I fell asleep to the background noises of a lake campground in summer. In other words, waves, wind, and some far-off neighbours having a bonfire. When I sleep in a tent, I usually use a dirty sweater as a pillow, and I did the same last night. Unfortunately, it was a cold night. I woke up a few times shivering, and tucked my arms under my belly to keep them warm. I really should have put on the sweater I was using as a pillow!
I did bring a very thin sleeping pouch which Sarah got me. It actually helped a lot. While I didn't think of putting on a sweater, I did realize that I could just completely enclose myself in the pouch, and let my own breath fill the sac with warm air. This worked for a while until I would toss a bit in my sleep, and poke my head out.
I clearly need to optimize my sleeping experience approaching the upcoming hills.
Tenting has some other nontrivial issues. Specifically, dew gets the entire tent damp, and because I tend to wake up with sunlight (which is usually before sunrise!) when I'm outside, I end up with an unfortunate decision. I can either let my tent dry and start my day late, and when it's already sunny, or I can shake it out as best as I can, and stuff in a damp tent to my blue pack. So far, I've opted for the second choice both nights I used the tent, and in the evenings I've been drying it out on my hotel room floor. I think that if I was more consistent with using the tent, it would be easier, as it would dry off every evening by being set up.
Still, there are other problems with the tent that I've mentioned before in my technology segment.
People are saying that it's hot outside, and for some reason I don't feel it. It might be because I am already expecting heat from the exercise, or that the wind is keeping me relatively cool. It might also be that this heat is manageable for me, and that I would start suffering if it got past 35 degrees, at which point exercise would just be dangerous.
Even with all of this, I feel remarkable. My legs keep going, I'm not getting sunburnt, and I'm staying hydrated. I've started "eating out" more and more, and taking less and less fruit with me. I am still carrying my big bag of trail mix, but I figured that fruit is too much weight considering how easy it is to buy. I've noticed that my food bag is always the heaviest one.
I'm also starting to be worried about my weight. The landscape is now better described as "rolling" than "flat," and this scares me. I think that I'll only fill my emergency water bottle half-way, and try to finish up my trail mix. Actually, I also brought a bike lock, thinking that I'll use it in Boston, but I could just get a new one... Thoughts? Should I get rid of my bike lock?
Today was a short bike ride. I figured there's no point in continuing to push over 100km, so I settled for 88km. Shit, now that I'm writing it out, it doesn't really sound like I "took it easy" today. Oh well, here's what I did today:
After shivering myself awake at sunrise, I decided to pack up quickly. Here's a mid-packing picture:
While packing my tent and bags, I noticed some sploshing in the lake. Upon closer inspection, it was some fish jumping around! This is what the water disturbance in the following picture is:
I actually had a dream about packing up before my hosts even woke up, and I made it a reality! I left them a thank-you note, and went on my way. I saw some more horses:
Not all roads lead to Rome:
At around this point, I said goodbye to my old best friend, the 31 highway, and made a new best friend: highway number 5. It matches bike route 5, which is the route I've been following so far! Along the road, I heard some loud croaking of bullfrogs in this pond. I also found it scenic:
Suddenly, I heard a horn from my left. I also heard a horn from my right. I averaged it out and figured that I was hearing echoes from a train horn straight ahead. Indeed, I arrived at a bridge, where this l o n g b o i was already snaking along:
And then...
After the bridge, I started going along side roads. Google maps kept redirecting me to the Erie Canal Trail, which was the annoying stone dust, so I had to make my own route. This was interesting, as in searching for the geodesic, I found myself snaking through rural neighbourhoods that looked exactly like suburbs. It's so strange! You go along this road, and see farm after farm after farm, and all of the sudden pops a suburban neighbourhood. No grocery store, no central building, since it's not a town, but just a piece of suburb embedded in farm country. As I navigated through these rural suburbs, I noticed that the landscape began to change...
I got to get close and personal with some cows.
Today I wanted to have a shorter ride, and rest in the evening. I planned to use this extra time to explore Utica, and I did. A bit. The most interesting thing I saw was this famous mosque:
I ate some lunch at Denny's, and decided that Utica was too boring to stay the night at, and opted to continue to Herkimer. That was a good decision. It was along the stretch of road, along highway 5 from Utica to Herkimer, that I really started to notice the change of landscape:
I found one in the wild!
From here on out, the day gets strange. I arrived at my hotel in Herkimer, and promptly took a shower. I then set out to do laundry. Part of the reason I chose this particular hotel is its proximity to a laundromat. Laundry was still an enourmous pain, since I couldn't clean all of my clothes at once, and had to do two loads, each of which were less than 1/4 full. The laundromat is on Main Street, a street which confused me for a while. You see, on the one hand, it's got well-maintained plants, a nice library, and schoolkids walking around enjoying the hot summer day. There's little banners advertising "historic Herkimer," and big spires of churches all over the place. On the other hand, a lot of people wandering the streets looked like junkies, a lot of the shops were closed down, and cars barely passed through the street.
The storefronts that were open seemed like nice small-town cafes like in all other towns I passed by. This perplexed me.
At the laundromat, I met two girls, Ana and Stephanie, who were relatively recent locals to Herkimer. Having nothing to do that day, and really wanting to walk around the town, and seeing what there is to do, I got into a conversation with them, and we decided to hang out for the rest of the day. Ana and Stephanie, if you're reading this, I really hope I wasn't imposing! I'm so glad you showed me around, and I'm thankful we had a chance to hang out. You're always welcome to visit me in Toronto!
We went to a local pizzeria, where I met Aaron, Rick, and Uncle Vito, who were excited by my bike-riding stories. They also made some good New-York-style pizza! Anyway, it was really cool to chat with locals, and they agreed to let me post these pictures online:
That's a picture of Rick (left) and Aaron (right), two of the workers at Papaleo's Wise Guys Pizzeria.
After the pizza, Ana and Stephanie, joined by their friend Rashid, showed me a small park with a big gazebo in it. I forgot to take a picture of the gazebo, but I did get a picture of a nice little statue in the park.
Afterwards, we went back to Ana and Stephanie's apartment to chat and be miserable in the hot summer nights that I missed so much over the long winter. As always, the following photo is posted with permission:
