Day 2 Monday

After a nice healthy breakfast of pancakes the size of pizzas at Lloyds of Lowville, at 8:52 again (coincidence?) I headed south helped along by very favorable North winds. I started to actually have fun… the sun was out, my legs felt fine, I enjoyed a tasty power bar or four. Time flew by and before you or I knew it, 69 miles later I was in Little Falls.

Little Falls is an old manufacturing town on the Mohawk River. It is loaded with huge 19th century factories (most of them empty) large houses (and banks!) At one time it was one the biggest cheese towns in the US, loading 360,000 pounds of cheese on the train one day in 1866. (no lie, I just read it on one of the nice info signs all around town) (OK it might have been one year, I don’t remember)

It is also the site of one of the first canals in the Americas, they built one here in 1795 so that small barges could navigate from Albany to Buffalo pre-Erie canal!

Anyway, as I was rolling in to the motel around 3pm, a couple of other cyclists say hello, and I find that they’ve just ridden from Los Angeles! (on their way to Boston) And had done 80 miles today coming from Syracuse. These people looked pretty slim, let me tell you! The best part of this was that the motelier gave me the group rate!

I had a chat with a couple of them over dinner… one of them (Mike) says he had 22 flats so far on their trip… and they did 100 miles plus through the desert when it was 103 degrees! And that the oldest of their group is 73!!

He also said that several people dropped out, due to injuries and accidents (two with cars!) Mike apparently has done this sort of long-distance touring all over the world… and when I asked him if he ever biked across Austrailia, he said "no," but there is a how-to book about it… the first sentence is: "you can bike across Austrailia, but 50% of the people who attempt it have perished."

My only problem is my route--I really don’t know where I'm going tomorrow, or the next day… somehow I have to traverse the Berkshires, but where? I’ll let you know.