Riding the Hudson River Valley

Today is the 3rd day on our Hudson Valley tour, a rest day.

It's been a while since I did any sort of "bike touring", which just means that you go from one place to another over the course of a week or so with a group of cyclists of varying abilities. You camp out every night, but you don't have to carry your own stuff. There's SAG service all the way, and most of the ovenight locations (college campuses or elementary school grounds, in our case) offer dinner or breakfast in the morning. Kind of like GOBA, but with fewer riders.

The ride goes from Albany to NYC over 6 days, an average of 40-some miles per day. The object, I'm finding, is to take your time with it, ride at a sightseeing pace, linger in the small towns along the way. I admit that it has taken me a few days to embrace that rhythm and learn to ride slow.Dave opted to load panniers onto his Surly for reasons entirely lost to me. As long as someone is hauling my camping gear and driving a SAG, I prefer to ride as unencumbered as possible. In any case, Dave is riding even slower than usual because of this, and I'm trying (I really am) to moderate my pace.

Once I get to upload some photos, I'll be able to better describe our experiences. For now, I'll just mention that we saw some amazing scenery, met a lot of interesting people, and rode some of the coolest roads. More later...