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What a difference it makes to have a bicycling partner. Both Caitlin and I individually set goals for ourselves to bike this week, but she didn’t have a specific destination, and I lacked the willpower to actually get my butt out of my chair when it looked like rain. But Caitlin dragged me out. Which was particularly noble of her, because as expected, I was demoralizingly far ahead of her. Contrary to what Lance Armstrong would say, it was all about the bike. The Kona Jake the Snake is a very very nice bike. And though it doesn’t fit me perfectly, it’s a far better fit than Caitlin’s totally upright hybrid is for her. She’s going to have so much fun when she buys a road bike.

And it didn’t even rain. Until we got home and went to the Ithaca Parade. A nice hippy parade, best experienced not at the final corner where we stood, but somewhere closer to the beginning, where the crowds were more appreciative. As some of you may know, I have a distinct case of demophobia, or a fear of crowds. Also, I hate
umbrellas. So parades in the rain aren’t really my thing. I stood back and watched the people watching the parade instead. At least the umbrellas were varied. Rainbows, ladybugs, cherries, Cornell, Citizens Bank, WPI, and one absolutely horrid one with kittens. The parade wrapped up with the He-man Chainsaw Marching Band. Loud and smelly, but the “synchronized” steps were excellent.

I woke up at 5:30am and didn’t roll over and go back to sleep. Strange. I went for a walk around the campgrounds hoping to find the trail down to the famous gorge. It wasn’t obvious. I started to realize that it was no colder this morning at 5:30 than it had been any other morning at 5:30. Meaning, it was going to be another hot day. Perhaps I didn’t really care too much about seeing this beautiful gorge. There are plenty of nice gorges in Ithaca for me to see. Perhaps I will try to bike over the hill before 10am.

I coasted down the hill to Watkins Glen. Ah. It was 79 degrees at 6:30am. My plan was looking better and better. Breakfast at a cute little cafe in Burdett was a failure, as it was only open Tuesday through Saturday. Eit. That just meant I’d get to Gimme! Coffee earlier. Besides, I had plenty of hills to go up before I got to coast into Ithaca. Much easier on an empty stomach. The fields on the tops of the hills that separate Seneca Lake from Lake Cayuga were beautiful, green and rolling. I only had to struggle up one or two monster hills.

One of the best views of Cornell must be from Rte 79 coming in from Watkins Glen. Except that the day was so hazy by 9am that I could barely make out individual buildings. C’est la vie.

I had a celebratory iced latte with Jofish and Caitlin at Gimme! Coffee, and then returned home to feel slightly less triumphant looking at the dog poo that had been deposited on some of my best clothing. Teach me to leave my clothes on the floor. Cats. I like cats. Even when they pee on the futon.

How was the trip overall? My legs were having fun. But I’ll never plan to bike in 90 degrees again. Not for four days in a row. Mew mew mew.

Today’s the day I said to myself, “Self, wasn’t I worried about the weather forecast showing thunderstorms instead of this horrible 90 degree weather? I would totally prefer a thunderstorm to this brain-killing heat.” Guess what? Half an hour later, it poured. It poured as I was three miles outside of Watkins Glen, a large town with plenty of cafes to wait it out. Instead, I had to stand by the side of the road under an oak tree because the visibility was so bad I didn’t want to take that huge hill down with wet brakes and no vision. I was absolutely drenched by the time I sat in a brewpub that was freezing me with its air conditioning. I left a puddle on their floor.

Then I went up the hill to the campground. Two hills, actually. I feel pretty good about my short days here in the Finger Lakes. There’s no way I was going to be able to do these crazy hills and bike 60 miles.

Oh, today started out with me biking along a triathlon route. I figured that out because there were all these bicyclists with really good shoulders biking past me. Luckily, they were biking the other direction. Two guys passed me on my side in the middle, but no one else was anywhere close.

After a small town diner breakfast, I looked for the canal path that ran from Penn Yan to Dresden I’d heard about from another biker. It was grass and gravel, but totally bikeable. Certainly the fact that it was downhill helped. Traveling it the other direction might not have been quite as pleasant. But hey, it was that or a back road with hills. Despite certain historical data, I’m not a huge fan of unnecessary hills.

Plus I passed an Amish family out for a Sunday afternoon stroll on the greenway. I’ve biked through a bunch of Amish country, and I love seeing the faces of the kids fill with joy and excitement as they watch me go by. I think that reaction is why I’m a fan of the Amish. I’m sure there are good and bad things about the Amish, but a culture that keeps its kids excited about bicycles has at least a kernel of goodness.

And to think I was worried that this day was going to be too short. I biked just 42 kilometers, but boy was that plenty. A lot of them were even downhill. Like, almost all the way from camp to breakfast. But when it’s 95 degrees out, biking hurts. Maybe if I’d been on shady lanes through fragrant forests or something. But no. Luckily the roads were low traffic, so my total flailing was pretty innocuous.

The Keuka Late State Park is situated on the shores of Keuka Lake, appropriately enough. But they had huge signs posted “Swimming Prohibited”. I would have ignored the signs except that the water was muddy and twig-filled, so I just waded.

Hmm. I feel as though I had more to say about this day, but maybe not.

Yesterday I was wondering why I had spent such a long time not biking over the winter. Not every day is as awesome as yesterday. Oh yeah… headwinds. Oh yeah… 95 degree weather. (I hope Caitlin survived her return trip.)

The ten miles to Geneva flew by. I met a guy biking from Maine to Washington coming into town. He seemed pretty cool, but in a different league from me. He was biking 140 miles that day ’since the wind isn’t too bad’. I started questioning whether I was lame. I sat on the lawn in front of the town library getting my dose of the internet while the day got hotter. Then I started out on the 15 miles to Canandaigua (prounounced ‘cannon - day - gwah’). I don’t care if I’m lame. There’s no way I’d be biking more than the 40 miles I’d plotted out to the county park. And that’s ok.

When I got to Canandaigua, I was stopped by a guy wearing a Tour De Fat tshirt who wanted to know how much a BOB trailer cost and where he could get one. He seemed to be pretty awesome, getting around without a car, which, in an upstate NY winter, is hardcore.

Now I’m sitting in the town library killing time until the sun is a little less killer to make my way 15 miles down the shores of Lake Canadaigua to the Ontario County Park. I’m going to camp! I haven’t set up this tent before! I love being faced with new and exciting hardware challenges in the middle of nowhere. Practice run in one’s own backyard? Pshaw.

Too many passwords. Odwasps Astronomy. Stupid stupid database passwords I set in the heat of battle and forget. Gah.

[Later] The fifteen miles were interminable. The last two miles were straight up. I pushed my bike for half of them. And it was still ninety degrees. But when I got to the top of the hill, the wind was blowing through the trees in the way that I love. That’s the white noise of nature that soothes me to sleep, the clashing of tree branches and rattling of leaves. Except that I was too dehydrated and undernourished and wiped out to sleep. And I had forgotten to bring a flashlight. The stars were excellent, though. Nothing like being in the middle of a grassy field on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere with a clear sky to remind oneself of one’s love of stars.

Back in the saddle again. A five or six day tour of the Finger Lakes region in upstate NY. Farmland, lakes, a bunch of glacial hills. Good times.

I realized I should spend some time biking in NY too late to bring my stuff up from Austin with me. So I had to scramble trying to figure out how to find a touring bike and panniers or trailer. Someone suggested craigslist, but the Ithaca craigslist is pretty minimal. But that inspired me to track down the local cycling club mailing list. One email request brought in about eight responses, and I ended up with a Kona cyclocross and a BOB trailer. Excellent. A cyclocross without a triple. Not so excellent. But I ended up getting the cassette changed out from a 25 tooth top gear to a 32 tooth top gear. Bottom gear? After a day of cycling, I feel pretty good about it.

Wednesday night I was getting a drink in celebration of Janet’s pre-B (step 2 of 5 or so in finishing a PhD dissertation at Cornell), and one of the attendees suggested that the following night (tonight), he thought we should head up to his lake house and have a bbq. I cautiously asked where his lake house was, because the idea of biking up to a bbq sounded excellent. It turns out it’s about half a mile from the state park where I was planning on camping. Perfect. A few minutes later, Caitlin realized that she could spend the day biking with me, and then get a ride back to town with Jofish. That sounded like fun to me.

Caitlin and I headed out by 11am, thinking we’d hang out at the state park if we arrived before the rest of the crowds. The long hill out of Ithaca was a challenge for both of us, but we made it. I should have had us biking on the sidewalk, which existed in lieu of a shoulder. But I hate biking on the sidewalk. It seemed like we biked an hour up hill, and then we were in Trumansburg, where, when I realized there was a Gimme! coffee, I called an iced latte break. Trumansburg seemed like a pretty little town, slightly touristy, but not crazy developed. We parked our bikes on the side of the bridge over the creek running through the middle of town.

And then it was an easy two hours to the state park. Rte 96 follows the ridgeline of the hills between Lake Cayuga and Seneca Lake, so it was fairly flat most of the way, with a short climb into Ovid, and a nice long drop out of Ovid towards Seneca Lake. I checked out Caitlin’s setup on her bike, and suggested a few adjustments of her seat. I think her bike is too small for her, but I think my bike might be too small for me, too. So it goes. At least my knees don’t hurt. And my hands aren’t tingling. I do have some awesome sunburn across the small of my back, though.

We chilled out looking west across Seneca Lake into the haze. Relaxing, if not beautiful. There was almost no one out on the water. Then we wound our way through the abandoned military base roads to find the back route to East Lake Road. There was a gate, but there was a gap for pedestrians! We sat on the dock at the lake house for at least another hour before anyone showed up. At least we could take our shoes off and know there was no more biking in store for us that day.

When the party arrived they were giddy with anticipation for Shark Wars! Apparently someone had found remote controlled sharks in SkyMall at some point, and someone else had bought some. Except! The batteries needed to be charged. So they went on a twenty mile round trip to buy some AAs. Caitlin and I were limp piles of goo on the furniture at that point, though I did end up keeping an eye on the grill.

The food was excellent, mostly from an Amish farm where people had stopped on the way up. Plus vegan pesto bread and vegan chocolate cookies. And beer. And the Lakers vs Celtics game. I re-read Snow Crash instead of paying attention.