Day 7 – Little Falls to Amsterdam, 44 miles

Word of warning – this post rambles a bit more than normal.  Looking forward to a good night’s sleep I am.
Second to last day and I still haven’t told you about the gear we are carrying.  You know that Bruce is pulling Dax and I’m pulling a Bob Trailer.  The boys are each carrying these Ortlieb panniers.  Bobby has the smaller set and Terran’s are slightly larger.  These are great bags, waterproof and highly reflective.
In one of Terran’s bags he is carrying all our bad weather gear.  Rain coats, rain pants and windbreakers.  These needed to be in an easy to get to location if the the weather turned on us.  Thankfully we didn’t run into anything that necessitated us using any of this (except for windbreakers a morning or two) but you know how it goes – if we had not brought it with us, it probably would have rained every day.  In Terran’s other bag he carries our food items.  This includes bars, drink mixes, etc.  Again easy to get to on the trail.  Bobby carried our toiletries in one bag (all contained within individual small bags within a packing cube) and one of the big packing cubes containing clothes you see below.  He also got a few pairs of shoes shoved into the bags as well.
The packing cubes you see above were an idea I came up with a few weeks before the trip.  I knew we needed a way to keep our clothes organized and separated as we would be in different rooms each night.  These are the Eagle Creek packing cubes – the ones that allow for separation between clean and dirty clothes.  We already owned some and used them pretty regularly for other trips, but I went ahead and ordered bags for the kids too (conveniently in the colors we already use when assigning the kids’ things).  They look pretty full here, but honestly it’s mostly because we had just done laundry so nothing was compressed yet.  Everyone got two sets of biking clothes, two sets of normal clothes, a lightweight hoody and extra socks/underwear and something light to sleep in.  Oh and everyone has a pair of shoes (not in the bags).  That’s it.  As it turns out we’ve been able to do laundry a bit more than we were expecting so maybe we could have packed even lighter. Anyway, most of those bags go into my trailer.  The red/yellow bag on the end is an Arkel. Each of the boys has one of these on their bike as well.  One carries tools, the other just extra stuff we might have on a day to day basis.  Bruce carries the first aid kit and extra tubes in the bags on the WeeHoo.

Ok so that’s the gear.  Hopefully I haven’t scared too many of you away and you’ve hung in for the funny stories of the day.  It was a beautiful morning and after a quick breakfast (McDonald’s  – hey it was next door) we were on the trail only to stop about 4 miles into the ride because we saw this: It’s the Herkimer Estate and a history teacher we met a few days ago told us we would pass right by it so to be on the look out.  Herkimer was a brigadier general in the Revolutionary War.  We jumped off the bikes to take a quick look around. We even got one of the kids to take a picture of Bruce and I – something that doesn’t happen often enough. And look – a family shot as well.   We got back to riding after that.  Around mile 12 I had a bit of excitement.  Bruce and Bobby had stopped to pee so Terran and I rode ahead.  About a quarter mile up we hit a patch of sand that was deeper than it looked.  I had my foot out already and was trying to stop my bike, but when the trailer wheel hit I could no  longer control it and went down in what Terran described as an “ungraceful attempt to leap off the bike.”  Thanks kid.  I was fine and he helped me back up and we walked our bikes through the slop and then waited so we could warn Bruce and Bobby as they came up on it.  After realizing I had gone down Bruce stopped to make sure I was ok.  The conversation went something like this:

Bruce – You ok?
Me – Yeah, I’m good.
Bruce – You sure?
Me – Yup, was a pretty soft fall.
Bruce (looking intently at my shoulder) – Come here…
Me (leans towards him and shows him my arm) – Ok
Bruce slaps my arm which produces a rather loud WHACK.
Me and kids – blink blink blink
Bruce with a rather sheepish grin – Yeah, you had a bug.  Nothing to do with the fall. Uh, guess I should have said something.
Me and Kids double over laughing until Terran manages to straighten himself up and in a pretty good mimic of his father, pretends to slap my shoulder and says, “Good Job Soldier!”
Cue much more laughter.

Anyway we were back to riding after that.  Here’s a peek at the part of the trail we are on now.
We stopped for lunch in Canajoharie.  You know you’re eating where the locals go when the first question they ask most anyone who walks in the door is “Do you need a menu?”  They just handed them to us, btw.And very lamely I have no pics from the rest of the day.  We kept riding the trail until we hit pavement just outside of Amsterdam.  I should note that for about 4 miles we were on a section of the trail where they apparently allow horses.  The trail was full of pits from their hooves and not really fun to ride.  The last half mile to the hotel was ALL UPHILL.  And steep at that.  We all walked.  And in fact we jumped hotels as well.  When we got the top we were staring at a motel, and the place were supposed to stay was still another half mile away but past the interstate exchange.  No thanks, especially since we’d have to ride back through it again in the morning.

To make up for not riding up the hill we somehow found the energy to walk down into town, only to order pizza and ask them to deliver it back to our room but to please give us a head start as we were walking back.  Yup we walked those hills twice.  At least the second time was without bikes.

Albany tomorrow.  Last day of the ride.  Current plan is to go straight to the hotel and drop gear, then ride the bikes to the Hudson and back to complete the ride.  We’ll let you know how it goes.