The BLO+E: Week 3 Day 3

Occasionally on a long ride the days are a mixed bag. Maybe there's grueling hills with stretches of flat roads. Could be the winds swirl, at times in your face pushing you back and other times at your back, like wings. There could be the same old same old scenery, with outbursts of spectacular vistas. On a bike, day after day, you really don't have the time to consider any of this. Instead, you're attuned to the bike, listening to the chain, the wheels, the wobble of the wheels, paying attention to hydration and food for fuel, focussing on a muscle twinge or a pained nerve. But then, without announcement, you realize that you're part of the place you're in and the world is good.

Today was sort of like that. When I left my camp,this morning, the sky was overcast, and I was biking along, with a drizzle starting and the sky getting dark. I was in Watertown, New York, about six miles off course (I had made a wrong turn), when the sky opened up. Luckily, a Dunkin Donuts as nearby, a good shelter to wait out the storm.

Shelter at Dunkin Donuts in Watertown, NY

I was there for more than an hour, waiting for the rain to let up, then my Garmin led me to my course, 12E, and though it was still spitting rain, you could tell that the weather was starting to clea. Still, I was hearing my chain, which was gritty. Was my gear all wet again? Would my wet socks lead to a cold? Would my tires slip on the wet road?

Back on Route with 12E

I suppose these are concerns people have wherever they travel. If so something happened in a car, you'd call AAA. On a bike, in the middle of nowhere, you'd fix a flat yourself. You'd pull out your first aid kit to clean a cut or scrape. You'd get off your bike and wait out a cramp. These are things you think of while rolling along. Then a view like this:

Lake Ontario on my Left

When you're on a bike, you're also concerned about direction. Perhaps you've learned that I'm not good at left and right, even when Garmin shows me left and right. I often take unintended side trips, like the one today to Watertown. So I'm often surprised whenever I see that I'm where I'm supposed to be, like Cape Vincent and the ferries across the St. Lawrence River to Wolfe Island and Kingston, Ontario.

Lake Ontario on my Left

Where I Want to Be

Ferry to Wolfe Island, ONT

Wake

Wolfe Island, ONT

Ferry to Kingston, ONT

Kingston waterfront

Upon landing in Kingston, the weather had cleared and the sky and water were a brilliant blue. I had stopped thinking and worrying about wet gear or mechanical breakdowns of the bike or body. The two are pretty much the same. You are the bike and the bike is the body. But a new place brings it's own set of problems, mainly directional, that is, getting oriented and determining the layout of roads. What better place, even more so than Duncun Donuts and Tim Horton's, than Starbucks.

Starbucks, Princess and Wellington, Kingston, Ontario

The familiar can make the strange familiar. There you find the same coffee, the same people, the loafers, the busy bodies, the homeless, the beggars. This corner in Kingston, Ontario--Princess and Wellington--could very well be the UCity Loop. The sky is the same in both places. You are two places at once, in parallel worlds, and they're all one place. You've had that feeling, eh? Here but there, there but here, here and there, at once.

Today I bikes 53.94 miles from Westcott State Park to Kingston, Ontario. The weather--the drizzle, the downpours, the spits, the blue sky--was wonderful. The chain was wet, full of grit. The tires often slipped in cracks on the road. There were occasional aches and twinges. It's was a wonderful day to bike to my Warmshower host for the night. In the end, at the end of the day, after a perfect ride, it all is worthwhile.

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