80 miles ridden – 1627 feet climbed.

I don’t know where our luck has been coming from but today was another great day. Sunshine all the way, wind not an issue, temperature peaking around 30C/85F…. Road surface generally OK but weirdly a lot of glass on the shoulder of the roads so we have to be very careful.

We cycled today through Madison County which was quite beautiful but a little disappointing that we didn’t see either any nice bridges or Meryl Streep. Lots of nice empty roads though.

As we neared our first SAG in Oneida we passed a local landmark – the world’s smallest church. The area occupied by the chairs Darin and I are sitting in is bigger than the church

I mentioned yesterday the process of tapering down our calorie intake and we were greatly assisted today by an old ABB rider who lives near Oneida who delivered to the SAG homemade ginger & coconut cookies, Reece’s chocolate cup tarts, and peanut butter whirl cookies. Obviously not much tapering down occurred on that SAG but we ate NOTHING at the second SAG possibly because we had just stopped at Charlie’s Pizza Place in Whitesboro. There were 7 of us eating lunch together and it was unanimously agreed that the tapering down would begin at a later point (yet to be determined).
We were now at the back of the ride but had a good laugh on the way to tonight’s stop – Little Falls. The roads are getting busier and busier but by and large we spend the majority of our time looking at stunning scenery. This area has a lot of history and in Herkimer we saw a stone church dating back to 1769 which for the US in absolutely ancient and there are quite a lot of other old buildings around.

Little Falls itself looks a bit like a northern England mill town, or maybe bits of Bath, but has its own character.

Only 4 more days of cycling. Today was my final laundromat session of the ride – it’s hand washed shorts and clean jerseys from here on in which is good. Although my hands have benefitted from 2 months of not doing any washing up I am concerned that they have suffered from the daily hand washing of my cycle gear. The guys with wives on the trip don’t have to do any washing at all – Sue?……..

I can’t believe that I have reached this stage. It seems unreal or maybe surreal and in some ways a bit of a dream even if I have hundreds of photos as reminders. Some days stick out in my mind but once I start thinking about the whole trip all days stick out in my mind and then it all becomes a blur. Every second has been so vivid at that moment but that turns into a stream of vivid memories and first-equal moments – I have a lot of processing to do. Now though I need to sleep.