Hoping for a Tail Wind

Spoiler alert. We ride 94 miles after waking up hungover AF, so today’s blog isn’t going to be very good. Just read yesterday’s entry again or something.

Or not. Whatevers.

I wake up and my head is pounding. Motherfucking hard core pounding. Too much beer and too much pizza and too much celebrating our successful smashing down the Erie Canalway Trail in 5 days. Approximately 25% of the ride mileage. Now on to leg two: adventure cycling our asses down to DC through the Delaware Water Gap.

I force myself up and out of the tent and fire up some coffee. Everyone is dragging ass and it’s definitely the quietest morning in camp yet, so I know I’m not alone in my category. No jokes. No plans. Just focus and pain. We pull ourselves together and bid Jeff adieu – then bounce down the Henry Hudson. We skirt alongside Albany – New York’s capital – content to focus our sights on the nations capital a week or so away. We don’t stop to moon Cuomo. Shucks. Daniel and Chad are smartiepantses when it comes to history and learning. Daniel motherfucks Rockefeller as we roll along; calling him out with fact after fact after fact. Not only is he a capitalist pig here in New York but also for destroying his hometown too, or as he puts it, “peeling Buenos Aires like a banana.” We find a breakfast truck and devour egg cheese and bacon sandwiches. The history and politics fade away into caloric bliss. Tour score.

We hit route 9 for a long stretch now. This is no longer a canal trail. Hills. Hills. Hills. They kick our ass. Then they do it again. Then again. This shit is horrendous. Grueling. Painful. The heat. The hangover. The climbs. We take a break in the tiny city of Hudson. It’s got cute little cafes with patio only seating. I eat a second sandwich and take a 5 minute nap in the city park. Then we move on for more hills and more heat. My headache has finally begun fading.

22 midday miles and we take a break for water/electrolytes/calories/electricity. We’re all delirious and exhausted beyond our own recognition. I can see it in everyone’s face. We don’t wanna ride but we’ve got more ground to cover. We’re all face deep on our phones when I become the fucking scapegoat for being on the guy on his phone. My hangover is just ending and now this bullshit. I threaten to kick Chad in the nuts for mocking my blogging. “I’m not doing this for anyone else” he says. Asshole. If you have his number, text him the flag of the nation of Chad emoji (🇹🇩) plus the nuts emoji ( 🥜 ) plus the foot emoji (🦶🏽). Or post it as a comment here and I’ll make him read it.

I take a shot of coffee and we get a move on. We cross the Hudson once more and boogie on down to Kingston. We find a rail trail and continue southbound toward New Paltz. We arrive in the early evening to find out that both New Paltz and nearby High Falls have streets with the same name – and Daniel’s friend Mateo lives on the one in High Falls. 13 miles back.

Science damn it.

10 miles ago it was let’s ride an extra couple to make it century! All gung ho. Or hung go. Depends on your autocorrect. But now we’re all not feeling a single more mile. We find a Mexican restaurant and grab chips and cervezas. Daniel is Talking with Mateo. Mateo and his brother in law save the day, showing up in a couple SUV wagons with roof racks. We load up and hitch rides back to his place. Worth it. His spread of land is amaze balls. We eat a feast and sit by a fire. Everyone snores hard that night.

Riding in this 2×2 matrix formation makes us kinda like a car with four passengers. But way better. We play music. We chat and joke. The matrix formation also brings into my mind a bit of cross quadrant segmentation analysis (was that even a thing before just now?). Daniel and I have the long touring experience. I actually met him few years after my Northern Tier Tour, gave him my maps and then he rode it in the opposite direction. Chad and Damon have zero touring days in the saddle whatsoever. They’re jumping in head first. They have previously connected in Amsterdam, Netherlands on a trip I planned for Damon’s bachelor party a few years ago. Chad and Daniel know each other through a mutual friend and are both teachers. I’ve already documented my background with Damon previously in this blog. And Damon and Daniel are brand new friends. We all fit together in different way. We’re all fucking weird as shit and out riding hard as fuck together.

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I sleep better than I have in weeks. But when climb out of my tent to drain the main vein, I’m overcome with how damn cold it is. I mean frigid. Cold!! I dash back into my sleeping bag and curl up. Ow! Curling up leads to cramping up. I lay there another 20 minutes when I hear someone rustling around. Chad is up. In my best Cartman impression, I yell “but mom! I don’t wanna go to school!” I succumb and put my long sleeve cotton shirt on and climb out. Daniel has a little fire going. Chad is making coffee. Damon wrestles with his tent. Sip sip. Plop plop. Fill up the waters and we’re out.

We whip off 40 morning miles on off road Erie Canalway trail. Lots of tree coverage. Fantastic riding. Little towns along the route, probably packed with working class residents adept at voting against their own self interests. Our on ride chats get a little political, but only in normal American argument sense. It’s clear none of us cares much for dysfunctional government, whether it’s consider right or left. State level Democratic or federal level Republican. It’s all horseshit. Only I’m now currently smelling horseshit as we roll by a farm… and horseshit is much better.

I can state with authority that I’ve bicycled from Rome to Amsterdam in two days. And damnit, it’s pronounced Ahm-schtar-dahm. Daniel asks a stranger walking her dog how long to Holland? She’s doesn’t get it. We spot a cafe right along the trail. Damon and Daniel, in this Amsterdam coffee shop, after we’ve been joking about cannabis bars. It’s like a tv sitcom. Their personalities definitely make for an ultimate odd couple. I expect them to harass the shops cashier about “the other menu”. But we’re again tamed by fresh produce, cool AC and hot coffee. And somehow someway it was filled with nothing but beautiful and happy women the entire time.

Chad and Damon are chatting in this cafe about how nice people have been to us along the way. They’re simply in awe of the amount of people who have helped us out. I’ve seen it and witnessed, so while I don’t take it for granted whatsoever, I’m not nearly as shocked as they are. Daniel has experienced it as well. He calls it tour magic. I cannot disagree. 10 miles later we’re looking to rejoin the off road path and didn’t think we’d be crossing some gravelly railroad tracks when I woman holding a machete walks up. She asks “you looking for the bike path” while swinging the machete around a bit. We affirm. And she lets us know to indeed cross the tracks. Can’t make this shit up. Trail magic.

We’re cooking with gas along this here Erie Canalway trail today. When I say gas, I don’t mean the bullshit fracked out of the earth – I mean my own flagellation. Damon got me eating vegan food or sumfin. We stop in Schenectady. Damon and Daniel hit the cafe. Chad and I walk a block and behold! Chad’s childhood home. Ages 0-8. I snap a photo of him in front of it. We stop for Italian lemon ice. Later down the road we all stop for a refreshing dip in the river. This is a good day.

Jeff is our warm shower for the night. Somewhere just outside of Albany. The tour magic runs high, as he literally rides out (and uphill) to meet us. Jeff is as weird as we are, and works for NYS DOT. So we’re talking trail infrastructure and bikes and trains. We do some laundry and take showers. Luxury!!! Our tents are set up in Jeff’s backyard. We celebrate riding across the state with pizza and beer. After a couple beers I’m even happier to bend Jeff’s ear about getting more train/bike connection in New York State. Jeff’s hospitality is just another example of the tour magic. After another beer I realize it’s like 10pm – well past the usual bedtime. So I dive and it’s lights out on day 5.

My watch is being wrist-swapped on the daily to mitigate the hard sun lines that come from living outside. It’s only taken four days to completely forget which wrist it’s on at any given time or day. So while speeding along at 20mph, I’ve got a 50/50 chance of finding out the time. I somehow always guess wrong. These self-sabotaging brain fucks eventually come around to metaphorically ride alongside the physical demands my inflamed corpse is enduring. For some reason, my University at Buffalo classes in calculus comes to mind – specifically whether there’s a value of infinity as it is approached by the ohm frequency. Mmm. Math. I must be going crazy.

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Time travel way back to when I was sleeping like a champ. Last night. So. I’m sleeping like a champ. Then the rain stops, the sun comes up and I’m making coffee on the jet boil for the first time this year. Hell yeah. Uno dos tres. We rip out of the campsite with a tailwind from the ghost of Dewitt Clinton. Locks on locks on locks. History lessons later. Or just read Wikipedia please. But we’re moving along in what I’m referring to the as the matrix formation. Keanu references aside, if you understand my second calculus let it pour over in all that math nerdy goodness. Please and thank you.

Fun fact I must’ve missed: all roads lead to Rome. Who knew?! And also, I really did think Rome was built in a day, but now I’m being told I’ve been lied to – much like the lies my teacher told me about the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party. And also also, for some strange obnoxious reason my foreign friend keeps saying “when in Rome…”. What the fuck Daniel? I secretly start questioning if maybe he’s really French. Or Russian? Whatever that would mean. I dunno. Either way we’re taking one of the roads (out of apparently every road in existence) to Rome but it’s actually an off road path the whole stretch. So what does that really tell us about cliches? We take a well earned midday break for coffee, food and electrical outlets at a place suggested by some guy driving around with his pickup tailboard down. Later he’d pop up on the other side of town yelling at us out of his truck asking how our lunch was. Weird. Nice. But weird. Lunch was meh, btw.

The trail continues out of Rome to Utica, but beyond that we’re headed back onto Route 5 for the second time. 23 fucking straight miles of it. Shit shows ensue. Enormous metallic robots come whizzing by us; they have all sorts of space issues. An all out assault on all four of our lives from truckers and trailers and motorcycles – all taking different levels of care for our life and personal safety. Several of them don’t give me my six fucking feet and I’m ready to start a pandemic riot over it. But the extreme heat has cooled and we still have a wonderful tailwind so we suck it up and bust ass across multiple lanes and highway interchanges, finally finding refuge at a Walmart. I grab some tire levers for Damon. He fills up some water for us. Judging by all the social distance arrows on the floor, I’m fairly fucking certain that my planned revolution would have succeeded here.

A little more death dodging and we arrive into Little Falls, NY. It’s labeled as a city. It’s gorgeous. And it charms the shit out of us. We see ice cream. We stop. We get ice cream. They even have vegan ice cream for Damon. And fucking pistacho. I love pistacho ice cream. I get some all over my face and shirt, while receiving an impromptu tour of historical facts on the area from a cute redhead who’s running things at the now converted old stone mill. She’s really on top of her shit. There’s an annual garlic festival here in September: “eat, stink and be merry.” Stinking like garlic would probably be an improvement on my current smell.

After the ice cream we slowly roll a few more miles to the Herkimer House. We decide to set up camp here. It’s fantastic. Daniel pulls out a machete, so I chop wood. We light a fire to keeps the bugs out. I get my campsite mixology on and whip up some ginger honey rum cocktails, when I pass it to Daniel, I look over to see him swing and chop open his packet of gourmet Himalayan lentils with the machete. Yesterday it was linguine Alfredo or something. I annoint him the Gordon Ramsey of herkimer house. For shits and giggles, I point to the dried pistacho drips on my shirt and yell at Chad about how these ice creams stains are mine and how possession is nine tenths of the law and so he better back the fuck off. Chad – who is a high school English teacher – just stares at me blankly, my passion for a good old weird time clearly going over his head. That, or being on summer vacation means he’s tuned out my childish antics. You can decide for yourself. After some chatting and eating and a drink and almost 80 miles today, I am ready to check out of the waking world well before total darkness. I lay down and between the trees above my tent I make out the Big Dipper in the evening sky. Happy face emoji.

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The ground beneath my feet

I know was made for me

There is no any one place where I belong

My spirit’s meant to be free

And soon now everyone will see

Life was made for us to be what we wanna be

Gil Scott-Heron, It’s Your World