Day 3: NYC to Middletown CT (109.1 miles)

Day 3 Full Flickr Photo Set

Today was our first venture out alone on the open road. GPS, we lay our fate in your hands.... here it goes...

We had our fun yesterday, but now it's back to business and more serious than ever. The ride from Philly to New York, although long and hard, was at least preplanned and we just pedalled along mindlessly. Today, we're on our own. We got up early, shook off the sleep and took to the city streets.































Within about 5 miles, Captain GPS had us merging onto a highway/bridge clearly marked "Cars Only." Hmmm, not a good start. But, with a little human interaction (ewwww, do people still do that?) we figured our way onto the bike friendly way across the same road. OK, hot on the trail.

















We got out of the city OK, but somewhere along the way we lost Jeremy's frame pump. Part of the cost of doing business on tour, I guess. You can only ever hope for a tenuous hold on any possession you have with you. Oh yeah, that includes Jeremy's wallet! Best we figure, he lost that on the ferry across the Hudson. Tough break Jer, but we gotchoo covered bro.

We also noticed that after about 180 miles, our tires could stand to be topped off, lest we start blowing flats (foreshadowing: dun dun duuuuunnnn!). So, after trucking along the suburban outskirts of New York for a spell, we GPSed our way to the nearest bike shop.

Huzzah! We threw open the doors to Pedal and Pump in Darien, CT and explained our story to Mike Smallidhe, shop owner. Mike was the first in what we would find to be a string of amazingly helpful bike enthusiasts and well wishers along our journey. He offered us his expertise and water- sweet sweet water!
































The rest of the day brought little variation. We trucked along Route 1 for most of the day towards Boston, basically tracing the Route One Stage Race in reverse. Here's a shot of Jeremy considering clearing this draw bridge...
















Lots of pedaling, a few stops to down some fluids and smooth sailing allllll the way. As a matter of fact, that back tire's looking pretty good, Kevin. Pretty strong and impenetrab......... awwwww, never mind. Kevin wins! First flat of bike tour! WOOOOOT!































Moments before Kevin sprung a flat, we were discussing the beauty of the setting sun and the danger that accompanies it at a gas station stop. We still had 25 miles to go before our scheduled Motel stop and figured we'd have enough time to make it before dark. The flat set us back a bit. So, we sprung into action. Kevin and Jeremy worked on preping Kevin's bike, Peter strapped the wheel onto his back to sprint back to the gas station to fill the tire and I worked on GPSing us to a closer Motel. I found us one that was about 17 miles away as opposed to 25 miles away, so after burning some daylight fixing the tire, we shot off. Normally, a 17 mile shot would take us about an hour, but soon enough the sun was down and so was visibility. We ended up crusing down rural forest roads with little to no shoulder and paved terrain that put cobble stone roads to shame. I was too busy trying to keep myself upright to take any actual photos of what this ride looked like, but here's an artist's (my) rendition of what it was like following the team on this leg of the journey. On the right, you can see Peter's blinky in the lead, behind him is Jeremy with no blinky, and on the left, much closer in perspective is Kevin's blinky.





















This dicey trip significantly reduced our speed and extended our ride time. At this point, we were locked into staying at this destination motel, regardless of cost or conditions. Our hope was to find a place that we could have one of us check into as a single tenant, and then after a bit, have the other 3 sneak in to split the room 4 ways (yeah, that old trick). For this reason, it's important to find "motels" as opposed to "hotels" because motels typically have individual outside room entrances, whereas hotels usually have one main lobby entrance. As you might expect, the proprietors of these establishments are well aware of this scheme and take steps to reduce this as best they can. They don't LOSE any profit from room-sharing as we're not taking up anymore resources than a single person would, however, they don't gain anything from it and they'll make you pay out the nose for 4 people. If this place wasn't conducive to that arrangement, we'd hoped to move on to the next closest motel until we could score. So we're hoping we get lucky.

About a quarter mile down the road from the motel, I broke off from the group to check out the motel. As I checked in, the desk clerk was curious as to my attire and lack of a car (afterall, a motel is designed as a motor lodge). I explained that I was on a bike trip from Philly to Boston and for added secuirty (and, yes, I felt a little bad about it) mentioned that it was for Katrina awareness (and now it was...). This was a secuirty feature that the team had discussed mentioning so as to soften the blow if we got caught with 4 people in a room. If caught, we'd rather not get price gouged or worse yet, have the police involved (as had happened to friends of mine on tour), so we were hoping to get a little pity. Plus this helped justify the reason as to why anyone would try to do such a feat. It's hard to explain to most people that we're doing this "just cuz." (Later we decided that our official response to "why" we were doing this is because "life is too short"). All in all, the clerk smiled and happily gave me a room with no more questions after this discussion.
















I got in, dropped my gear, and called the team waiting around the corner to let them know we're in. Meanwhile, they were scouting for a diner and found one about a mile down the road. In typical bike tour fashion, we scuttled in and devoured everything the waitress put in front of us.
















After dinner, we shucked back to the motel, snuck in, showered and collasped. 6 hours sleep and we ride again...






























Map of Day 3 Route: