The Northern Tier: Days 47-52 and The End of the Tour

Day 47: Tramontane Cafe 

     I got an early start in Port Byron trying to beat the thunderstorms that were on the forecast for the afternoon.  The morning was nice but unfortunately already hot so I got as much mileage in before things got really terrible.  I was transitioning from the New Erie Canal to the Old Canal, occasionally needing to take to streets and highways.  I made it through Syracuse pretty early after very good riding conditions.  The sunlight was filtering through the trees onto the paths I was riding on, rays of beautiful sunshine lighting the way forward.

There were fish in the canal and I narrowly avoiding crashing while craning my neck to see them.  They swam lazily in the shallow water while I flitted by on my bike.  I stopped for some excellent trailside food at Three Pines Cafe. An excellent turkey sandwich was all I needed to keep my stoke up as the storm clouds rolled in.

I got a flat tire shortly after lunch but didn’t let it get to me.  Just as I was finishing patching the thing, storm clouds darkened the sky and rain started falling.  I rode through it unfased, a little grateful for the cooling effect, but more annoyed that my socks were getting wet. I was now down to two pairs after losing my third.

I made it to my destination of Utica around 5:00 pm and stopped at the Tramontane Cafe for some tea and scones.  Robin, the owner, let me bring my bike inside and was super friendly, letting  me set up to write a lengthy post in the corner.  The music was superb and just as I was getting comfortable a gigantic thunderstorm hit the town.  Being a California native I’ve got a particular fascination for weather like these storms.  There isn’t much weather to speak of on the southern west coast of the US, much less anything exciting.  So when a real storm rolled in, repleat with lightning, thunder, sheets of rain and howling wind, I was glued to the windows watching.  The power was knocked out after a particularly violent lightning bolt struck the power lines on the sidewalk not 10 feet from the door.  Water began to seep through the ceiling in a few places and the cafe workers rushed to scramble buckets to contain it.  I loaned out my headlamps and flashlight to help out in the darkness.

 

The storm eventually died down and I stayed at the cafe until close, happy for some interesting folks to chat with and a hot meal.  The Tram is a great place, full of eclectic art and sound, host to open mic nights and interesting baristas, sandwich artists and generally a superb atmosphere and staff.  It reminded me a lot of some of my favorite cafes in San Francisco.  It had a familiarity that I was really enjoying.  When closing time rolled around I mentioned I was probably going to camp in the park down the street.  Robin and Dewey then of their own accord went on the hunt to find me a place to stay and luckily Robin had a friend with an empty house that was being renovated.  It had been host to a touring cyclist friend before and they were happy to let me stay.  So I crashed on the bare floors, thankful to have a roof over my head as the rain poured down again later in the night.

Mileage: 90

Day 48: Over the Hills to Cooperstown

     I started the morning by reading and writing for several hours, waiting for The Tram to open so I could get some coffee and thank them for being such excellent hosts to me the night before.  Utica was bruised from the tempest, but the streets were extra clean and the air was clear in the late morning.  After a macchiato I hit the road to Cooperstown to see Chris Clayton, fiance of Brian Contratto, an old (and great) friend of mine from my gymnastics years in San Diego.

The mountains outside of town were beautiful and steep, full of pleasant farms and dark stands of trees.  The rain had cooled off the road a lot and I was finally able to climb without going blind from sweat dripping into my eyes. At this point I was officially blazing my own trail.  All along the Erie Canal trail there were spray painted markings like the photo below that marked the route of the most recent “Canal Ride”, an annual ride along the canal.  The markings were a great boon because the trail was discontinuous, switching from bike path to highway and other avenues.  Without the markers I was operating conditionally on the google maps app on my phone.

The ride to Cooperstown was gorgeous.  There was hardly anyone on the road and the grey sky had muted the colors and cooled the mountain tops.  It was peaceful riding despite being very steep and I was thankful to finally have some serious legwork needed to get me up the hills.

Eventually I arrived at lake Otsego.  Several miles along the densely forested highway that ran parallel to the shore brought me to Chris’s door. We chatted for a bit before deciding to take a swim in the lake.  It was the perfect temperature with cool and clear waters, visible down to at least ten feet.  There aren’t too many things better than jumping into cool water after a long ride on a bicycle.

Mileage: 40

Days 49-50: Baseball City

     I decided to take a few days off the hang out with Chris and his friends, all of them attending the med school across the street.  They were a great bunch of people.  I met about 15-20 of them over the course of the two days I was there.  They would come from the hospital to chris’s apartment with a harried energy that seems to radiate from the overworked.  After getting ice cream and playing Super Smash Bro on the N64 our group laughed ourselves into histerics.  The sugar and video games seemed like a needed respite for the med students, who were clearly working extremely hard learning and performing in the hospital.  It was impressive and reminded me of the schooling I’m getting ready to throw myself into.  I felt a pang of jealousy for them, only in anticipation of feeling the same exhaustion and satisfaction that comes with learning huge amounts of scientific knowledge.

During the day all of the med students were busy working, but occasionally they would make a break to come home for lunch and a brief pause from the rigors of their day.  I was lazing on the couch for a lot of the mornings, essentially the opposite of a hard working medical student.  I made my way through town for a few excursions, one being out onto the lake with Chris’s kayak, the other to see the famous Baseball Hall of Fame.

I also spent a good deal of time sitting in the local coffee shop reading, focusing my attention on my book at hand The Omnivores Dilemma along with articles about food culture, the food industry, healthy vegetarian diets, vegan protein, vegetarian athletes and similar information.  Without getting into specifics, meat is a pretty environmentally destructive method of obtaining protein if you’re not careful about how it’s raised and processed.  I was feeling fairly guilty about the massive aomnunt of food I had eaten over the past month on the road, especially about all the hamburgers.

As I was sitting on the porch of the cafe, huge groups of little league baseball players made their cacophonous way to the baseball hall of fame.  Many times there were entire teams in uniform, hearded by coaches and parents.  Inside the museum there were several types of observer, but the two that stand out are the baseball geek: encyclopedic children who could spout factoids and statistics of famous baseball players and teams hundreds of years older than themselves, and the bored: kids who were along for the ride and after having their fill of museum pieces, resorted to wrestling with each other (among other obnoxious activities) to better entertain themselves.  It was interesting and sometimes entertaining to watch the kids run around the place.  The museum itself was mildly interesting to me.  Baseball fans seem to love statistics and facts about the great teams and players.  I was interested in the history of the game but that gave way to record keeping quickly in the timeline of information on display.

The rest of Cooperstown is an immaculate suburb with well manicured lawns, beautiful brick houses, a crystal clear lake and a gigantic medical center.  There were two groups of people my age around the place, medical students and museum workers from the art, farming and baseball museums, all of them rare sightings amongst the older townsfolk and little leagers.

The last evening I was there all of the med students got together for a barbecue.  The food was excellent and I was very glad to have people of similar knowledge pools to talk science with.  It’s not super often I get to discuss my job in detail with people.  We had a ton of food and shared stories, talked science and health and generally had a great time eating and drinking together.  Our evening was cut a bit short by storms that gathered overhead, but we managed to finish the food and clean up just before the rain started falling.

Mileage: a few by foot.

Day 51 and 52: Poughkeepsie Takes a Shit On Me

     After coffee and breakfast with (future) Dr. Clayton I got on the road towards Poughkeepsie.  I was riding into the Catskill Mountains and it was excellent.  The farms gradually gave way to more forrests and rivers, deep green covered hills and valleys that glowed in the sunshine.  There was hardly any traffice and the roads were nice, making for a great riding experience.  Although not quite as grand as the Cascades or the Rockies, the Catskills had plenty of beauty.

I was working pretty hard getting through them though.  Because I’d stayed an extra day with Chris I nevessarily made the three day ride to Brian into a two day ride.  The roads stretched on and on, winding their way through the hills until I landed in New Palz for pizza. All of the locals in the store were borderline dumbstruck that I had ridden from Seattle to their tiny pizza place on the side of the highway.  That feeling never really gets old, people being impressed and even incredulous of being on and close to completing such a long journey.

After pizza it was a short 10 miles to Poughkeepsie were I was going to try and stealth camp in a state park.  The park was called Franny Reese Park and did not mention any campground fees but I figured it was worth a shot.  When I arrived on the bike path, there was no way into the park except down several flights of stairs to get underneath the Mid-Hudson Bridge to the entrance.  I wasn’t down to lug my heavy ass bike down all those steps after a 120 mile ride so I decided to cut my loses and camp in the tiny memorial park just before the stairs.  This park was about 20 feet square and mostly functioned as a viewpoint for the bridge from which I snagged this photo.

There wasn’t a “no overnight camping sign” posted anywhere so I figured what the heck, there’s no one around and I’m not causing any trouble.  Unfortunately Poughkeepsie’s Finest disagreed.  I was roused just after midnight by a policewoman and her male partner.  She seemed to be in an incredible rush, leaving me hardly any time to get my pants on before she began trying to open my tent.  I was understandably groggy, but she was having none of it and told me flatly that there was no camping.  I asked if there were any other places I could camp and she said exasperatedly that there were plenty of hotels and motels in the area that I could stay.  But I’m poor you freaking jerk!  I was thinking, but kept a pleasant demeanor while they took down my info and told me to leave.  I asked again about camping in the area and they mentioned someplace more than 20 miles away, more or less implying they wanted me to go fuck myself. It was clear they didn’t give a shit about cyclists and me not being one to argue with people holding a lot of power and not a lot of compassion, decided to begin my ride at midnight  …after 120 miles the day before and one hour of sleep.

I packed up my junk and rolled over to the bridge bike path entrance only to discover that they closed it during the hour I was asleep in my tent. Why I never found out, and when I tried to ride my bike across in the car lanes I got stopped by the toll attendent who said that if I rode with the (absent mind you) cars, the cops would give me a ticket.  Wonderful.  I asked when they opened the bike path back up and it was not until four.  I was pissed at this point.  Not only was I sleep deprived and unwanted in the town, but they wouldn’t give me an option to leave.  So I pulled out my phone and found a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts and spent the next three and a half hours browsing memes on the internet, too tired to do anything else.

I chatted with the donut guru for a bit and he was friendly enough.  Four AM is a magically strange hour.  The world is dreamlike already, still and silent and cool and stranger still by lack of sleep.  Just as I was preparing to get back on my bike it started raining.  At that point I was glad because it was only making this story better.  I mosied over to the bridge and got on the bike path, navigated my way through downtown “Poo”keepsie, onto the rail trail and into the forest outside of town.  I was glad to have the rain helping me wash my hands of that place. (Note: it really wasn’t that bad of a place but I’m writing from the perspective of my mood at the time.)

The forest was black, the rain obscuring the full moon and the overhanging boughs obscuring what little light was reflecting off the bottom of the clouds.  Crickets and cicadas added to the chorus of raindrops pattering on the leaves and on my jacket while my rhythmic pedal strokes added the downbeat.  The rain was lit up by my headlamp, making like the stars on a jump to light speed in Star Wars as I rode through them.  Occasinally a large one would hit my lamp directly and burst into hundreds of droplets in a flash of refracted light.  Bats flew across the path, snatching moths that would have flown into my brightened forehead while toads jumped out of the way narrowly avoiding my tires.  The asphalt was dark and blended into the tunnel of trees and it was difficult staying awake through the blackened gloom.  The asphalt also raised a mist that congealed into floating apparitions, ghostly plumes that caressed my face before bursting into nothing after I charged through them. This riding lasted until the sun came up.

It wasn’t quite nightmarish but the night riding was definitely dreamlike. Right around when the sun came up the rain lightened and then disappeared, leaving me with damp roads and damper bike shorts.  The air was thick with moisture, but at least cool, and the hill climbing into the Adirondaks was not too difficult from heat.  I stopped again for a second breakfast and to recharge my caffeine levels.  Sixteen ounces of black gold later I was ready for another thirty or so miles. Luckily there were several rail trails that linked all the way to Manhattan.

I crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge on the sidewalk and lugged my bike down the stairs to a bike path.  I was so fatigued at this point that I was getting lost and missing turns regularly.  I didn’t even have the strength to get frustrated, mereley drifting along placidly and exhausted.  I was barely registering the chaos that was begining to intensify around me as I moved down the Hudson River along a bike path into downtown Manhattan at rush hour.

I finally made it to Brian’s office around 3.  Weaving in and out of New York traffic with a heavily loaded touring bike is a harrowing experience.  I realized quickly that I was going to have to be audible as well as visible to avoid getting hit in the madness.  Pedestrians of every size, shape and color flowed like human rivers on the sidewalks, flooding the banks into the streets filled with cars, trucks, motorycles, vespas, other cyclists and plenty of trash and filth.  New York is the city of blairing horns and I was screaming with my own voice right along with them, happy to feel like cussing someone out for inching into the bike lane was more acceptable here in the general offensiveness of New York road culture. Finally off my bike and in the relative safety of by-foot travel, I went on some errands.  New Yorkers are a finely threaded bunch and I needed some new clothes.

As the sun fell Brian and I headed over to his place in Brooklyn to have dinner on the roof of his apartment with Tom Chard.  Each beer brought me closer to comatose but I was able to maintain myself throughout dinner and into the night.

I had finally made it.  I was at the end of my journey, in the hands of my best friends, enjoying the din of the city and the reflection of it’s lights off of the clouds. We ate tri tip off the grill, with carrots and fennel and tomatoes with beer.  I felt like Frodo and Sam on the slopes of Mt Doom after casting the ring into the fire.  I was sunburnt and exhausted.  I slept that night for fourteen hours straight.

Mileage Day 51: 120

Mileage Day 52: 90

The End of the Tour

     

The trip from Seattle was just over 4,000 miles long.  It took 52 days with four of them for rest.  I average 77 miles of riding per day, and not counting rest days that average was closer to 84.  I fixed about 8 flat tires and a shifter cable, trued my wheel once, fell over while clipped in numerous times, crashed once.  I biked through eleven states, 13 if you include the ones in Canada.  I saw the landscape change from temperate coastal rainforest, into mountains, into deserts, into prairies, wetlands, hill country, river country, badlands, forests.  I experienced all manner of weather, much of it extremely hot and humid.  I wore sunscreen every day, was still burned three or four times.  I wore three shirts and two pairs of bike shorts.

By the end of the tour my rear tire was showing threads.  On the last day (unbeknownst to me) I had destroyed my rear hub.  My bike broke down from the stress, but I only became stronger.  My legs are thick and sinewy with a tanline that is nothing short of incredible.  I did not lose a single pound, but the muscle in my arms did migrate to my legs.

Most of the tour I spent alone and enjoyed it.  After spending several years in the Bay Area and all it’s chaos I was ready for some solitude.  A reboot of sorts.  My screen time was about thirty minutes to an hour each day, something that seems incredible now with my phone in easy reach within my pocket again.  Seeing the countryside change from day to day and week to week is an experience I recommend everybody have.  I was lucky to have met nothing but kind and generous people and I am thankful for that.  The world does not seem nearly as bad a place here at the end.  Traveling especially does not seem at all dangerous to me now.  I have experienced possibly some of the worst natural conditions one can on a journey.  My run in with the police was an unfortunate situation, but in the end the story was good so there’s that to look forward to telling.

I spent about $2,000 on the trip, almost all of it for campground fees and food.  I ate around 5,000 calories a day most days, all of it converted to fuel for my now thunderous thighs.  I would recommend this trip to anyone.  Of course I went rather quickly but there were several people I met that were rolling effortlessly, covering 45 miles a day and crossing in 90 days.  If that still sounds like a lot, consider that there are 14 hours of sunlight in a given day in which to cover those miles this time of year in the north.  The Adventure Cycling Association maps are incredible and negate the need to plan at all.  I planned my rides during breakfast each morning and had no trouble.

All in all it was an amazing journey and a great way to spend the summer.  Thanks for following along.

-Andrew