Yesterday’s ride was excellent. They say it is hard to make the good times into interesting reading but as I am still grinning about what a great ride I had so I’ll give it a try.

On the way out of Syracuse I stopped by Melo Velo bike shop . What a cool shop and Darren helped me out with a few details on my bike. I didn’t see a whole lot of Syracuse but it seemed to have a lot of interesting old buildings and a lot of brick. There’s something about real stone and brick that makes things seem more formidable than newer communities where things seem less substantial made out of wood and plastic siding. Right outside the bike shop was the Empire State Bike Trail which I followed all day.

The Empire State Trail near Syracuse follows the Old Erie Canal and it is great to ride. Long uninterrupted stretches of smooth concrete or crushed stone trails. Mostly running along the old canal with trees on the other side. After being a traffic warrior the last few days I found it so relaxing to just cruise. I still wasn’t going very fast but that seemed to matter less when I was so happy where I was. This is the kind of trail I would ride just to wind down at the end of the day and I felt no rush to be anywhere. If my ride took all day, and it did, it wouldn’t matter because there were no cars with their incessant need to hurry all around me. 

Leaving Syracuse had me worried because there was a stop sign seemingly every 100 yards and the trail did a lot of jumping back and forth across the car roads.  It was at least protected and a nice place to ride. About the time I started to get anxious at averaging 4 mph for the last 1.5 hours the trail finally split away from the main road and went off on it’s own. 

It was a bright blue sky with big puffy white clouds day. The sun would skip in and out behind the big cotton balls to offer up some shade but it never felt gloomy. I was warm and sweating, but it was one of those sickeningly perfect days where it just felt wonderful to be moving through the air and any cynicism or criticisms I had about what was around me lost out to unicorns and rainbows. I felt a bit of a buzzing high just from feeling the wind over my skin. And I was enjoying myself immensely. I felt strong all day and just pedaled along feeling good. 

I grabbed lunch at a Subway in Chittenango which is where Dave Mirra was born (probably not in the actual Subway). I couldn’t help by think about him as I was riding along and especially the young Dave who I first met. The mannerisms of the knucklehead dudes working the Subway reminded me a lot of Dave. There was a tiny little skatepark in town that looked like a mini replica of the old Greenville park, Dave must have had some part in it. I couldn’t think of what to do there on my heavily loaded touring bike with a tall seat post but I had to at least ride over some of the park in honor of where I was. 

I popped back on the trail and kept pedaling lost in thoughts of the old days for a long time. It seems crazy I got to do vert shows and tour with Dave if only for a short while. The trail was good for that kind of riding and wondering. Flat, smooth and easy to follow. An intersection with a road every mile or two, sometimes even longer. You’d maybe consider it boring but I’d call it more a simple pleasure. Pedaling through the woods with no cars at an easy rate with no stress is all good to my mind… for my mind. 

When I rolled into Rome, NY there was suddenly a lot to see. First up the trail suddenly got a bit wonky. The trail signs that so far had been as clear as day directing me through every turn and jog got unclear. There was still signs they just weren’t placed at the intersections. The trail itself turned into two single tracks and was for the first time of the whole day not perfect but muddy. As the trail crossed into a city park two teenage kids on motocross bikes in full gear were roaring down the bike path and turning into the big green park cutting ruts around trees and picnic tables. They weren’t following each other, just both ripping around the area in what seemed to be random motion. They were on real motos too, not like 50s or something. At the same time an unhoused person was slowly pushing a grocery cart with her belongings up the trail seemingly unbothered by the MX bikes darting by. Also, there was an ambulance in the park with lights flashing loading someone on to a stretcher. There was a lot of shirtless middle aged men with sweaty beer bellies and their high school mullets still intact getting in and out of rusty Camaros, lifting the open the rear hatch to grab beers or slamming closed the hood with greasy hands. It felt like the volume of the world had been turned up to full blast as I pedaled through the melee. Moto bikes whizzing around with four strokes thumping, ambulance siren wailing, Camaro’s engines revving, random yelling, bitingly loud Harley’s suddenly accelerating out of parking spots and drunkenly missing shifts and scarping a foot peg, classic rock echoing out songs I knew every word of without even wanting too, and the silent shuffle of the grocery cart pusher who smiled at me as if this was a normal day. At the end of the park the trail here had a big closed sign across it and said to follow a detour. There was no detour signs and after a circle around looking for them I just rode past the closed sign and didn’t find anything stopping me. I did find silence.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m bagging on Rome by the way, I feel like a passenger on this trip. My bike and my legs are taking me for a ride and I’m just watching it all go by.

Then things were simple again– just pedal along and stay on the path. I thought about what a massive challenge making this bike path that runs all the way from Buffalo to NYC must have been. Whoever or whatever group got this together has done an amazing job. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been linking together all these different routes and working things through all these little towns and communities. The minor imperfections of the trail surface and signage near Rome are not a detraction, just an interesting part of the experience. 

72 miles (116km) covered today at a very leisurely happy pace.