One of my favorite rides of the week has to be Sunday morning to breakfast. It’s always really quiet because most people are still sleeping or maybe at church and it’s just peaceful.

It was pretty chilly when we left the house, but it was supposed to get warmer.  8 miles later and we hit up Panera Bread for breakfast!

It was nice to relax and chat over coffee.  We decided to keep riding for a while and head to Lake George:

I will say that it’s now tourist time. The people on the path. The people! Spread over the path, with dogs that chased us, kids weaving all over the path on bikes. It can be dangerous.  John and I got separated by a clot of people and then I saw a young boy topple over from his bike, so I stopped to make sure he was okay.  His mom had scooped him and and he was crying, but no blood or anything.

I said to him, “Do you know what this means?”

“What?”

“It means you are a real biker now.”   Then he smiled and we knew he was fine. So, I continued on and met John at the lake, who was probably wondering where I got off to. LOL.

Boom.

We hadn’t thought too much about this ride as I didn’t have sunscreen and we didn’t have a snack. It was a long ride without food, so we got a snack at the lake and wandered around.

Fort William Henry fife and drum group.

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We headed back home and wound through more people. Ugh!  It went from 0 to 60 with people this weekend.  We had shed jackets since it was pretty warm.

After a bit, I realized that I was going to burn in the sun, so I had to put my jacket back on to protect my arms. I did not have my travel sunscreen in my bag since I took it out last fall! We really didn’t prepare well LOL!

The marsh:

It really was a gorgeous day.

Home!

Ride stats:

Total miles:  33.8

Average speed:  12.2 mph

Top speed:  26.6 mph

Calories burned: 1010

This ride felt really good. Definitely ready to head down to Saratoga!  Not to mention I want to do 46 miles on my birthday in a couple weeks 😀  

Another weekend flying by.  I have not been to a movie in a theater in 2 years (the last Batman). It takes a lot to get me out to the theater and this movie did it. Godzilla!  I am a huge Godzilla fan and grew up watching all the monster movies on TV. I loved Godzilla, King King, Rodan, Mothra, Gamera. Yay!  Of course, I had to see this with my sis, so we met her, the nieces and my BIL for a Saturday showing.

I tried to get my nieces to look scared and this was the best take:

Good thing they have other talents because they are not thespians…

As a true fan, I have to say the last reboot of Godzilla with Ferris Bueler Matthew Broderick was horrible and disappointing.  However – this reboot? Amazing!  I loved it!  No silly one-liners, excellent special effects. Just very good.  I didn’t really care about the family at all  – in fact I kept forgetting their names. But who cares because… Godzilla!  Highly recommended.

We all went out to lunch and then it was time for John and I to get in a ride. Not going to waste a nice weekend day!  Our original plan was to go to the lake and back.  

It was pretty breezy and I was feeling fatigued just from a hard week. Work was pretty bad this week and on top of that I haven’t been sleeping well and I think it just took its toll.  After 10 miles, I told John to go on to the lake. I still wanted the miles, but not the hills, so we decided to meet back up again a little later.  I went back through the streets.  Looking off to the golf course:

You can’t bike on the golf course.  Probably a good thing 😀

Hometown Glens Falls and our future home when the never ending closing finally happens:

I love the paint job on this building!

I rode for another 10 miles or so and got a text from John that he was headed towards Coopers Cave and froyo!  I headed that way and met up with him on the path and it was time for our treat!

I got a Mexican sundae, which is chocolate and peanut butter (under that whipped cream!) on top of vanilla yogurt. That’s probably my favorite thing to get at Coopers.

We actually got chilly eating this as it was much later than we normally are out riding and was starting to cool off.

My patented shot while biking!

All done! Tired, but still a good ride:

I have another project I am working on.  I found something interesting up in the attic of the shop.

So, I got to cleaning it up.  It’s quite old, actually. I took off the back to make sure there weren’t any buggies in it before bringing it into the house and found a stamp on the mirror from CD Widman, which is a company in Detroit founded in the 1800s!  The mirror itself is beveled and has that funny coating on it to make it the mirror (not sure if that makes sense). This piece has been painted, so it isn’t the original finish.  It looks pretty good clean:

This is going to become part of my dresser redo project, which I will talk about at some point when I get a chance. This will be getting a new coat of paint and detailed cleaning (there is paint on the mirror).

Sunday was also more family time!  It was my dad’s birthday, so we gathered for ice cream cake!

I can’t believe another work week is upon us. I cannot get everything done on the weekends that I want to do! Note to self:  buy a lottery ticket this week.

Saturday was ride day since we were going to my folks’ house for dinner on Sunday.  It actually started on a very sad note.  I looked outside in the morning and saw a kitty on our lawn.  My heart sank because I recognized the kitty as one that comes through our property a lot. She was owned by someone last year because she had a flea collar on, but over the winter the collar disappeared and she didn’t have any ID on her.  We called her Girly Girl (not sure how that came about).  She was somewhat friendly and the other day happened to just walk in the shop because John had the door open.  Anyway, I went outside hoping that she was just injured and I could help her, but it was too late.  We don’t know who she belonged to (if anyone). I was starting to think she was homeless and wondered if she was going to become my next project and I feel maybe I dropped the ball there. Anyway, we buried her. We will keep an eye out for signs about a missing cat or if we hear anything. I don’t know if anyone misses her, but I cried for her.

Sorry about that depressing start of the post, but it made my heart heavy for a lot of the day.  We waited until after lunch to ride. The plan was to go to the lake, which would be about 32 miles round trip and the first real hill challenge of the year.  While 55 seems warm coming off the winter, it actually is pretty chilly still and so I bundled up with some long underwear and a couple of jackets. Still Michelin Man time :).

It was really, really windy out. It was a head wind to start and boy howdy did I get tired right off the bat. You have to work so much harder to keep your balance and just make headway that it is really tiring.  

About 8 miles in, we decided that we didn’t want to try to get all the way to the lake because we would have to come back after struggling the whole way there.

I didn’t see this picture later until later with the bunny ears John was trying to make. Nice husband…

We ended up going to Decision Point, which is the stop where we decide to continue to the lake or not. Obviously we already knew we weren’t.

We rested here for 5 minutes or so. We had passed a woman on a bike a bit earlier and said hi as we went by. She ended up coming through here and said “Can you imagine how great this day would be without the wind?” I laughed because that proved to John that I wasn’t the only one complaining about the wind.

We decided to go loop around and hit up the new coffee shop in Glens Falls – Spot Coffee.  This was 15 miles in.

Now there is a Spot in Saratoga and we really like it. It’s a small chain that started in Canada. Anyway – 2 years it took them to open this! It’s a beautiful build out, though.

Snack!!

After relaxing some, we walked around downtown and stopped in a store that sells old furniture. They like to do the painting of old furniture, which sometimes I don’t mind, but sometimes I wish they hadn’t.  Anyway, the downstairs is where the furniture is sold. You can purchase it and they will paint it and do whatever finish style you want on it.  John saw a china cabinet that was just perfect for Radiance Manor. If we ever close on it, that is…

The ceilings in the new house are not really tall, so we have to be careful about the scale of furniture. This is perfect because it is 5 feet 1 inch, from the 1930s and in fantastic shape.  The price on it was $85, which made me stop in my tracks and then the owner said “That piece is on sale now for $75”.  I nodded, but inside I was all YIPPEE SKIPPEE!

We checked out some other really nice pieces as well and decided to purchase the cabinet. Of course, we asked them to hold it since it didn’t fit in our bike bags.  We will have to go later in the week and pick it up.

After that unexpected purchase, we left for home. Note to self:  STOP buying things for the new house. 

Finally home and actually pretty tired.

Ride stats:

Total miles 24.2

Average speed:  11.1 miles per hour (much slower than normal due to wind)

Calories burned:  943

So, the lake will have to wait. There is plenty of biking season to get there ann back. No hurry.

Yippee!  I finally reached 2500 miles!  The first ride of the year was March 10th and I hit 2500 on November 16th.

I wasn’t planning on hitting that Saturday, but it turns out that Sunday ended up rainy and there was no biking – so I am glad I did. Saturday was gorgeous! I still was bundled up because it was in the 50s.

The exact spot where I crossed over 2500:

I actually ended up a bit over 2500 on the day:

Some fun stats.

Equivalent miles of running – Approximately 834

Calories burned – 75,060, give or take a few thousand

Pounds not gained due to calorie burn- 21

Pounds lost during the season –  Zero  😀  I just don’t lose during biking season.

Flat tires – Only 1!  Remember the year of the flat tire a couple years ago? I replaced the tires with Gatorskins and that was so worth it. Those tires cost more, but overall less than all the tubes I had to buy from all the flats.

Distance traveled – Albany to Los Angeles is 2457 miles, so pretty much across the US! Of course, that is air miles, so I guess I need a flying bicycle.

Last year’s total road miles – 2174

Things that contributed to the success of this goal:

The weather.  We actually had somewhat of a wet summer, but there didn’t seem to be days on end where it would rain, so I was able to sneak in rides here and there.

No injuries, or least nothing that kept me from cycling.

My job.  Having the ability to flex my schedule allowed me to get in those rides when the weather was right.

Deciding to commit to the goal.  That meant always planning out how many miles I wanted in a week and checking the long range weather to plan when I was going to ride.

How about a collage of some of the treats I had while riding this year?

So what’s next?  I am not ready to bring the bike in for the year yet. There may be another nice weekend this month. I have never ridden into December, so that is probably very unlikely, but I did ride Thanksgiving weekend last year.

Ah to be back in my quiet lifestyle again!  After a pell mell week, it was good to go for a relaxing ride on Saturday.  I made the mistake of trusting weather.com that it would not rain, but other than that it was a good day.

Come along with me for some peaceful photos!

I missed my bike!  One thing about Vegas – not bike friendly.  It gave me the willies thinking about trying to get to and from the Strip to get to work there.  Not that we saw anyone on bikes doing that, but they should think about making the city itself more bike friendly.

It was a little chilly in the 60s for the first part of the ride, but the sun was out and it was nice to be on open roads with very little traffic.

I had decided I wanted Martha’s ice cream today, so I made a large loop around towards Lake George.  I didn’t actually want to go all the way to the lake because there was a big car show going on and I had no desire to be around a lot of people after being in Vegas.

I had to shed my jacket after a while.  This part of the path goes through Glens Falls.  A lot of stop and go, so it kills your average speed, but it’s pretty.

Lots of fall blooming flowers.  Goldenrod and Joe Pye Weed:

Rest spot!

I sat on a rock next to my bike and caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  Little tiny toad!  He was maybe an inch long and very cute.

I will make him look big and fierce, though.

After some rest, I headed to Martha’s.  I had asked my mom if she wanted to meet me there.  I gave an approximate time with a half hour window because you never know when riding what can happen.  We ended up getting there within 5 minutes of each other!  Perfect timing.

I had a scholarship sundae:

That’s hot fudge, raspberry sauce and cookie crumbs.  Yum!

Mama Radiance:

My dad wanted to burn leaves instead of come for ice cream, can you believe that?  Doesn’t know what he is missing.  Anyway, we chatted for a long time since I had to catch her up on all we did in Vegas and the skies started to cloud up.  I figured it was best to head home.  Sure enough, a mile or so in going home and it started to sprinkle.  I almost thought about pulling over and waiting, but then realized it probably was a rain that wasn’t going to stop.  So, I pulled over and put my jacket on.

Frowny!

I then saw this and had to pull over, rain or not.  This is newly painted because I know this wasn’t here a few weeks ago.

It was mostly light drizzle at this point, so I changed my route home to go on the path and get under some tree cover to keep dry.

We have been avoiding this part of the path all summer because it dumps you out into construction, but it was worth keeping drier.

Done!  I cut the ride a bit short because of the weather, but still a good ride.

Ride stats:

Total miles:  38.5

Ride time:  3 hours 5 minutes

Average speed:  12.3 mph

Top speed:  22.1 mph

Calories burned:  1317 – good enough for a big sundae!

And irony? I was so glad to get out of the cold and drizzle and hop into the shower