Dist: 65.44
Ride Time: 6:59h
Avg Speed 9.3
Max Speed 34
Trip 126
Camping so near a steep hill where semi-trailer trucks switch between low and hi-axles makes for an early wake-up! I was all packed up and ready to ride around 6:45, and then decided to check tire pressure, ended up unscrewing my bicycle pump handles from the plunger, and once properly put together realized it wasn't up to the task of adding another 10 lbs of air pressure to bring my rear tire up to 120 lbs. In fact, with all the time with the pump attached to the tube stem the pressure dropped from 110 to 80! Frustrating to spend 30 minutes on all that and be worse off at the end of it.
Made good time and reached Great Barrington, about 22 miles, by 10am. I stopped at the bicycle shop there to get my rear tire up to full pressure, and also it needed some truing of the spokes as the wheel adjusted to having more load on it with all my gear. I also got some Co2 pressurized cartridges to help with topping off my tires, since my hand pump wasn't up to the task.
Passed Bash Bish State Park around mile 34, my knees and quadriceps were complaining a bit on the uphills and I thought wistfully about stopping and visiting the waterfall that Marie had gone to the weekend before, but soldiered on thinking that I wasn't going to cross the country in two months if I only did 30 miles after every time I had a hard day. The hills sure went slow! Sometimes today I was going 4.5-6.0 MPH, at pedal cadences of 45-50! Definitely need to adapt the gearing a bit to give me a few more low gear choices! (Right now it's a 30-42-50 with a 12x25 cassette.)
I crossed the Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River - I'd already been in New York state for about 15 miles but crossing the river felt like an appropriate marker:
Approaching the bridge from the east, there wasn't any signage indicating there was a pedestrian walkway on the south side - I didn't notice this until partway across when I met a person walking. So for the 3/4 mile bridge I was riding on a teeny tiny shoulder between the edge of the bridge and all the cars going by - not much chance to look to either side and enjoy the views of the river valley!
After I finished crossing I took a rest in the shade and called campgrounds to figure out where to spend the night. Sadly, once I had crossed into NY I was going to be working with a terrible car-driving map that covers the entire state, and hasn't much detail, for the next 200 miles until I reached near Binghamton, and it's 5 years old as well so plenty of the campgrounds have closed or changed phone numbers! I reached one and they gave me directions, after following them for about two miles I realized they were going to direct me onto a section of highway-interstate - it was divided and all cars goin 55 MPH, but was a short segment of the state highway so wasn't closed off to cyclists. Re-evaluation of plan. Take a county road, go south, and whichever Campground sign I see first I would follow (there were several marked, only one I had reached on the phone.)
I see the sign for Catskill Campground first (one I hadn't been able to reach anyone.) Ride down the road, and then every 1/2 mile for about 2 miles there is a sign saying "Campground Ahead." Now, when you're in a car this may seem fine and properly maintain the suspense - when you're on bicycle, have riden 6 1/2 hours and more than 60 miles that day with a full load, every little hill between those 1/2 mile signs begins to feel a bit deceiving.
I pass by an overgrown field with picnic tables, reach the end of the road at a Petting Zoo/Miniature-Pony Riding place, ask around and can only find two guests staying there for more than a week and no employees. Since then it has become my observation that everyone leaves their "OPEN" signs and flags outside or turned on, because the worst that could happen is a motorist could stop, find nobody was actually there, and keep on driving, right? Anyways, can't find anyone who expresses any authority or knowledge about the place, so fill my water bottles, snag a roll of toilet paper, and head back to the overgrown campsite area to spend the night.
An Observation on States and Road Maintenance: In Massachussetts, they paint the crumbling edge of the pavement with a white line and call the gravel and grass beyond that "the shoulder." In New York, they make the road twice as wide as they need to, paint the middle half with lane lines, and 1/4 on each side is the shoulder. It should be mentioned that New York also has a recurring state budget crisis, and I believe still, on August 2nd, have not voted on a budget for the fiscal year that began more than 4 weeks ago. From what I understand this has been a annual occurence for many of the past years. But nice roads they have!
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