Day 52: Farmington, NY to Baldwinsville, NY

It was raining again! I woke up around 5 am to a major downpour outside. I went back to sleep hoping the rain would pass quickly. Unfortunately it stuck around for awhile. We finally got out of bed around 8:30 and it was still raining, just as hard as before. Yuck! I checked the Doppler radar and it showed that the rain clouds were going to be around all day.

So we stalled... ate breakfast... chatted with Ric...stalled some more and then finally around 10:30, we pulled our bikes out of the barn. It was still raining, but just slightly when we loaded up the bikes. I went inside to fill our water bottles and came back out to a heavy downpour of rain. UGH!

We finally left Ric's house around 12 noon. We had stalled long enough to get a break in the rain for about an hour. At least we had a nice 10 mph tailwind from the SW today. We made good time for this first hour.

We'd gone about 16 miles when I stopped at a turn to wait for Marc. I waited, and waited and then a car pulled up and the guys inside told me that Marc was a mile back changing out his tire. Bummer! I rode back to find him and by the time I had made it back, he was back on the bike riding toward me. He had a broken spoke which was a quick fix for him.

This broken spoke was just the tip of the iceberg for us today. We had quite a day of maladies! While riding through the town of Newark, a car made a sharp right turn into a parking lot, which caused Marc to have to brake quickly and swerve to avoid colliding with the car. I saw the near accident unfold before me and I was steaming mad at the driver of that car. I pulled my bike into the parking lot and pulled up to the driver's side of the car. At first the driver ignored me and then she finally got out of her car.

I was so furious that all I could yell was, "You almost hit that bike!"

She mumbled back, "No, I waited for the bike to pass me."

"What?" I saw it all right in front of me- I don't know what the lady was talking about. At least she could have just apologized. If I had my pepper spray handy, I might of sprayed it right in her face. Frustrated, I pedaled off muttering loudly under my breath, "You need to get your eyes checked lady as you are dead wrong."

I caught up with Marc up the road. I don't know who was more rattled - him for the near miss or me for the confrontation with the driver.

The rest of the day sort of fell apart after that. Around mile 30 or so, we missed a turn and ended up taking a route that added at least 5-6 miles to our trip. Then, when we stopped to check the map and reconfigure the route, the skies opened up (granted it had been already raining on us for the last hour or so)and downpoured rain. It was raining so hard that our bikes were still soaking wet from the backsplash even though we stopped under the roof of an old filling station.

We had to wait about 30 minutes for the rain to let up enough to ride on. We used the stop as our lunch and munched on the fruit that we had packed. It was about 3 PM when we rode off and we still had 40 miles or so to go.

Not more than 5 miles later, I had a flat rear tire. Marc was riding about 300ft in front of me so he could not hear me yell for help. I knew he'd eventually come back so I took off the tire and started inspecting it. I had about 3 pieces of glass embedded in the tire. One piece was about the size of a dime! My tire was garbage. Luckily, Marc came riding back after about 10 minutes and had a spare tire for me.

I wish that was the end of our calamities, but no! Oh about 3 miles after my flat, Marc had another broken spoke and then about 15 miles later he had a flat tire as well. For the last hour or two of our ride, I was a grumpy mess. I was hungry, tired, wet and hot. When it wasn't raining, there was 99.9% humidity.

We finally arrived in Baldwinsville around 7 PM, it took us 20 minutes or so to find the motel as it wasn't right in town. We got the last room available! That was luck.

Tonight were dining in our motel room at the Microtel. There were no restaurants within walking distance so we decided to lay low and order pizza delivered to our room.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a better day. We are doing a short 49 mile ride to Rome NY. I've pre-booked the motel so we don't run into problems like we almost did tonight!

Marc's Stats:

74.85 miles

15.3 average mph

4 hours 52 minutes total pedal time.