Had a blast yesterday. Just realized, I think it's technically the first time I ever biked from one state into another. Lol. From the north side of Greenfield Mass, up to Guilford Vermont.
I brought everything I needed for the ride. There were no stores along the way. Glad I brought my swim trunks and towel to cool off before biking the last hour back to the truck. I'd sweated so much, the thin, khaki colored sun pants I wear over my bike shorts looked like I'd peed myself. They dry quick on the downhills though, so it was fine when I got back to the truck.
For food, I pre-made a pinto bean mix with sliced raw onion, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, pickled banana peppers and home made Southwest sauce. After mixing it all in a small mixing bowl, I packed it it into a double walled, insulated, stainless steel container. On the 1.5 hour drive to Greenfield Mass, I had it in the truck's dometic fridge, so the container was super chilled before I started the bike ride. I packed a couple of large wheat/low carb wraps on the bike with a plastic plate. Worked great! So when I stopped an hour into the ride for my first wrap, the bean mix was still nice and cool. I brought a silicone covered spoon to help scoop it out of the insulated container. I saved enough bean mix for a 2nd wrap a couple hours later when I got back to the covered bridge. Way better than eating a cliff bar every hour. I also brought a couple large apples, a peeler and a paring knife. Peeling an apple is the only safe way to get rid of the pesticides IMHO (washing doesn't work well because of the wax they spray on). I use the paring knife, so I don't break my front tooth crown biting into the apple.
Anyhoo
I got to the bridge about 1.5 hours into the bike ride, then I did the loop you see at the top of the map pic above. that loop was a sh!t ton of climbing. My bike computer decided there were 8 climbs on this ride, and the last 2 climbs were each over 2 miles long. The very last climb had 560ft of elevation gain. Thank God I have such low gearing on my bike. There were multiple times I was fully in the granny gear and only going about 2mph.
I can't explain why, but I had a blast doing this ride yesterday. I could have easily driven it in the truck, but it just feels like way more of an adventure biking it. Biking speed is just fast enough to keep me interested, but not so fast where stuff whizzes by. And it's quiet enough, I can hear the river in one ear, and listen to an audiobook in the other.
Most of the time the trees gave me shade, almost zero bugs, I was by the river half the time so I didn't have to worry about water. This photo shows the cnoc bag and sawyer water filter combo i use to filter water. I had two, 1 liter bottles. I fully drank 2 liters and about 2/3rds of a liter after leaving the bridge to head back to the truck. I probably could have gotten by on just the 2 liters I started with, but I was far far happier not worrying about that and being able to drink as much as I wanted.
Here's my water filter setup The hanging bag weighs less than half an empty bottle. I could just scoop water with one bottle, screw the filter on top of the bottle and squeeze into the other, but then you have a contaminated bottle. It also takes more effort to squeeze the water, and you have stop occasionally to unscrew the bottle a little to let some air in, and then resume squeezing. The bag just lets gravity push the water through the filter. It takes about 5 minutes per bottle, which gives me time to snack and relax before moving on. If anything, I kind of like the forced break. Sometimes I get into go go go mode, and it's helpful to take a break occasionally.
I changed the wheels to the tougher, heavier rims I have with bigger tires. 55mm bead to bead vs the 42mm tires I have for all road riding. The bigger tires made me slower, but it was more comfortable for sure. I'll probably ride the 55's when I do the bike tour from my parents, and when I do the Vermont rides. They drop my average speed from 11mph to 9-10 on the long rides, but it's worth the speed penalty being more comfortable. I'd rather take an extra hour to ride 50 miles and be comfortable than be miserable the entire ride.
I took a couple videos. First one is of the covered bridge In the video player, in the bottom right there's a little square thing to the left of the flag you can click on to make the video expand to the full screen.
The second one was on the Mass side, close to where i parked.
I brought stuff to shower at the truck before driving the 1.5 hours home. Also had a nice indian dinner from the fridge before driving back. Yay having a microwave!
anyhoo, here's a photo dump from the ride yesterday. if reading this from a computer, just click on a photo to start the slideshow, use left/right arrow keys to scroll.
Retaining a little water from yesterday. It was a good hard ride. Going to do my easy recovery ride today, eat right and hope to see a good weigh-in tomorrow. Tomorrow will mark 1 year since I started my weight loss journey. Was hoping to break 220 officially. If I don't, it's ok. I got super close.
I saw 220.6 Sunday. Did a hard ride Sunday (25 miles) and yesterday (32miles). So even though I saw 222.4 this morning, I'm pretty sure that's just water. So I'm going to go do my 11 mile, easy loop and I'm going to go easy on it. Then I'll just putter around the house today and see what happens tomorrow. Wish me luck. Technically if I see 220.4 or lower that's <100kg and that's my main goal. to weigh less than 100kg's from here on out.
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