“…the hills go on forever and the party never ends.” Today we traveled along Hwy 5 all day long with lots of rolling hills. This is just a warm up for our ride on Friday which will have more than 6,000 feet of climb. Today we wound up with just over 3,200 feet of climb. We enjoyed riding the smooth shoulder most of the day, except for the stretch of road that went through the southern portion of the Syracuse metro area. We lost our shoulder and truly shared the road with the city traffic for over 10 miles and 50 or more stop lights. We were glad to get out of the city and back to the rolling hills whic
h showed up as soon as the stop lights disappeared. Our average speed for the day was 17.4 miles – hills and stop lights. The total distance today was 114.2 miles. Once again, we couldn’t complain about the weather: temperatures ranged from 62 to 87 degrees (even though it was fairly humid); winds were out of the south early and SW later in the day; and no rain (severe storms passed south of us a few hours after we finished).
Matt had bike trouble today – rear hub (see details in his blog). Once again our tour director (as so named by Gill, the Scottish trans-America biker) saved the day. He took Matt’s bike to two different bike shops to get it back in working conditions. Both shops squeezed Matt’s bike in, even though both were very busy. We thank both of them for their help.
We have now traveled 3,162 miles with total climb
of 80,243 feet in 30 days (you were right, Bud, we will probably do more than 90,000 feet of climb before we finish). The end continues to approach, but it won’t really be here until we actually dip our wheels in the Atlantic Ocean. The weather forecast still looks like there is a better than average chance that we will stay dry the rest of the way, but the temperatures and humidity will be rising. We will need to get an early start the rest of the way as afternoon showers seem to be in the forecast.
