a call to the nearest bike shop, we were on our way pick up a new tire. Tom, the proprietor of Ordinary Cycles in Pittsfield, MA was generous with his time and knowledge, and it was fascinating to hear his tales.

Sad Brett puts a temporary fix on our broken tire.

Since it was 6:15 by the time we left Ordinary Cycles, we called to let our gracious host know we would be a good bit longer. We found Robert R. (and his wife who we did not get to meet) through Warmshowers.org and he was a perfect host. He let us take showers (even setting out towels for us before we arrived), cooked us a yummy dinner, helped us look at maps for tomorrow, and let us do our own thing. Thank you!

So excited to get to New York!

Yay!

Our main goal for the day was accomplished: we made it out of Massachusetts and into New York! We stayed Night 1 in New Lebanon, NY. We hope to spend Night 2 in Thompson Lake State Park.

Thanks to all who helped today turn out so well!