An easy 23 mile (39 km) day. I rode from Weedsport to Syracuse in good weather. My GPS was actually working and allowed me to find the car rental place without difficulty. The original rental (on line) showed some sort of small SUV, I ended up with an Altima sedan, it was supposedly an upgrade, but putting a bicycle in it looked daunting.
Fortunately, the rear seats folded down. We couldn’t figure out how to bring down the driver’s side rear-seat and the rep had to run off. I finally looked in the manual and found there is a strap hanging down when one opens the trunk, pulling on it released the seat.
The opening wasn’t quite wide enough to load the bike into the car. Once I removed the bicycle’s seat, I was able to get it in…barely. After about an hour, I was good to go.
I’ll skip the next few days, except for a few important things. I went to my daughter’s in Newburyport, MA. As planned, Jane (my spouse) was to arrive there and I did meet her as planned. On Saturday night, we attended a friend’s wedding. While dancing, Jane managed to injure her knee with a meniscus tear. While dancing she claimed she heard something “pop.” Additionally, she was wearing awful shoes for walking and dancing. All the stressed added up.
She walked out to the car without much pain, but by the time we returned to our daughter’s place, she had difficulty getting out of the car and winced at every little move. I felt she should get it looked at, but she was concerned about catching her plane back to Florida the next morning. We went to bed and at around 1 am, we got up and headed to the Anna Jaques hospital emergency room. As luck would have it, our son-in-law had a walker and it allowed Jane to make it to the car. Without it, I think it would have been an ambulance ride, what with stairways and all. At this point she was in extreme pain.
The staff at the hospital were excellent and, following an X-ray, determined it was the meniscus tear. They gave her crutches and lessons and a leg support and sent us home. She did manage to make her flight to Florida, although Homeland gave her the going over because she had to be a terrorist wearing a leg brace. Go figure. She brought along the hospital paperwork, just in case, but I guess that wasn’t good enough.
After sending Jane off I faced a decision. I had tried to convince her that I should postpone the ride again and go back to Florida to help her. She INSISTED that I continue. I agreed but felt that I should make haste to finish. With that in mind, I have jettisoned my tent, sleeping mat and, this is painful: my ham radio station. This lightened the load by twenty-two pounds (10 kg). My thinking is I will be able to travel quicker in the mountains ahead and I won’t really have time to stop for leisurely radio operation. I know this will be disappointing for my ham radio friends, but such is life. I will promise, when I get to Newburyport, MA to fire up the radio (letting everyone know in advance) and contact those of you that have missed me thus-far. After that I will ride the bike down to the Atlantic Ocean and do the traditional “wheel dip.” Oddly, it won’t be with the same bike I started with, I totaled it in Minnesota.
I returned to Syracuse, NY on Monday. After dropping of the rental car, I again headed east. The GPS guided me through all the Syracuse back streets and in no time, I was back on the Eire Canal towpath. The day was sunny and very windy, but the towpath has so many trees around it that the first forty miles (65 km) were relatively easy. I decided I would go to a Best Western motel that I had stayed in the night before, in Utica, NY. It was 65 miles (103 km) and would be a good destination. Little did I know the last 25 miles (40 km) would, you guessed it, have severe headwinds. I had started around noon and figured I would make it well before nightfall, but my speed cut to half, the wind was getting worse and worse.
At one point, there was a big gust and I heard a sharp crack and the top of a tree snapped off and landed right in front of me! I stopped with about 20 feet to spare (6 m).
The sun kept getting lower and lower and I was racing to beat the darkness. The GPS indicated I was getting close. It was getting colder and darker. I finally came upon Harbor Lock, and knew that I had less than a mile to go. I couldn’t find my way across the lock. There was a sign that told me to walk my bike across the lock, but I could see where. I looked downstream and saw the other lock wall, so I rode down there and it was chained off. I pushed the bike up to the original spot and spied a walkway across the lock that wasn’t visible from the approach. I pushed the bike across, put on a heavier jacket and turned on all my lights. It was now totally dark.
Finally, with much relief, I arrived at my destination. I got a room and went in and turned on the heat. I’m not one for much heat, but in this case it felt fabulous.
After calling Jane to check up on her, I was off to bed. All night long I could hear the wind howling and rain pounding on the roof, I was thrilled to be indoors.
The next morning the rain was still pounding, the wind was still blowing and I decided that it would be best to just hunker down for the day. I slept most of the day. As I write this, it is the second evening and I feel like I caught up on some much-needed rest. I’ve had the sniffles all day, I probably caught something at the wedding. Hopefully, tomorrow my head will clear and the weather will clear. Predictions are for thunderstorms. Hopefully, I can ride between them and take shelter when needed. At least they may change the wind direction. Once, just once, a tailwind would be very welcome. We’ll see.
