Start: 7:36 AM

Finish: 4:42 PM  

Saddle Time: 6:01

Ascent: 214 feet

Descent:  117 feet

Miles: 73

Total Miles: 3,521

Highlight: Rode straight through Syracuse almost entirely on bike path.

Lowlight: Poor cellular signal and terrible hotel wifi is making this difficult.

Cyclemeter:  Follow this link to see the data I’m collecting with the cyclemeter app. You can see gps information, speed, elevation, distance, cadence and heart rate. Better viewed on a computer where it’s easier to play around with the graphs.

I can’t tell you how many people have asked me “how old are you?”.  Often the question is asked by someone really interested in my trip, like they want to do this someday.  I guess they see me, some guy with gray hair riding across country and want to place me in the spectrum of age relative to them.  Helping to answer the question, how long does this dream have before I’m too old. I don’t know what they expect to hear.  I think of myself as 25 but I certainly don’t look it. Do I look like I’m in my 60’s or older? When I say “53” does it match up with their expectation?

I had this conversation with a guy I met today while taking pictures of a drained portion of the old canal in Jordan.  He passed and circled back to talk with me. He’s ridden the Erie Canal and some other similar distance tours but wants to do a cross country tour on highway 20, the longest road in America, from Boston to Newport, Oregon, but feels intimidated. I told him my usual line about how this requires nothing special, anyone can do it, better fitness just means you will finish sooner.

I often get good road information from talking with locals.  This guy told me the Empire State Trail through Syracuse was recently completed earlier this year. When I rode the canal five years ago the route through Syracuse was on a bunch of roads with few bike lanes or bike paths to speak of.  That’s totally changed, the route now is almost all bike path.

Most of my ride today is along the old canal.  Recall the canal was built in phases with some sections replaced by larger, newer canal.  In many places the old canal was drained to make way for development while more remote areas were overtaken by nature. The town of Jordan was built around the old canal, now drained with houses and condominiums built up to the edge in some places but some areas have been turned into park so you can walk around in the old canal. It gives you a much better understanding of the construction that went in to building the canal.

The canal covers a lot of ground so at some point it will have to cross other streams which was accomplished by building aqueducts over the obstruction. This seems obvious to me now, the Romans built huge aqueducts a couple thousand years ago but I never made the connection.  The canal aqueducts fascinated me when I first saw them five years ago, the concept of a canal bridging over another body of water. I passed over several aqueducts which have been rebuilt with concrete and others that have been damned off and allowed to fall apart. The Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct is one exception, it was rebuilt ten years ago using original building materials including huge wood planks and glue. Fascinating.

I reached the outskirts of Syracuse after about 10 miles.  Google wanted me to take city streets most of the way but I decided to follow the Empire State Trail signs based on the conversation I had earlier. I’m glad I did because the ride was very nice. It was certainly longer, winding its way through the city but almost entirely on paths with a few stretches of bike lane.  They even routed out the east side of Syracuse on a busy four lane highway by building the path in the median, a great way to create bike paths in congested areas.

The route east of Syracuse to Rome was equally interesting, riding through the Old Erie Canal State Historic Park, a 35 mile section of restored old canal and towpath. The surface was a mix of pavement and stone dust, really good riding. The area was more remote than previous sections of the current canal, more like a ride through the woods with a canal by your side.

I’m staying in a Days Inn in Rome tonight. I’ve stayed in a few Days Inn on this trip, all are clearly straight out of the 1960’s with how they are designed.  While I don’t normally need handicap access I have noticed the complete lack of ramps leading anywhere only because I need to lift my bike up over curbs. Day’s Inn seems to be the worst offender. I think every other chain has at least entered the late 20th century.

Rome is a good size town but there’s nothing walking distance from my motel but a Denny’s and a Chinese restaurant.  I decided to repeat my meal of a couple days ago and order Indian food through GrubHub. Chicken Saag, naan, and a couple samosas.  Finally I can buy good beer as singles and not a six pack so I grabbed a couple tall boy New Belgium Imperial IPA’s from a convenience store next door. My plan was to have leftovers for breakfast tomorrow but I ended up eating everything but one samosa and of course the beer is for tonight.

Only three days left.  Tomorrow I’m staying in Amsterdam but still debating the next day.  My current plan is to do a century ride Thursday followed by an easy ride on my last day. I’m somewhat waiting on the weather, I don’t want bad weather on a 100 mile ride.