Once again I ventured off on a bicycle ride on the Erie
Canalway Towpath. I had planned on
riding on the trail on the Saturday before Halloween, but bad weather was
predicted so I cancelled the trip.
Turned out that the weather prognosticators were wrong. I started looking at weather forecasts for
potential clear days with temperatures in the mid-50s and above. Tuesday, November 8, 2016, looked like my
last best chance of getting in a ride. I
think there is a pretty good chance that it will be the last long ride of the
season, though I am not going to totally dismiss the chance for another
pleasant day for a ride.
My real preparation for the ride didn’t begin until Monday,
the day before the ride. I had surveyed
the selected route on maps and Google Earth previously, but as far as spending
a lot of time getting equipment ready and my leg muscles prepared, I had not
done much. I think I have ridden a bicycle
five times since my 120 mile-ride on the towpath during the previous two
months. Therefore, Monday consisted of
printing out maps of the trail and frantically making annotations for the map
of what to look for at specific turns on the trail. That ended up being an important part of the
preparation for the ride as like before, there were places on the trail where
there were no markers pointing the way.
In fact, near the end of the ride I had to search for a hidden trail
marker.
I began the ride at 10:40 a.m. just north of the Mohawk
River on South James Street in Rome, New York.
If you are interested you can check it out on Google Maps and do an
earth view to see the area. I ended the
trip at about 3:30 p.m. at the Historic Herkimer Church just east-southeast of
Herkimer, New York, on New York Highway 5-S.
The total length of the ride was just over 32. Miles.
I am guessing that the temperature got up to 60 or 61
degrees – just enough to make it a pleasant ride. By the time I finished it was in the low 50s
to the mid – 40s. It got a little cool,
but I had additional clothing to put on in the event that it got too cold.
I was not the only person riding or hiking on the
trail. There were two couples at
different points on the trail that I met coming from the opposite direction and
maybe two or three other lone riders.
There were at least a dozen hikers and a cross country team from Utica
College that were on the trail as well.
There were times when the trail was situated between the Mohawk River
and the Old Erie Canal. In fact there
was one section on the trail that was between the original Erie Canal and the
second generation of the canal. I’m
certain that there have been at least four generations of the Erie Canal.
A goodly portion of the trail was paved with asphalt. There were places where tree roots had grown
under the asphalt and pushed the pavement up into bone-jarring bumps. There was about three miles of trail that was
very soft because of recent rains. It
wasn’t exactly mud, but it was soft enough that it slowed forward progress
considerably. I think between the soft
trail and the lack of good directional signage I lost between 30 and 45 minutes
in travel time.
I only had one bad experience on the ride, which occurred
outside of Utica, New York. This part of
the trail was on Highway 5 on a nice wide shoulder. Even though most of the shoulders on the
highways for this route are nice and wide, as it was here, I choose to ride as
far away from the traveled portion of the highway as I can. Some idiot (that’s all I can think to call
him) came across the white shoulder line and onto the shoulder as close to me
as he could without sideswiping me. I
literally could have reached out with my left hand and hit his car. I was more disappointed that shaken up.
My GoPro failed me once again; however, I had a small camera
with which I took a few pictures and a few video clips. I am attaching them here and invite you to
take a look. They certainly are not
professional, but they aren’t bad for a little point-and-shoot camera. (It looks like the videos are not going to attach to the blog. The message I get is that the two or three minutes of video is too big. Darn.)
And by the way, I mention in the last video clip that Susan
was going to pick me up in about an hour from when I was doing the clip. Well, she arrived right after I finished the
video clip.
Many, many thanks to Susan who supported my effort and spent
the day cheering me on!
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