The heatwave finally broke and boy did the weather feel fabulous! We actually woke up to temperatures in the upper 40s, which is pretty chilly, but no complaints here!

John was working on Saturday, so my ride was solo. I wanted a longer ride but didn’t really want to bike down to Saratoga alone. I’ve done it before and funny enough got a flat tire. Or not funny LOL.  I decided I would do closer loops to home so that I could get help a little faster than if I was stranded halfway to Saratoga.

I love to ride in the mornings. It’s not as hot and with the sun lower, there is a lot more shade from trees. Plus less traffic. It’s win-win all around!  I did a large loop by the airport, which has some nice climbs and lots of open road:

You know summer is in full swing when the chickory blooms:

My new bike jersey:

One truly annoying thing about bike jerseys is that there is no vanity sizing. In fact, it’s like the opposite. It’s soul crushing sizing LOL. You need to get shirts that are 3 times the size of your normal shirt to have a chance of it fitting. So I have an XXL and it’s snug on my hips. Looser in the shoulders – so obviously made for a slim-hipped woman and not a curvy one.  But, It’s very comfortable and cool (even though it’s black).

After about 15 miles, I stopped in the shade for a snack:

This would be all sunny if it was later. Did I mention I like morning riding?

This is also a new item I received for my birthday – a wrist mirror!

It’s adjustable. It rotates around and opens and closes.  The only thing that I need to get used to is that things look small in the mirror and really are much closer than they look.  And lots more freckles on view as well – 50 sunscreen applied.

I finished up at 33.5 miles on the day. Since it was morning, it was too early for a cupcake, but I did stop at the bakery in the last couple of miles to bring one home for later!  This was a butterbeer cuppie with an iced latte consumed next to our water feature.

That made for a nice afternoon snack!

I also treated Mr. Fuji to a bath. I have to admit I haven’t done much more than rinse it off in the last couple of years, but it was time for a full on scrub down with the grit:

Yuck.  I got out a scrub brush, toothbrush, degreaser and a magic eraser and now Mr. Fuji hasn’t looked this clean since I got it!

And wouldn’t you know a bird pooped on the handlebars while it was in the sun drying off. Gotta love it.

Now I just need to grease the chain and gears before the next ride and show off the sparkle! 🙂

I had a serious itch for biking this weekend. When we hit almost 70 last week, the roads were really too sloppy and wet for riding. It was mid 40s and sunny Saturday morning, John was out of town, and I said “What the heck – I’m doing it!”.

It was warm enough at first, but after about 5 miles in, the sun went behind the clouds and the wind made it feel a bit raw.  Right about this point:

The roads actually were still a bit sloppy from all the melting snow as well and were full of sand and grit. I’m actually a little surprised I didn’t get a flat tire.  My legs were filthy after my hour long ride and so was my bike!

Eeek! Needs a washing before the next ride.

The ride felt okay. The gritty roads made it a bit of slog, not to mention I have indoor biking legs LOL.  My hill legs are still on winter hiatus 😀   I think I’m just going to keep the bike out now and dress warm. No snowstorms expected, so if I can get out a couple times this week, I’ll be happy!

On the organization front (which was one of my goals for 2018), I finally got some file folders installed in my trunk to organize my guitar music.  Long-time readers will recognize my beloved Jenny Lind restoration.

Yes, I know the floral file folders don’t match the trunk, but they are pretty and I asked for and received them as a Christmas present.  Now my music is separated by composer or time period. All I need now is to build a base so this sits higher up to reach easier while I’m practicing.

Small steps!

It’s time for something different! On Saturday, we put our bikes in the car and headed south to the Mohawk Hudson bike hike trail.

This trail is part of the Rails to Trails Conservancy, which is an organization that is pushing to get unused railroad tracks made into trails, which when finished will allow people to bike, walk or hike many, many miles.

This section of the trail is about 35 miles long. We only did part of it out and back. While the temperature wasn’t too high – about 80, it was quite humid. There had been a lot of rain the day before and it felt pretty swampy at times, especially when the sun came out.

The trail was really nice to be on.  Taken while on the bike (not recommended):

I just kept remarking at how green it was. This summer has been somewhat wet and everywhere is just so green still considering it is mid August.

This was one of the high elevation points of the ride.

Quite the view!

It was a real treat riding on this wide paved path.

My pictures don’t show it, but there was a fair number of people out on the trail.  We stopped for some lunch at an open bench and wouldn’t you know the sun made an appearance while we were in the open.

I was slathered up with No Ads 50 SPF sunscreen for the day. That stuff works, but I will say that dust and dirt sticks to me like I am flypaper or something. Makes for a bit of a grimy ride.

The path follows the river quite a bit, which makes sense since it is on the old rail lines.

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It was flat for most of it, but some very challenging hills periodically.

This is an old depot.

I couldn’t quite tell what business is in here. It was closed at the time. This would be a super cute cafe, I think.

Another moving picture 😀

We biked just about 30 miles. We definitely want to come back again. It’s only 45-60 minutes away, so not that bad to get there.  Highly recommended for local peeps to go check it out!

After we finished, it was time for our snack. There were no stops to be had on the trail like with our usual long rides so we had to wait until we were done and headed to Mocha Lisa’s in Clifton Park.

They didn’t have any cupcakes, but I did spy a raspberry twist that looked good.

Paired with an iced coffee and this was a nice ending to a good ride!

It’s been an annual tradition for a while now where I bike my age in miles. I turn 49 on Monday, so I needed 49 miles 😀

Monday weather looked iffy, so I chose to do the ride on Sunday. My longest ride this season has been 41 miles, so I was ready for the ride.

One more year of miles and then I am going to switch over to kilometers LOL!  It’s getting to be a long ride.  That was like a 19 mile run.

I have to say that I am in really great bike shape for the season. I’ve got good endurance and my hill legs are much better than last year. Not sure why, but I’ll take it.

It was family cake time after that. I was ready to refill those calories 😀  Yesterday John spent hours making a cake for me.  We’ve gotten into watching the Great British Baking Show on Netflix, which makes us want to bake all the things. Anyway, there was a master class on the recipes and a dobos torte was on the show. Normally chocolate, but Mary Berry made it all about caramel and John said he would make it for me. I loves me some caramel. Here is the recipe.

The cake ended up with 10 layers. Here was assembly:

I came out to peek occasionally, but tried to stay out of the kitchen while he was baking.  It turned out very impressive!

Instead of brittle, I requested candied pecans around the outside.  The top is so pretty!

That is a layer of the cake topped with some caramel and cut into triangles.

This cake was the star of the show. John did an amazing job.  The inside:

For as rich as the cake is, it is actually very light.  I don’t think I will ever get John to make this cake again, but it was worth it 😀  I could probably use another 49 miles to have another slice!

Happy Mother’s Day!  We went out to Panera for breakfast with my folks this morning. It’s always good to visit. She even shared her gift from my sister’s family:

Yum!

Saturday turned out to be a great day weather wise. That meant a ton of outdoor time!  I was up early working on the garden bed. John was gone for the day, so I did some solo riding. The clouds broke and it was so nice to see the sun after days of cloudiness!

Happy Lori.

The farmer’s market has moved outdoors for the summer, so I cycled there to see what was up.

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Could you imagine me biking home with hanging baskets? That would be interesting. Lots of good stuff at the market. I picked up a couple goodies for later in the day.

I stopped at home and went back out again for another loop. It was mostly road riding for the day.

It was also getting cloudier, too. It ended up raining overnight.  Rides like the one above are nice thinking rides. Nothing too surprising and you can see for a long distance in front of you, so I tend to think a lot.

Done:

Kind of a nice maintenance ride.  I had my treat that I bought at the market. Cookies! They were kind of small, so I got two 😀

With some coffee.  I spent the majority of daylight hours outside on Saturday (with sunscreen). That was great!  I got a lot of garden work done.

You can see all those little maple bud things – it almost looks like pollen:

It gets everywhere, too. Starting to put some plants in the bed now – and I got my tippy pots out.  Nothing in them in this picture. We need to do the stone under the bench, but it’s coming along nicely. Our neighbors seem to appreciate all that we’re doing to the house.

One last picture:

The Carnival de Nice tulips fully open. Hope your weekend was great!

Getting that mileage up already. This weekend’s weather was amazing! It really felt like early June. Crazy April so far – it started really cold with snow and now temps in the 70s. It felt great, though.

Saturday we decided to go for 30 miles. We thought briefly about going to Saratoga, which is a little over 40, but seeing as long rides have been about 20, that would have been too much.  We decided to pad our lake with ride some extra miles.

Wave hi to the people, John!

It was warm up until we got the the lake itself. It’s usually cooler there, but it was also breezy and probably 10 degrees colder! Brrrr. Glad we had jackets along.  Tourists are starting to arrive and some of the seasonal businesses are opening up.

We stopped at the Lake George Baking company to pick up a treat and then got some coffee here:

Isn’t it funny that they sell coffee and gelato at an olive oil company? Anyway, I had a cinnamon twist that had chocolate rolled into the center:

This was sooo good! The LG Baking Company is going to be opening a satellite store a few miles from our house soon, which is big trouble.

The lake:

You can see how choppy it is from the wind.

The boats are just about ready to start for the season. We will be taking a cruise in May celebrating my parents’ 50th anniversary.

No flowers yet, so no worries with this sign.

While the temperatures felt good, it still is pretty brown around here.

Don’t you love the telephone poles smack in the middle of the path? Going the other way, it’s a downhill run to these and a pretty good clip, too.

And home:

Ride stats:

Total miles:  30.9

Top speed: 32.4

Average speed 11.4 mph

Calories burned:  976

This was the right amount of miles to do. I was ready to be done. If we had tried to go for 40, I would have been sore and tired. I think a couple more weeks of good riding and I’ll be ready for 40.  The average speed was a little slow, but my hills legs are still building and the speed will come for those. We ended up with about another 18 mile ride on Sunday and it’s feeling great!