Start: 8:13 AM

Finish: 1:30 PM  

Saddle Time: 4:20

Ascent: 1,006 feet

Descent:  675 feet

Miles: 56

Total Miles: 3,765

Highlight: Cross country bike tour complete.

Lowlight:  About 5 miles into the day I had to again repair my fender which now was rubbing against my tire.

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.

Once in Washington I was putting together the blog after about a week of biking.  I looked at the map and thought my progress across the state was impressive but zooming out I still had a very long way to go. It seemed insurmountable. How do I pedal that far, I’m already tired? I didn’t think about the thousands of miles ahead on a regular basis but where I want to be in two hours for my next rest stop or how many days to the next border crossing or geographical feature. By focusing on these daily, small, achievable goals before I knew it 1,000 miles had passed, then 2,000 miles, then 3,000 miles. Now here I am, after 59 days of riding 3,765 miles I crossed the country by bike. I think there’s an allegory for life in this bike trip.  By focusing on small, achievable goals eventually you can do big things.

Today’s ride was an easy 56 miles on familiar trail and roads. I took my time in the morning, no need to rush so I had coffee, motel breakfast and finished up yesterdays blog post. I was on the road around 8:15 for a five mile ride to the Dutchess County Trail which combined with the Maybrook trail will take me 35 miles to Brewster, NY. New York has done a great job building out their Empire State trail network.  The Dutchess County Trail starts in New Paltz, NY and connects south to other trails taking you about 100 miles to the tip of Manhattan almost all on bike trail.  For anyone in the area, I highly recommend these trails.  I rode a lot of training rides on the Maybrook trail, now I will be heading home after 3,800 miles of cross country riding on the same trails I rode while contemplating this tour.

For those of you not from this area, I should have mentioned the weather yesterday when I rode my 104 mile day.  It was hot and humid with a heat index of 105. Today is similar. Riding in this weather is not as bad as it sounds.  The breeze from riding keeps you cool, especially if there’s some shade. The wooded trails provide a fair amount of tree cover. It gets difficult on climbs when I’m exerting myself and not moving fast enough for a cooling breeze. Most of today’s ascent gain was on rail trail so only 1.5% grade, barely even noticeable at this point.

My ride into Danbury and home was on roads I’m all too familiar with by car but rarely by bike. I rode right though downtown on roads I would always avoid when out for a bike ride.  When you get more comfortable riding in traffic you tend to ride more like a jackass, weaving around and taking up the lane. I didn’t need to get hit by a car this close to the finish line.

The only climbing I had was the last mile to my house, we live up a hill, nothing big but a few short steep sections.  I followed  since I’ve used Google so much on this trip, figured it would be a good way to end.  I made one change about a half mile from the house to avoid a short steep hill but the road was closed for chip sealing. I found this hilarious.  I thought of all the miles I rode on chip sealed road complaining about how the rough surface slows me down and newly chip sealed roads are somewhat dangerous with piles of loose gravel. I hit it hundreds of yards from my house.

I was greeted by family and neighbors happy to see my return, in one piece I guess. The garage doors were decorated with pictures I took and they even had a finish line tape.

It’s been a long trip over two months.  I’ve seen a lot and met many interesting people along the way. Over the weekend I will write a couple posts about my final thoughts on the tour and the route along with a gear review. But for now I’ll end with the most common question I was asked by non cyclists “do you get bored?”. Or the alternative, “What do you do to pass the time?”. The answer is no, I didn’t get bored.  Riding was the best part of the trip.  Some of the off bike routine began to wear on my but more on that later. I never listened to music, podcasts or audiobooks. I would find it too distracting. I enjoyed keeping this blog and the daily instagram because it kept me focused on what I experienced and how I wanted to convey that in writing.  I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing.  Thank you for following along.