Another fabulously gorgeous weather weekend in the Adirondacks!  I was happy that John was home this weekend to be my biking buddy 😀    This was the Travers weekend at the track in Saratoga, so we wanted to avoid that traffic/people mess.  Lake George had a car/boat show, not to mention we were just at the lake on Thursday, so we decided on Schuylerville and Espressohuis.  John plotted out a route for us to go to make sure we got in 40 miles.  I don’t know why, but it doesn’t feel like a long enough ride unless we get to at least 40.  I know, please smack me.  John said he added an extra road to our route that didn’t seem too hilly to bump up the miles (cue dramatic music).

We stopped early in the ride about 6 miles in for a light lunch:

Egg bagel sammie!   Not many pictures for a bit.  We really just cooked along without stopping from here for another 15 miles.  Since I thought the rest of the ride would be mostly gentle hills for the ride home, I attacked all the hills on this part of the ride, trying to maintain a minimum speed on them for a challenge.

Then a stop for a stretch.  Another historical house and marker:

 

Around mile 25, we ended up in Schuylerville!

We sat on the deck to enjoy our treat:

 

My drink and peanut butter cuppie!

 

This cupcake is actually pretty small.  Very good, but I wish it was just a tiny bit bigger!  I do like coming here for our snack, too.  The owner is very nice.  After relaxing, we headed towards home and the new extended ride.

We turned down the new road. Sometimes I get anxious feeling when going a new route since I have no spatial relation to how long it is or the road conditions, terrain, etc.  This road was rolling hills and farmland.  We stopped our bikes and it was so, so quiet.  I have never been on a road so quiet.  There was no traffic noise at all – only the noise of insects and birds.

 

Then I see this ahead.  I was all, “Aw, hell no!”

It doesn’t look as bad in this picture as it looked in real life.  I was really balking about going up and kind of wanted to turn around and go back home our normal way.  See, you can’t see past the trees there and I just knew that the hill kept going (and I was right).  I had almost hit a wall with the new road and being a bit tired, but decided to go ahead and tackle it.  We were around 35 miles on the day at this point. About 1/4 of the way up, I was thinking there was no way I was going to get to the top since I was already in a low gear.  How slow can you go and not fall over, right?  Pretty slow, it turns out LOL.  I finally put my head down and just ground it out.  Wobbled to the top, whew!  I told John that had I known about this hill, I would have had 2 cupcakes.

 

It did afford us with a nice view, though.

You can see forever.

 

I was really discombobulated, though.  I could not quite wrap my head around where we were in relation to home, but it was pretty.  There were more rolling hills until we got dumped out just outside of the village about a mile and a half from home.  John said we didn’t end up quite where he thought, so we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.  One last climb to home and I was complete toast LOL!

 

Ride stats:

Total miles:  42.5

Average speed:  12.9 mph

Top speed:  29.7  (eek!)

Calories burned:  1374 – although with the hill work, this is probably low.

Saturday means bike day!  It was a beautiful sunny day in the low 80s.  We were having trouble deciding where to go, though.  We wanted to go to Espresso Huis in Schuylerville, but that is only (relatively speaking) a 25 mile round trip ride.  What we decided to do was make a giant loop de loop to get there, with a lunch stop earlier in the ride.

I was excited:

 

On a side note – I need a haircut!  We slathered on the sunscreen and headed out.  This is the main route out of town that gets you to the northway.  It’s a busy road and a fast road, but it does have a wide shoulder designated as a bike lane.  There are some nice views, too.

 

I got excited because I thought I saw a goldfinch, but then I realized it was fake.

 

My biking companion!

We were twins on accident, too.  Our destination was Mr. Bill’s!  We haven’t been here yet this year.  We got here around mile 12 or so.

 

It’s a 50s carhop – complete with music. This statue is very iconic:

 

I had a grilled cheese sandwich.  That basket of fries was what came with John’s scallops – big enough to share!

After enjoying our lunch, we circled around to head south.  It was hot and sunny and not much shade.  We ended up going to our favorite River Road way.

We got through the hill portion and I was sooooo hot and sweaty!  At the top, I thought I was starting to bonk, so I had some pineapple.

This was probably 25 miles on the day?  It turns out that I think I just got overheated and wasn’t really bonking.  I definitely wasn’t feeling that great. After a bit of a rest, we went another 5 miles to Espresso Huis!  Mile 31.

 

We really like this place.  Wish it was a little closer to home and we would come more often during the week.  We both had the same thing – iced chai latte and cuppicakes!

You know you want to see a close up of that, right? Chocolate coconut!

There is a local baker that does the baked goods for them.

After a nice rest in air conditioned comfort and the refilling of bottles with ice water,  we headed home.  That heat episode really wiped me out, though.  I drafted off of John most of the way home (thanks, J!).

We had to take a detour because the bridge is out on our normal route home and we passed a cool dam on the canal.

 

Then another cool thing – I could hear the Ospreys calling.  There is a nest along route 4 and they have babies now.  I stopped way back here to get a picture because she was disturbed by us, I think.

Of course, we did have to go by it anyway, but I didn’t want to freak her out by standing below the nest. You could see a little movement in the nest.  It would have been cool to see an aerial view.

I heard another one really close and we looked right up over our heads and saw the mate!

He stared down at us for a bit.  I half expected him to dive down on us, but he didn’t.    Happy nesting, Ospreys!

 

And then finishing up the ride:

Total miles:  46.6

Average speed 13.4 mph

Top speed:  33.1 mph (big downhill!)

Calories burned: 1452

 

Note to self. Just because it isn’t humid doesn’t mean it isn’t hot.  We need to stick to morning and/or shadier rides at these temps.

HOT!!!  Us yankees are not used to this hot stuff.  It’s kind of humid, too.  Ick.  We have a window AC unit for the bedroom, but haven’t put in the one for downstairs yet.  We have another bit of cooler weather coming next week, so we didn’t feel like dragging the big unit out yet.

John is away, so I was left to my own biking devices on Saturday.  I wanted a longer ride and for ice cream, but I knew that it was going to be in the upper 80s and I didn’t want to over exert myself in that heat.  The solution?  2 rides!  I ate breakfast and then went out for a 10 mile ride.

I just love this time of year.  Not just because my birthday is coming up, but because everything is so fresh and green.

The canal is pretty high, too.  There is going to be a kayak race on it some time because I passed the finish line.

I won!!

After 10 miles, I came home and decided to go back out after lunch for a trip to Martha’s!  I have been wanting Martha’s, but the weather hasn’t been warm enough for me to want to bike to ice cream on the weekends.  Last weekend was 45 and rainy – today 85!  Crazy weather, I tell you.

I was all decked out in bright pink so cars would pay attention to me.

 

It seemed to work, too.  Cars stopped for me at all the crossings that I did today.  Pretty amazing!  Or, it could be what I suspect, which is that the universe really does revolve around me! 

I stuck as much to the path as I could, but there is some yucky street riding to be done.

With some not so lovely shoulder.

Time for Martha’s!

You can hear the screaming from Great Escape across the street.

 

I had the scholarship sundae which I have been craving!  It has chocolate and raspberry sauce with cookie crunch over whatever flavor softserve you want.  I had strawberry.

 

Nom, nom, nom!

 

Okay, I used a spoon.  Truth be told, I had a little bit of difficulty finishing this.  I totally lose my appetite when it is this hot.  I sent out a few texts telling everyone what I was enjoying (rubbing it in) and took my time finishing.

Clouds were starting to build up as I was leaving.

 

It threatened a little, but didn’t storm. Thank you.

 

Today’s miles:

Total 32.47

Average speed 12.1 mph (lots of stops for pictures and meandering around)

Calories burned:  1116  – well deserved sundae!

Now for a few gratuitous garden pics since I didn’t post a what’s blooming on Friday because I got busy.

My lovely buttercup iris:

It’s has 5 buds on this stalk – yay!

Another allium.  This is one that I actually planted 2 years ago and it never came up.  Not sure why it did this year, but it was a treat to see!

 

The bed is all neat and tidy now.

 

 

Both beds, actually.  The side shade garden and the front.  All mulched and ready for the next blooming time.  It’s quiet time in the garden now until the roses pop out (next week!)

 

See you all Monday with an AIM post!

 

 

Not the best weekend for riding, but we did manage to get in a bit.  Things are almost starting to feel like spring around here.  The trees are starting to get some buds.  The gravel path is still too wet to ride on, seeing as it was pouring rain on Friday.  There was also rain in the afternoon forecast and it was in the upper 40s, so we decided to keep closer to home than planned.

Street riding until we got to the path after 7 miles.

 

This is right by our froyo shop that we like to visit.

 

Too cold for yogurt yet, though.  At least for us.  These people were out for ice cream!

We headed down the path.

 

Our plan was to get in around 20 miles for the day, so we headed out to what we call Decision Point to turn around.  This is about 5 miles from Lake George and the beginning of the hilly section. Mile 10.5.

 

It climbs for around 3 miles and then there is a 2 mile zoom downhill into Lake George Village.  From here, it makes no sense to do anything but go all the way to the Lake or turn around.  We decided to turn around here.

John says “Coffee Time??”   I say “YES!!”

We biked back to Glens Falls to Coffee Planet.  We spend a lot of money time at this place.  Bikes securely locked together and to the pole.

 

I also dropped and cracked my helmet on the bricks.  Now I need a new one.  👿

Downtown Glens Falls.  Very quaint.  This was around mile 15 or so.

 

I had a black and white cookie with my coffee.  I love the black and white cookie!

John had coffee cake.  Our treats were touching on this plate, but that’s okay in the dessert world.

It was clouding up on our way home and I have to say it was pretty windy.  I was sweating from the work into the wind- even though it was only in the 40s.

Another ride in the books!

 

Ride stats:

 

Total miles:  22.1

Average speed:  12.5 mph

Top speed:  22.4 mph

Calories burned:  650

No ride on Sunday as it was cold and windy.  However, we did get a lot of outside work done.  We tackled the bushes on the side of the house, which was a total bear thank to some neglectarino neighbors.

I got the garden bed cleaned up.

 

The only thing I haven’t done is trim the butterfly bush down because I like how it looks for now, but when it starts to bud at the bottom, I will cut it down.

 

Lots of bulbs coming up. Yay!  My shadow looks like it’s chugging a beer, too 😀

Warmer weather coming this week – woo hoo!

 

 

I said I was going to get my bike on the road in March and I did it this weekend.  It was going to be sunny and mid 40s on Saturday, so I decided to just go for it.  The first ride is such a rigmarole with changing the tire to my road tire, pumping up the tires and adjusting everything.  Then hauling the bike down the stairs. How stuff gets out of whack from sitting on my bike trainer is beyond me, but it is so.

Mileage set to zero.

 

Anyhoo – we decided to bike for some coffee.  I actually got John to go with. I think my excitement was catching or something 😀  Or possibly he was enchanted by my stylish attire:

I was totally layered up for this ride.  I had on leggings under my bike pants. Then long underwear, a long sleeve technical shirt and 2 jackets. I could barely move!

Can you tell how excited I was to get out there?  John was waiting for me.  Usually it is the other way around.  It’s a little weird to bike with snow piles still around.

 

It’s not as snowy in other spots, it just looks like more because of the shoveling of the driveway.

The roads were dry, but the unpaved bike path is still impassible.  We did go on a bit of the paved part.  The canal is still frozen over.

It actually turned out to be quite a nice ride.  I started to get a bit sweaty as we got towards the coffee shop.  The sun helped warm us up a lot. It actually ended up being close to 50 degrees!

At mile 6.5, we ended up at Coffee Planet.  They changed out the artwork recently and this artist encouraged participation with this large framed piece of paper and colored pencils to draw on.  This paper was blank last week.

 

We each had coffee and a snack.  No cupcakes, but I did have a big cookie!

 

It was really an enjoyable day.  It felt so, so good to get out on the roads.  Riding on the trainer just can’t even come close.  Not to mention it can’t come close to doing real life hills and terrain.  We got home at 14 miles.

Not bad for the first ride of the year.  My thighs were a little tired, but other than that I was blissfully happy.

 

As I took this picture, John said “Ear to ear”  – and he was right!  I was so happy for the rest of the day.

Sunday brought another quick 6 mile ride, although it was breezier than Saturday.  I have 20 miles on the year, which is about 0.75% of my goal miles for the year  😯

 

 

 

 

Saturday had the looks to be a perfect outdoor day.  After a Friday of soaking rains all day, it was nice to see the sun.  The roads were pretty soggy, though, so we scrapped plans to bike to breakfast to let the roads dry out.

John owed my my football meal and I waited all week to get my breakfast at the Chocolate Mill!

Brioche french toast with blueberry compote.

The coat the bread with crushed cereal, which gives it a yummy crispy crunch!  And served with *real* maple syrup, thank you very much.

Temps were warming up and the roads were getting drier and we could’t wait to get on the bikes!  We decided to bike down to Saratoga for lunch.  We had to go earlier because of it getting dark earlier and also because we were having my folks over for dinner.

Ready for some fall pictures?

Kind of past peak, but nice none the less.  We stopped around mile 5 to save this guy:

Big snapping turtle.  He was crossing the road to a field, but that wasn’t such a good place for him, so we herded him towards the river and waved cars to slow down.  He started to safely head back down to the river bank.

And they aren’t kidding.  Turtles are sloowwww…

After a bit, John asked if I wanted to stop for a picture.  Sure!

Then he said, “I meant the view.”  Oh.

I decided to shed my jacket here since we were stopped and approaching the hill section for the day.    The skies were so blue and clear, right?

I laughed when I saw this picture.  John is not ducking out of the way, he was just looking at his front tire and I got some of him in the shot.

We stopped for a break around mile 15.

We went birdwatching here once with my sister a couple years ago and there were clouds of mosquitoes – so we didn’t stay long.  I would like to hike here again some time.

 

We arrived in Saratoga at mile 24 and went to the Beekman street art district for lunch. This place is called The Local and they serve lots of craft beer and locally sourced food.

We had BOGO coupon to eat here – score for bargains!!  I saw one of my favorite dishes on the menu – eggs benedict.  With local eggs?  Thank you!

 

We kept proclaiming how beautiful the day was for riding.  Should have known that Mother Nature had a surprise in store for us.  After lunch, we bike back into town for a bit of dessert.  We each got a pumpkin cupcake at Bettie’s.

One was a cinnamon coffee cake cupcake with pumpkin buttercream and the other was a pumpkin cupcake with pumpkin buttercream.  We split both of these.  While we were eating, the skies clouded up and it started to sprinkle.  Uh oh.  We went over to the library to go online and check weather.com.  The whole state was dry, but for one big green blob coming right our way with thunder!  Eeek!  We waited for a bit.

Nothing like being stuck 20+ miles from home, right?  We thought if we left, we could skirt around the rain as we headed north, so we  left after a bit.  We bike for 4 or 5 miles and got totally soaked and decided to pull over at a Dunkin Donuts to wait it out.  Too miserable.  I was sopping wet.

I had nothing waterproof with me at all, so I did my best with my hood under my helmet.  We could see blue sky just to the side, so we were hoping it would come soon.  Still pretty, though.

The rain finally tapered off and I wrung out my jacket.  Not waterproof.  There was absolutely no rain in the forecast for the day, so I don’t know what was up with that.  Now we were on the back end of the rain the rest of the way home, so the roads were wet, but at least it wasn’t raining on us any more.  It was cold riding soaking wet, I will say.

This is what passed over us moving on off to the north.

We had a fairly uneventful ride home until….

Right about mile 42:

Flat tire.   We were both afraid to say something out loud about getting a flat during this ride and then it happened 5 miles from home!

I took some foliage shots while John was changing his tire.

 

Finally made it home with an hour to spare before my parents were to come over for dinner.  Mad scramble to cook and shower!   I think my bike shoes won’t dry out for days.

Ride stats:

Total miles 46.9 miles (eh… 47)

Average speed:  12.7 mph

Calories burned:  1403

That ride had a little bit of everything in it!

Today’s pink picture:

We had the most glorious weather this weekend! Cooler and dry.  It was a perfect weekend for biking 😀

We decided to head on down to Saratoga for our long ride on Saturday.  This was all road riding.  John wanted to have lunch down there, so we left around mid morning.  We took the newly paved bike lane on 197.  We had been kind of avoiding that because of the poor condition and now it is nicely done.  However, I kept hearing a squeaking noise coming from John’s bike.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

It was rhythmic with his pedaling.  I decided that was going to drive me nuts hearing that for 50 miles, so we pulled over after about 4 miles for him to mess with the pedal.

The newly paved part is back there where the truck is.  This little meadow was full of butterflies. You can’t see them in this shot, but they were floating all over.

John lubed up his pedal arm and we were good to go.  No more noise!  Next stop was around mile 12. It looks like we are in the middle of nowhere, but we are actually right next to the main route 9 going south, just on a side road. Also newly paved.

We thought we saw a dog in the driveway of the house across the street, but turns out it was a goat!

He was just hanging around in the driveway.

We had snacks here.

It was bright and sunny today.  Not too hot, though, which was really nice.  Next stop was near the Wilton Mall.  This was 20 miles in.  I actually really hate biking near here because the traffic is icky.   We locked the bikes to a fence.

John wanted Hattie’s Chicken Shack.

knock, knock m***********

Now, if you have been reading, you know I have been poultried out this week.  So, I decided if I was going to eat at Hattie’s, I was going for what Hattie’s is known for.  What Hattie’s won a Bobby Flay Throwdown with.  The fried chicken.

I haven’t had fried chicken in years. Many years.  Let me tell you  – this is probably the best I have ever had.  I ended up not eating the bun and just eating the chicken out of it (it had coleslaw on it, southern style).  It was juicy, not greasy and so good!  Yummy!  We walked around a bit to let lunch settle.  We stopped at a couple stores –

And then here:

I pointed out various things that I wanted and John remarked that he could just do 1 store and be done shopping for me for Christmas.  Smart man I married, I tell you.

We decided to head to downtown Saratoga and John noted his front tire was flat.  Sigh…  While he was changing the tube, I filled up the old one with air to see where the leak was and it held air.  I am thinking what might have happened is that my bike was leaning on the pressure valve and let the air out  of his tire.  We need to test the tube later and see.  It would be nice to save $5 if it was still good.  Anyway, we got back on the road to our next stop on the tour of Living in the 10%, which was at The Bread Basket.  This was at mile 24.  I love how the front door looks like a hobbit house.

They had some cute cupcakes there:

However, we went with a more adult taste.  John’s carrot cake cupcake and my German chocolate.

They look smaller in the picture than they seemed in real life.  My cupcake with chocolate so dark light cannot escape its surface.

I forget the the cupcakes at Bread Basket are gut bombs.  Very, very rich.  There is a 4th dimension and it is cupcake vision.

John says “do I have to eat the whole thing?”

I was uber full at this point.  We walked across to Congress Park to let the cupcakes settle.

This is the Triton pool with “Spit” and “Spat”

Carved from Carrara marble. Kind of wanted to take a dip in that pool, too.

Time to head home.  We took what has become my favorite way home via West River Road.  This adds some miles onto the way back, but it’s all good, right?  I like this way because it goes through a lot of different scenery like shade, farms, open road, along the river.  There is a good mix of hills, too.  Luckily the first part leaving Saratoga is fairly flat.  I kept telling my cupcake to stay down!

Here we had just come out of a wooded area that was nice and shady.  John was adjusting his brakes.  This was around mile 32 or so?  Here is a cool barn:

We are around 40 miles here.  We took a breather, but didn’t need any snacks.  I was totally fueled on cupcakes 😀  You can see forever from here.

This is almost at the top of the biggest hill climbs for the way home, so it’s nice to get here and know that you are close to being done with the climbing.

Along the river, we spotted several birds.  One was a heron and the other was this egret.  This was around mile 46.

I was feeling pretty good and had a good second wind by this point.  We clipped along pretty well on this ride.  I was glad to be finished, though.

Ride stats:

Total miles:  52.2

Average speed 13.6 mph

Top speed:  32.5

Calories burned: 1607

This was probably the fastest average speed we have had for a long ride.  That’s 52 miles at that speed, so we were quite pleased about that.  Helps that there wasn’t really a strong wind today.

I love our long rides!