And rain it did! I woke up to the sound of some heavy rain on the tent early this morning, figured there was not much I could do about it, and went back to sleep. Waking up in the morning, still raining. I checked the weather on my smartphone and hoped that it would calm down later in the morning.
No such luck! With the time getting closer to 10am, I decided that I was going to have to don my rain gear and take down the tent in the rain. My wonderful waterproof panniers kept my clothes dry and my rain shell kept me dry but the tent got soaked and thrown into a garbage bag before being stuffed into my pannier.
The canal towpath in the rain wasn't much fun and made for some slow goings, so when I reached Palmyra, I decided to get an early lunch in town (giant calzone, had to take half to go) and then jumped off the towpath and rode on NY Bike Rt 5 (Rt 31) for about 10 miles. The rain let up, so I jumped back on the canal towpath, as it is pretty picturesque (and becomes paved) the closer it gets to Rochester.
Somewhere around Pittsford I noticed my rear tire was almost flat. Jumped off the bike and found a giant piece of glass stuck in the tire... I've read a number of cross-country blogs where the authors only had 2-3 flats going across the country when using quality touring tires, and now a flat on day 2 is going to make me paranoid like crazy for the next few days! Luckily I was very close to a bridge so I changed the tire under there as the rain started coming down pretty heavy again.
New tube pumped up and I was off. A few miles down the road I deviated from the canal path and headed north to my parent's house in Greece. Got a good shower in, a wet tent set up to dry, some clothes laundered, and a bed to sleep in tonight!
Start: Newark, NY
End: Greece, NY
Distance: 40.50 miles
No comments:
Post a Comment