Day 82: Albany, NY and the Mohawk-Hudson Bikeway

Wow. I'm in Albany. I saw and rode along the Hudson at the end of today. It really feels as though I'm close to completing this quixotic journey. Three more days of riding, with stops in Rhinebeck and West Point on Thursday and Friday, and I should be home!

Today, with just a hair under 50 miles of travel, was an excellent day of riding. Part of that excellence, as was the case for yesterday (for which astute readers will note there was only a photo blog post -- this will have to do for the "color"), is that I stayed dry. And by that I don't mean that I skipped wine with dinner. Rather, I was pretty convinced by the weather reports that were predicting rain and thunder storms on my path with 80% and higher certainty, that today (and yesterday) would be challenging weather days. But today was actually sunny for large segments of the ride and, although there were threatening clouds hovering at different times, nothing came of it. I even had a tailwind for a lot of the day! Yesterday had headwinds, but, again, the threatening clouds stayed just that -- threatening.

So, in the game of low expectations being exceeded, today and yesterday definitely fit the bill. Which, almost by itself, made for good biking days.

Today's ride included approximately 35 miles on a paved, yes paved, bike path -- the under-publicized  Mohawk-Hudson Bikeway. It ranks up there (IMHO) with the best portions of the Pere Marquette trail and even Coeur d'Alenes. The terrain was curvy, with elevation ups and downs (which keeps it interesting), and the scenery was highly varied -- from paths through canopies of trees, to routes alongside the Mohawk River and its various locks, to urban passages (Schenectady strikes me as a pretty cool city), to travel by the lesser-known Cohoes Falls. Really good stuff. I didn't even look for parallel back country roads.

And did I mention that I'm in Albany which is, like, a real city? I'm ensconced in a Hampton Inn and having dinner at a restaurant with real Bordeaux glasses and red wine choices other than "house." By contrast, my stay last night in Amsterdam  (Day 81's destination) was at an America's Best Value Inn that I would politely describe as -- putrid. And the wine last night? Well, it was Fetzer red in a miniature airplane-size bottle, illegally procured (in the sense that the Billiards Hall, literally the only place open within miles with a booze license, wasn't supposed to sell it to me to go), and consumed in my hotel room with a takeout pizza (which actually wasn't bad).

Civilization -- and, by that, I mean Manhattan -- here I come!

Here are today's route and metrics:

Day 81: Amsterdam, NY

OK, this post is late and I'm punting by just  (a) putting up pictures and (b) saying a few words about the ride in Day 82's post (to come).

But I wouldn't leave you without the route (46 miles) and metrics, would I?

Day 80: Little Falls, NY

Not a particularly blog-worthy day, so I'll keep this -- like today's ride -- short. The ride was exactly 40 miles, from Rome, NY to Little Falls, NY, but that was a good thing because I battled a pretty stiff headwind the whole time. I also battled the weather forecast, which, having been benign until late last night, suddenly showed a 60% chance of thunderstorms along my route by 2 p.m. So I wasn't in a lingering, taking photos, mode (or mood).

I do need to report that I found an about 5 mile section of the Erie Canal Towpath that was paved -- so that was good, although it was marred in parts by tree roots having pushed up the asphalt into bumpy ridges (anyone who has ridden the Greenway along the Hudson above 96th street will know what I'm talking about). But enjoying the brief paved section spurred me to try harder tonight to find an online resource that would specify with more precision which portions of the Towpath are paved and which are not. Especially since I expect to be riding in the rain on Tuesday (into Amsterdam) and Wednesday (into Albany and, for my purposes, since I'll then be turning South, the end of the Towpath), and the thought of doing that on the crushed stone is not particularly appealing. I think I was successful in my research, and there do appear to be some additional significant length paved sections ahead, but the proof will be in the riding!

Except for that one section of the Towpath, the roads today were pretty unappealing -- mostly large, with heavy traffic and, even when traffic was light, not passing through particularly scenic areas (e.g., the outskirts of Utica). I did briefly detour into Ilion, motivated by a recent Times story on the importance of Remington to the town and the possibility of the gun manufacturer moving out because of prospective state-wide gun control legislation, which, the story speculated, might spell the end for the town. Which, based on my brief observations, wouldn't surprise me. Ilion seemed pretty downtrodden already, even with Remington in place (my apologies to any Ilion-ites in my readership) -- although, to my chagrin, I didn't locate the actual Remington factory because I kept mistakenly searching for Smith & Wesson on Google Maps (ah, the perils of middle-aged memory).

Here are today's route and metrics: