67.1 mi / 5:02:39 time / 13.3 mph avg. / 1986 ft. climbing
Staying at Southwick Beach State Park

I’ve ended a lot of bike tours with a vacation/destination, but I’ve never started with one before. I’d say I highly recommend it! The five days spent at Rett’s dad’s in Skaneateles were filled with the usual wonderful food (sweet corn straight from the garden!), family and friends (Rett’s sister Sophie, her brother Luke, his partner Andrea, and even my friend Dan made for a full and fun house), backyard frisbee, backyard fireworks (pro-level quality provided once again by Dan), actual pro fireworks (at the Skaneateles Field Days Labor Day celebration), and most importantly, relaxation. 

Only Ken and Sophie were left to see us off this morning, but that was another nice symmetry, since they were the ones to greet us when we arrived at the end of our last tour. 

The first part of the ride, to Baldwinsville, was familiar since we had done it a couple years previously. Rett largely knew the way on her own, which meant she knew we would be hitting the 10% grade she and her mom could sometimes not make it up in the car in the winter on their way to Baldwinsville high school. This was her first big test of her most-loaded bike so far (35 lb. bike + 40 lb. load), and she kicked its ass. 

18 miles in we stopped at the B’Ville diner for her beloved rice pudding. 

From there we were onto pretty country roads with a lot of up and downs, but everything manageable. We passed through Phoenix, and obviously after that, Mexico, where we took advantage of a McDonalds’ bathroom and WiFi. 

By the time we arrived at our destination, Rett was wondering why she was as tired as she was. It’s probably because, when combining distance, load, hills, and wind, it was one of the two or three most energy-intensive rides she’s ever done. What was amazing was that on the whole she had felt good enough that she was barely even aware of that fact. 

To show how far she’s come in the last two years, the longest ride we did on our last tour was three miles shorter than this one. We had tailwinds that whole day, which also made it our fastest ride, at 11.0mph. And it was mostly flat.

Today, with a lot more hills, mostly light cross- or headwinds, and a longer distance, Rett banged out this ride at 13.3mph, 21% faster than her fastest ride of our last tour! I’m so proud of her for her massive improvement, and so is she! 

We got a sandy campsite just across a small dune from the Lake Ontario beach. It’s one of the nicest beaches we’ve ever been on: miles of sand that extends way out into the water. 100 yards out we were still only up to our waists. We spent a while screwing around out there together, which was my favorite part of the excellent day. 

Since the park is in its off season, a lot is shut down and we weren’t able to get any firewood. But a nice woman with sons who hike was trying to help us out in some way with our limited carrying capacity, and ended up giving us three Luna bars. Just don’t let her know that we had enough capacity to carry a bottle of wine the last 20 miles to camp!  Which we enjoyed with our gnocchi and pesto dinner after watching the sun set. Day one (our longest planned ride) complete! 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2016 at 8:03 pm and is filed under 2016 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.