Day 49- Troy, NY

Last night at dinner, Rick, one of our fastest riders, came to me and said–”ok, tomorrow is the day– you’ve said that you would try to ride with me one day out of the trip, and tomorrow is it”…Rick is super fast–he keeps a very strong steady pace all day long, everyday, and is always among the  first people to get to the hotel. He gets there hours before everyone else. So, I told him that I would try to keep up with him.. I was able to stay strong and hard with him all day, which was an accomplishment for me. I had to work so hard to keep up with him. I was drafting him for a good bit, which was still really hard just to stay on his back tire. Mike and Tom joined us from the first SAG on, and we got lost, so we decided to stop in at Dunkin Donuts to get some coffee. Rick was ready to leave after about 5 minutes…stopping is not his thing. We found our way back to the correct route, and continued on at a fairly strong pace. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and the ride was so much fun. We rode along the Mohawk River, and towards the end of the ride, we had about 20 miles of bike path which was really nice. We stopped at Lock 8 to watch them raise a few boats from one water level to the next. This was very interesting. You can see in the pic, that one side is much lower than the other. So, we saw a few boats come up into the Lock, and then they would fill it up with enough water to raise the boat to the next level, then open the door and let the boat out. It was neat. The pic below is Tom and Rick when we stopped at the lock. We got to the hotel super early which gave me some time to do some homework.