Day 48: And then there were three

Today marks two very important occasions. Today marks only five days until we finish the trip and is the day we finally separated from the Philly boys.

We’ve had five or six times where we thought we would be separating from Pat and Leo throughout the past month of biking with them but today was the real one. We started the day traveling together for about 20 miles on the same Canal trail that we were on yesterday before getting to a crossroads where Leo and Pat were going north and we were going east. Tears were shed, snacks were eaten and Pat promised to send Dustin an ‘I love you’ message every night. 

Once the boys were gone it was quiet. No movie quotes, random yelling, or old jokes. We had a 96 mile day ahead of us and we were trying to mentally prepare ourselves for another 76 miles. Our preparation wasn’t enough. Today was another hard day. We have been pretty lucky with heat so far on the trip but we are actively biking into the heat wave and it has been ROUGH. We had a little rain in the beginning of the day which cooled us off but pretty quickly we were sweating our butts off and had only gone 40 miles. There was a moment when we all looked at each other and decided alright at mile 50 we will take our lunch. It was a good plan, a great plan even. We would’ve been right past the halfway point of our ride and been all energized again for the rest of the day. The only problem was that at the 50 mile mark we checked for restaurants and the closest one was 11 miles further down the road, because upstate NY hates us. At mile 55 I was fantasizing about the strawberry breakfast bar I had eaten 30 miles earlier, and all three of us were super low on energy. But we made it! And the world rewarded us with some absolutely delicious food in a small little diner for a 3 pm lunch. 

38 miles to go. Ugh. It doesn’t sound like much with the miles we’ve been putting in lately but it’s still another 3-ish hours in the saddle and our butts after over a month are sore to say the least. Some highlights from the end were that we were playing a lot of music, we found a cool stream at one point, and Dustin got attacked by a wasp. He said that his lesson was learned that he shouldn’t bike with his shirt open but he would keep wearing it like that because it was much cooler.

 

(This isn’t just a shirtless picture blessing you, if you look closely on his left side there’s the wasp sting)

We finally roll into Julia’s aunt’s friend Tracy’s house around 7:30 PM and got a standing ovation from everyone there. We got a 5-star treatment with a pasta dinner, a pool, drinks, and showers. Best part was the pool though because somehow this is the first time I’ve been swimming on the trip and it was so relaxing. 10/10 experience. Julia swam too but Dustin wouldn’t because he is a hot tub only kind of guy. 

It was revealed during lunch as well that the place we were staying tonight was on the East side of Syracuse and tomorrows destination is going to be on the west side of Utica. So today was 96 miles and tomorrow will be 38 miles, so obviously we are balancing our days well. But an easy day means it’s pretty much a rest day which is going to be good recovery for the last few days of our trip!