I've asked strangers for help a lot this trip. Most of the time it was for directions, or for a water refill, but a few times it was to sleep on their land, or to get a ride to a bike shop. Luckily, I haven't yet needed help with something more serious. Since I started, I got better at following the right trails, and at filling water at gas stations instead of interrupting upstate New Yorkers in their eternal fight with the growth of their lawn.

Still, all of my requests have been met . Moreover, I've been questioned multiple times whether or not I needed help while I was taking a break on the side of the road, or just pumping some air on my bike. Addimttedly, I struggled to find a lawn on the second night I went tenting, but I mostly attribute that to looking in the wrong neighbourhood, and even so, I got a great place after less than 30 minutes of asking around. In short, I always assumed that it was natural for people to help me, and people naturally assumed that I was no threat to them, and that I am one to be helped.

I think that this is because I am a white male travelling alone with no visible tattoos, piercings, or other disfigurements, and wearing clean clothes.

This makes me think about how much different this trip would have been if I did not have the above attributes. I also wonder if my beard has an effect. Either way, the effect of being me is strong. It means that while I am homeless, I'm not treated like a homeless person. I walk into a coffee shop to sit and relax for a few hours, and no one bats an eye. I walk into a gas station with my bike, laden with gear, and a cop comes up to me and makes smalltalk about going on patrol on a police bike. I was held up at the Niagara Falls border stop for 15 minutes because I was chatting with two agents about the route I was planning to take. Just because I don't look homeless.

I'm also staying a lot at hotels, which compounds this effect, since I have the luxury of showering, and doing laundry. This means that for all anyone knows, I'm a neighbourhood kid just biking around the block with loads of gear. I bet that if I shaved I could probably convince someone to let me sleep in their living room.

So where does privilege come in? First off, I've got the money to spend every night in a hotel. Sure, I've saved up, but the mere ability to save up for something like this is already more a product of my environment than a product of me. Secondly, and more importantly, I've got lots of friends with money and cars who can bail me out if anything goes wrong. That's the key here - if anything goes wrong. That's what privilege means to me. It means that I can take high risk situations and have a comfortable place to fall back on in case everything goes to shit.

At first, I thought I was doing something spontaneous and low-tech. I thought that the only requirement for what I was doing was 2 weeks and about $1000. It may still be the case that anyone could do this with 2 weeks and $1000, but it sure as hell would have be harder to find a lawn to sleep on if I was a black man with large face tattoos.

Okay, so that wasn't exactly about the bike, but it's definitely about the riding experience itself, so I hope you'll forgive me. Don't worry, tomorrow I'll be writing about my first experience in biking through some real terrain.

Today I was debating between going to Albany or ending my day in Schenectady, and opted to stay in Schenectady, because I remembered that I'm not rushing. In total, I did 115km today:

After waking up relatively late (7am) at my hotel, I grabbed a banana from the breakfast table, and started biking. It was overcast, with threats of rain, so I wore my long pants and my sweater. Soon after leaving Herkimer, I crossed the West Canada Creek, and saw a cool overgrown bridge that may have been an old railroad bridge:

I continued along highway 5, and got to see some nice views of the cliffsides:

I figured I'd give the Erie Canal Trail another try, now that I got better tires. It still felt slow, but it was so scenic I decided to continue along it

At some point, I realized that I was going slowly because I was wearing too many clothes, and I wasn't putting enough muscle. Sounds silly, but after taking off my long clothes, I started moving much faster. I saw some cool waterfalls along the trail:

Until this point, I subsisted entirely on a banana and trail mix. I wanted to add some more chocolate to my trail mix, so I stopped by this hypersexualized squirrel to get some

At some point along the side of the highway, I took a break to call Sarah, to mix my new chocolates into the trail mix, and to pump some air into my tires. After doing all of this, I noticed this little floof in the grass

It didn't move away from me, but it wasn't dead. I think it was just sick or too scared to move :( Either way, I took another picture, and didn't get too close.

As I continued biking down the highway, along a relatively empty stretch, I suddenly saw signs for something related to a martyr. Sure enough, out of the woods comes this thing

Here's some more pictures of the plaques and the statues. I suggest you look up the stories yourself, but apparently there was some serious colonialsm going on in this region.

Upstate New York is full of surprises. Not far from this shrine to colonialism, this popped out of the woods:

At around this point, I was getting close to Amsterdam, New York, and the Erie Canal Trail was paved, so I moved to it. It was busy! There were people all of the sudden! Amsterdam was a town that was alive! I even saw this little guy

Amsterdam has a castle.

Here's proof that I was in Amsterdam:

I stopped by to get some unremarkable chinese food, which was pretty much the only thing open on Memorial Day. Afterwards, I got lost trying to cross the river back to the trail. Some two kids on BMX bikes showed me how you need to go through a strip mall to the roof of a parking garage, and then through a narrow fence to get to a bridge that leads you to an elevator that takes you down to the park on the other side of the highway. From there, there is a relatively new bridge that crosses the river:

It had some cool art on it

Right by Amsterdam, there is a nice place to live

The rest of the bike ride towards Schenectady (I know, right? It's quite a mouthful of a name) was marked by a well-paved, busier and busier Erie Canal Trail. I highly recommend this stretch of the trail, as it's got some really cool historical plaques, and even these ex-locks:

I finished my day by wandering around downtown Schenectady, and being sad that everything was closed. City hall is beautiful though!

I think that Schenectady has been the most pleasant place I've been to so far. Definitely beats Utica, that's for sure.