Day Seven

And so ends our first week on the road. It was also our shortest. 60 miles, from Morrisville, NY to Ithaca, NY. We're staying with Jason's friend Carla.

We woke up to our friend Dan bellowing out his window, "Gentalman, start your engines!" Chatted with him while we packed, and got a nice early start.

All of our excitement today happened before we even started riding. As we pulled into the gas station this morning to get some breakfast, a guy at the pumped said, "Hey! Is one of you Greg?" Quite shocked, I told him that I was. Turns out it was Paul, the owner of the campground we were supposed to stay at. We explained what happened, and Paul's wife told us we may have to sell ourselves if we run out of money. Doubtful.

Moments after breakfast, my clip unscrewed from my show into my pedal. In an attempt to retrieve my clip, I broke my pedal by stripping the bolt, so I was forced to ride clipless on my right foot for the day. Oh well.

We had a beautiful ride to Ithaca. Jason had a little trouble with bags, and got a flat tire about 2 miles from Carla's, but we made it through relatively comfortably.

We took a ride in to the bike shop in town to get things looked at. For me, it was my fork and pedal, and Jason was searching for a new back rack. The guy said he couldn't have a fork for me in 2 days, but gave us the number of a guy that could. Apparently my pedal is reversible and just has a test ride pad on one side. Oops.

So, we took a ride to Swan Cycles to see Glen the bike master. Glen works at Cornell, and runs a makeshift shop out of his home. He doesn't do it for (much) profit, but just because he loves to bike. I got a brand new Surly Long-Haul Trucker fork, installed, for only $94. Absolutely amazing. That's probably about $50 less than any other shop would be able to do the job. Glen is the man. Jason got a new rack too for an incredible price.

We returned to Carla's very happy, and ate a huge dinner of steak and absolutely delicious pasta. Then we took a ride into town to get ice cream and drive around. Today was the best day yet.

Tomorrow: A rest day.