Day 4 10/13

Time to leave Albany. Well not even Albany. We were in Colonie. We rode 4 or 5 miles in the wrong direction down these really f'ed up roads to find a Super 8. Since then I have decided no more Super 8s especially if they are 5 miles in the wrong direction. That being said I was happy to finally get out of Albany and out of this state.

I was running out of clean clothes so today was laundry day of sorts.


Crossing the bridge out of Albany. Look how happy she is.


The Hudson.


Its crazy how much of the sky you can see when there are no buildings around. Beautiful.


So my mom needed to stop for some provisions and a bathroom we saw this place by the side of the road. Perfect we thought. We get there and it has all these flags that say Vermont and the name of the rest stop itself is "Vermont Village". I was all like "woah we are in Vermont already.... i didn't see any sign.??" She was more interested in finding a bathroom. Of course the main cafe was closed, you know Wednesdays. After she got back she confirmed to me that this was still New York. What the hell we are 20 miles from the border. People are crazy.



I think it was a reservoir of some sort but look at the water and how the clouds reflect off of it. Again beautiful.



OH-FREEKING-LAY!!! You find the coolest stuff on the side of the road. I got so many positive "beep beep"s from the hat, its crazy. If you want to be noticed ride a bike and wear a sombrero.


I was going to leave the hat on the "Welcome To Vermont" sign but i was MISSING. So I just tossed it up on the poles where is should have been.


And of course, lo and behold, 500 feet up the road there was the sign. Ahhh well.


Wait what??? What is an Obelisk doing in Vermont?


We stopped in Bennington a really nice little town with a nice little coffee shop. We had dinner at this old Brewery, it was real nice. Except there were all these statues of realistic looking people doing realistic looking things all over the town. It was kinda creepy since more than once I thought that these statues were real people only to discover that they weren't. Here are a couple.



42 Miles Route 7 to 9 Vermont East

Day Three 8/12

Ive been trying to get on the road by 8 to no avail. Today was the same. The alarm went off at 7:30am but we weren't gone by at least 10.

We stopped by a Rite Aid to get some drinks and my mom's handlebar bag broke. Both straps. So for future reference Nashbar handlebar bags suck.


Here I am practicing my best facebook face waiting for her to get out of the Rite Aid


With her broken handlebar bag and my loose handle bars it was time for some ghetto fixes.

She used some toe straps that she was going to use for her pedals to thread through the torn holes from the missing straps and through more holes that she cut in the front.


For my handle bars I went fishing through the trash outside and found a Red Bull can and cut out of it a strip to shim my handlebars. There was already a peice of rim tape as a shim but it wasnt enough. The combination seems to work great.


There were some pretty ill looking abandoned factorys of some sort (concrete or cement I think).


I was digging the graphitii too.



Flat tire AHAHGGGGGAAAGG!!!!!!! I hate my life!


Still fixing.


Flat tires are the bane of my existance.


This was a pretty beastly hill. For those of you who don't know what a fixed gear bike is its a bike with one gear and where you can't stop pedalling because your pedaling is directly attached to your wheel moving. Soooo I can't coast down big hills and my leg were moving crazy down that hill. Yeah I know, hardcore! (hey if you cant toot your own horn on your own blog then where can you). I also made it all the way back up. My mom wasn't so lucky.


I EAT HILLS!!!!


ALBANY!! HOOPLA!!

(I guess the most interesting thing about them is that they are the summer home of the giants. We weren't impressed.)

There is no better way to end a long day of riding than with a 4 pack of bangin root beer



64 Miles Up 9W

Day Two 8/11

Well day 2 started out with a bang. Literally. We were riding up a hill right down the road from where we stayed when my mom trys to shift and SNAPAHWAPA!! her derailleur snaps in two and gets flung from her bike. Lets just say she was really pissed off and apologetic already feeling as if she was slowing us down but obviously not her fault.



So wondering what to do my mom walks down to this sports complex on the side of the road. She comes back a little later saying that we are getting a ride to the bike shop. What kind of crazy luck is that?! So this awesome guy named Carlos comes out and helps us load our bikes into his truck. We are all "thank you soooo much" "You are our hero" all that. The first bikeshop he takes us to was non exsistant. The second was closed. The third was just right, and ended up being the closest to where we were originally. I am not sure what town it was in but the shop was called Bryan's bikes. We leave our bikes there and go get a bagel across the street, on the suggestion of the shop owner. We get back and he has replaced my mom's derailleur and is working on my loose handlebar and broken stem bolt. Thats when the sky opens up. Thunder, lightning and all of that.


Fianlly the rain gets less and we head out thanking the shop owner for his services and for letting us chill in his shop. So on go the rain coats and off we go down the road.



And of course 15 minutes later the rain clears and the sun comes out. Beautiful.



We weren't headed to New Paltz but thats where my twin brother is going to college so I figured it was a good place for a photo.

We make it to Kingston an decide to call it a day.

Oh and these health bars are the jam!!




36 Miles Up 9W

Day One!!!! 8/10

And we are off.... well we have to get out of the apartment first, always a challenge.

The early going is pretty slow. Both of us are getting used to riding bike loaded with over 100lbs of stuff. I had just put on the risers, breaks and a rack for the first time the night before and everything was pretty rickety plus my bars were sliding around because they weren't the right size for the stem (uuuuuggg!!!). We set out up 9W, a very popular road for city cyclists looking to take a ride out of the city. I was planning on taking river road but I couldn't find it.


We stopped for lunch after a pretty late start someplace along 9W to grab a bite and regroup. I just finished my BLT when I see, flying down the road, Drew a fellow cyclist from the city. He was on his way to Bear Mountain.


Never having gone down 9W by myself I am sure I could have taken a more scenic route. But there were still pretty nice views of the river and a couple pretty cool bridges.






After we passed Nyack 9W got really hilly. It resulted in some walking.

Little did we know that this was the road that goes right above West Point. It went on forever but there was a pretty impressive view of West Point from there.


It was getting pretty late and we weren't anywhere near Poughkeepsie, where I wanted to get to the first day. So we ended up staying in a Motel on the roadside near Cornwall. It smelled pretty grungy but it looked clean.




63 Miles Across GWB and Up 9W

The line up and gear

(she looks so ready)

Rider: Teresa Bell
Age: 49
Height: 5,4
Weight: "like she would tell me."
Job: Teacher/Mother of 3
Riding
experience: Stories of herself in college



Bike: 1974 Centurion woman's bike
Parts: Mostly old suntour stuff



(oh man I am repping posse sooooo hard)

Rider: Cosme Del Rosario-Bell
Age: 17
Height: 5,10.5
Weight: 153lbs
Job: Student
Riding
experience: NYCC Youth Group (Yoots) Graduate, 1 season Cat 5 Track Junior and Mens field at Kissena Velodrome, general city riding and other bike related shenanigans




Frame: Iro
Wheels: Formula track hubs to Velocity areoheads
Cranks: Sugino 75
Gearing: 49x17 (fixed)