Day 3 Biking Across (Part Of) New York: The End

Well, well, well, look who’s quitting another bike tour. Me! Today Kenzie and I biked over 88 miles, my longest riding day… ever. We got on the road at 8:15am and arrived at our hotel at 8:00pm. Long day.

The first few miles of the day were fairly uneventful. We stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Weedsport for breakfast. I ate a bacon egg and cheese on a bagel and washed it down with a bacon egg and cheese in a wrap. Fueling up is essential.

About halfway through the ride, we navigated our way through Syracuse. We rode right past the state fair, which was neat to see. We ate at a fancy brunch place, which was quite a juxtaposition from the rural woods that we were biking through all morning. I felt self conscious because I was wearing a cutoff flannel shirt and probably stunk, but whatever.

After leaving Syracuse, both of my knees starting hurting a lot. Each pedal stroke was considerably uncomfortable. At one point, I fell two full miles behind Kenzie because I was moving so alarmingly slowly. At that point, I encouraged Kenzie to push on towards Rome (closer to Utica, where she is getting on a train in the morning) and I would get a hotel at the next town.

I fell during today’s ride. Here is the picture of my bike that I snapped while assessing the damages.

Like usual, though, Kenzie did a great job at offering me some concrete solutions for my knee pain and encouraging me to keep grinding. After a RedBull mixed with a Gatorade, I was able to zone out and finish the 88 mile day.

We ended at a hotel in Rome and ordered a lot of Dominos pizza to celebrate our long day.

Kenzie, as I said, is leaving tomorrow and heading back home. Historically speaking, I have not been great at bike touring alone, which contributed a lot to my decision to end the trip here in Rome. Additionally, as I also said, my body is in immense pain and I think it’s wise to listen to what my body is telling me. Lastly, it might rain these next two days and if you think that I’m a bad bike tourer in general, you wouldn’t believe how awful I am in the rain.

Some notes: if I ever post about doing a bike tour in the future, do not send me encouraging messages. Consider commenting things like “are you sure?”, “how much have you trained? If the answer is ‘not at all’, maybe don’t do it”, or “hey, don’t do another bike tour, you aren’t good at those.”

I have accepted the fact that bike tours might just not be for me! Shocker, I know. Overall, though, I saw what I needed to see! I explored new towns, met some interesting people (some good, others not so good), and biked close to 250 miles over 3 days without training at all! That’s pretty neat.

Thanks for the support and, seriously, don’t let me do this shit ever again.