After three days without talking to a soul, except a few country folk, it felt really good to reside comfortably at the home of a fellow builder and bike enthusiast named Dakota.
He represents the TBR crew in Troy and has built some of the coolest bikes I've ever seen.
We went dumpster diving on a bike he built which is two bikes tall and almost three long, with a trailer and balanced metal triangles extended horizontally towards the ground s the bike can stand on it's own.
We got tons of bagels and then spent a few dollars on groceries and I cooked some pasta for him and his friend Erica, although I think I made it too spicy.
I was really fiending beer and asked Dakota if he would buy me something supremely American; big, strong, cold, since I was STUPIDLY not allowed to drink in the country.
He came back with Steel reserve and I drank it as we talked of trips and governments and bikes.
The two had made it to Toronto on thier bikes for Bikebike in august, and laughed when I told them I strayed from the valley. We then looked at topographic maps to see just what I went over. Some steep hills my friends.
I woke up too late and stayed in town too long.
My idea was to use Albany as a stop to fix any problems I may have had up until now: Navigational, mechanical, and residential. See I knew it would take two days to get to NYC from here but I had nowhere lined up to stay along the way.
Dakota not having a computer, I did what I could at the mall Kiosk to find someone on couchsurfing or Warmshowers. My options were Hudson, NY or Poughkeepsie, in terms of a place to stay and neither of them answered my emails, so I decided to just get on with it.
It was just after 4PM when I left and it would get dark around six, what a write off, I didn't get anything done, and I was hungry, luckily I had a bag of Cinnamon raisin bagels from last nights haul.
It had been raining all day and didn't look to be letting up so I just biked, stopping once in a town library to use the computer to see if anyone had responded to my emails, they hadn't.
I biked until 8:30 before getting into hudson and finding all the hotels far too expensive, one lady helped me find one about 8 miles north called Jocelyn's motel which was only 50 bucks for the night, and not too bad.
She then added that business wasn't particularly booming during the weekday and she could let me have a fancy room for 60 bucks, and I wouldn't have to go back the way I came.
DONE.
I took a hot shower and then set out on foot to explore the town.
It was quaint and inviting, the type of place couples from big cities go to for a weekend getaway, Bed and breakfasts, book shops, right along the Hudson.
I caught a bit of the "hip"scene in some bar/bookstore I can't remember the name of.
A bunch of mid-twenty somethings and older type intellectuals co-mingling around a bowl or two of gourmet pretzels and mustard, drinking Dark Ale and discussing Literature.
I wanted a beer so badly, but was mostly concerned with food, so I ate some of their pretzels and asked them for a cheap food recommendation.
They were amazed I had biked so far and invited me back to a show they were having in an hour or so, I said I might stop by, but knew I wouldn't.
This trip isn't about socializing, at least this part of it isn't, it would do me more good to sleep and eat then drink and listen to music.
I ate in my hotel room, and used the lobby computer for a little bit and fell asleep.
4:30 AM my alarm went off, and I got up. Yesterday was so unproductive that I had 125 miles to go today, and if it was possible, I had to get going early, I skipped the continental breakfast and was on the road by 5AM.
I broke the day up mentally in to two sections, One, was Hudson to Poughkeepsie about 40 something miles, and the other would be Poughkeepsie to NYC, about 85 M.
What can i say, I just biked, and pushed hard, focusing on my breathing and motion and nothing else.
The wind was against me all day and it rained at times, the wind was frustrating.
I made poughkeepsie by mid-day, around 11:00 AM and stopped at a farmers market. DAMN something smelled good.
And that's when I had the best pulled pork sandwich of my life. Made fresh on 'HawgWild's'
bbq with homemade sauce, delicious!
I could only eat half and put the rest in my bag, on I rode.
It started getting really beautiful as they highway (route 9) would connect with the parallel running Hudson River, and Poughkeepsie had some huge bridges that were really cool to look at.
You can really tell how bad suburban sprawl has hit New York because in Poughkeepsie you can take the metro- not an amtrak- a metropolitan train to the city for 14.00 bucks! That's over 80 miles!
It was tempting, but it was still early so I rode.
I rode and rode, right along the beautiful large hudson river which hosted beautiful hills off in the distance. I would come up a slope and see three major hills in the midst, and I started looking for where the river would break into a bay and become NYC, but I couldn't see it, just hills.
I would go back down and only see road, then up again, and hills, and then down,
Until I realized that the middle hill I had been staring at wasn't a hill at all, it was a skyline.
In the distance it had looked like a mound of faraway hills, but as I got closer I could see the distiguished colours of grey and the sharper outlines.
I was still a good 40 Miles off when I could clearly see Manhattan, I would go down around a bend and come back up and see it a little clearer, it almost made me wheep. I couldn't help it, five days of cycling through the country and now to be approaching something so gargantuan and profound, it was shocking.
Soon I would be in the largest city in the world and meet a thousand people and find my friends and go to Bikekill, one of the coolest annual bike events world wide.
I rode until Yonkers and couldn't wait any longer, I had to go play, so I took the metro for ten bucks and rolled into grand central station around 4PM...
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