Last weekend was such an unpredictable weather weekend that we didn’t do our usual long ride, so I was looking forward to Saturday!

 

It was a mostly cloudy day and temps in the upper 70s, so a good day for riding.  There was a bit of breeze, but it was coming from the east, making it a crosswind which didn’t really affect the riding.  There is no path on the way to Saratoga, just road riding, so not terribly exciting for pictures.

 

We stopped around mile 9 or so? for a little rest and snack:

 

Yummy, yummy dried pineapple!

Tick and poison ivy country, right here…

 

We hit up Saratoga at mile 20 and checked out the Bread Basket for the first time in at least a year.

 

They have good cupcakes – or gut bombs as we like to call them.  These are big suckers.

 

Mine was peanut butter. It was filled with peanut butter mousse and topped with peanut butter frosting and ganache. John had a Boston Cream.  So yummy!  Especially after 20 miles of riding. Today was opening day for the Saratoga Race Track, so hardly anyone was downtown since they were all at the track.  That was quite nice, I have to say.

After eating, we walked over to Congress Park and looked around.  There is a section with a sundial surrounded by Pan and the Maenads:

 

Pan is a wee bit creepy:

 

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We didn’t spend too long here and headed home, well-fueled by cupcakes!  We booked home.  This is around mile 32 or so on the day. It’s at the top of a small hill and overlooks a long way.

 

Riders!

 

It was feeling a little humid and I was glad for the cloud cover.  Our arrival home:

 

Ride stats:  

Total miles:  41.5

Average speed:  13.4 mph

Top speed 26.6 mph

Saddle time:  3 hours 6 minutes

Calories burned: 1452.

It was a good ride. We are in good shape for the season and these rides feel pretty easy, even with the hills.  I really pushed on the one big long hill on the way home to see if I could accelerate on the climb, which I actually was able to do!  I think watching the Tour de France influences my riding LOL!

Speaking of le Tour, it was very good this year.  I was rooting for Nairo Quintana and if there was one more day in the mountains, I think he would have won.  He will win in the future, that is for sure.

Funniest quote of the tour came from Geraint Thomas.  There was one stage where he just had a really bad day and went down in the standings because he just didn’t have enough energy to keep up.  After the race he said “Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail. Today I was a cheapie little Ikea nail.”     I think we have all been there.

We have shed!  Once John got the base built (2 xs and plywood), it was time to assemble the shed. It really didn’t take that long, surprisingly. It’s a Rubbermaid shed made of vinyl and snaps together, and then several hundred screws. 🙄  We put the walls up Friday evening:

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Then finished it Saturday morning.

This went together surprisingly fast. It doesn’t look level in the picture, but the ground slopes, so it actually is level 😀  We had to dig out around the base to level it.

Now we are starting to fill it with stuff! We are going to put in some shelving and pegboard for hanging as well.

Happy, happy!  Then comes the reward of riding for a cupcake!  We left right after lunch.  The plan was to go our old River road route to Saratoga..  John said he thought it would be just a little bit longer than where  we leave from now (20 miles). Mistake 1 was not checking that for sure…

 

This is a beautiful road for scenery. The temps were in the mid to upper 70s, which was nice, but the winds were brutal on the way down. Head wind all the way.  I felt a little tired right from the get go. Ever have those days where you start exercising and just know right away it isn’t going to be your best?

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Farm country.  We stopped at the very top after a climbing for a snack.  This is where we realized it was going to be a longer ride than expected. Where we would normally be  mile wise at this point was quite a bit farther.

 

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No choice but to keep going!

We took another stretch break here, which was around mile 19.

 

We were planning the trip down to be around 21 miles or so, but when we were here, we knew it was another 7 miles to go! I was starting to get cranky with the wind and an unexpected extra 40 minutes to the ride down.

Finally!  28 miles later and we got to Saratoga.  Good thing it wasn’t a super hot day. That was the saving grace on not bonking. We both ran out of water. I had coconut water as well, but I had frozen it the night before and it was still rock solid LOL! 

I was sooooo ready for my cuppie.  This is a vanilla sundae cupcake. With a chocolate fudge filling.

 

Plus the biggest iced coffee they had, which I sucked down 😀

The good thing was that headwind on the way down meant a great tailwind on the way home!  We went home our usual way. With the tailwind, it was like dropping an instant 10 pounds!

Not many pictures on the way home. It was later in the day and we just booked our way home.  Stopping around mile 38 for some now thawed refreshment:

 

I was feeling a lot happier with cupcake energy and a tail wind

 

Boom:

 

I was almost tempted to ride around for another half mile, but we were pretty tired by this point.    Longest ride of the year to date!  I am at about mile 830 on the year now.

Ride stats:

Total miles: 49.4

Saddle time:  3 hours 42 minutes

Average speed: 13.2 mph

Top speed:  25.4 mph

Calories burned: 1730

That was quite the ride! Note to self: Always double check the mileage for a new route 😀 It’s amazing how much easier the ride home was. Wind makes such a difference.

 

Saturday was a warm and muggy day.  We wanted to get the slate path finished up before the rain moving in over the next few days.  Here it is pretty much finished:

We need to back fill in dirt on each side by the edging and will be putting in more sand as it settles after the rain.  It is slightly meandering around the garden bed.  At some point, we will be doing the other side – with lessons learned from this side 😀

Then it was riding time! We opted for a shorter ride since storms were supposed to be coming in the afternoon.  We thought a lake ride was in order.  At least the path sections were nice and cool to be on:

 

John trying to cause an accident:

The little theme park for kids is open in Lake George now.  Magic Forest.

It’s not a total rip off of Mickey riding Dumbo or anything 😉

The lake was surprisingly uncrowded. It was Elvis Festival weekend, so we thought there would be more people, but then there are the inside performances as well as outside performances.  We stopped at the park for lunch.

 

Another packed lunch:

I have been inhaling blueberries lately.

The sun was going in and out behind clouds and it was feeling pretty humid. We walked around town before having our treat.

 

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We stopped by the Lake George Baking Company.  It was hot enough for ice cream, but the bakery is so good and we can get ice cream right near our house any time 😀

View from a cookie:

 

You could hear a few different Elvi singing around the village.  The better ones you pay to see, the ones that are free to see can be hit or miss.  This one was not bad, though.

 

Not sure Elvis wore too many flannel shirts, though…

Ducks all in a row:

 

I noticed after I took this that all of these are male. Wonder where the ladies are?

It was time to head home.  This is one of my very favorite sections of the path:

 

It was really starting to feel hot in the sun, too. You could almost feel the rain was going to come.

 

We took a longer route home just to get in a few extra miles.  It passes by this cool old barn.

 

And then we arrived home.  It started raining maybe 45 minutes later, so good timing!

 

Temperatures when from muggy mid 80s to 50 degrees and raining on Sunday. What a turn around!

House closing happens on Monday – we can’t believe it is actually going to happen!

 

 

We finally decided we were ready for a ride to Saratoga for the year.  That means cupcakes!  😀

Saturday was quite cool, actually.  More than cool. It got down to 31 degrees overnight.  I had covered up my plants that had new growth on them to help them make it through the night, and they seem to have survived.

Going to Saratoga is a 40 mile ride, so we left earlier.  We packed lunches since I wanted a cupcake and didn’t really want to spend the money on lunch *and* a cupcake.  When we left the house, it was around 50 degrees.  It was a little chilly, but at least it was sunny.

Leaving from our new house, it is all road riding to Saratoga and on the busier route 9, which is a designated bike route, but still fast traffic.  It goes down and crosses over the Northway, but we did that once and never again. Too dangerous – so we take a detour by one of the state parks to avoid the on/off ramps.

 

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About 10 miles in, we stopped for a snack:

 

Another biker came by and chatted for a few minutes.  Then the lady that lived in the house we were stopped near came out and talked with us as well.  It was a chatty day!  She has a beautiful bridal bush in her yard.

10 more road miles and we got to Congress Park in Saratoga.  The working carousel:

 

 

There were some baby ducklings nearby as well!

 

Baby ducklings are just a ball of cuteness wrapped in feathers. I wanted to take them all home. 😀

We settled by a sunny fountain for lunch:

 

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My sandwich survived being in my bag on the way down. Yay! It was also cold enough that the coating on the protein bar didn’t melt.  Score all the way around.

After walking around town for a while, it was time for cuppies!  We stopped at Parkside Eatery. They do a fantastic job with baked goods.  I saw a chocolate chip cookie dough frosted cupcake and new right off the bat it was what I wanted:

 

This picture looks smaller than it was, too. Seriously – this was so ride worthy!  It had ganache instide the cupcake as well.  Uber rich. Holy moly. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Riding always makes food taste really good as well.  This was probably 550-600 calories based on its weight, so not something I would be able to fit into a normal day of eating LOL!  That’s one of the reasons I love ride days 😉

This did sit a little heavy in my stomach and I just couldn’t eat the last couple of bites. 

By this time, it was mid afternoon and time to head back with cupcake power.

All pictures taken today were done while stopped. Too busy of a road for me to snap pictures while actually riding. Safety first 🙂

We are about at mile 30 on the day here. John was having a good ride:

 

We avoided the Northway interchange on the way back as well and go into farm land. This is one of my favorite parts of this route we take.

 

It’s an undulating road and almost never has traffic on it. Check out that sky!

 

We arrived home a little tired, but not bad at all for the first Saratoga ride.  Cooler temps help keep you fresher, too, I think.  It topped out in the mid 60s.

My bike computer actually got bumped and stopped recording for almost a mile, so the total was actually 41.7  😀

What does one eat for dinner after a long ride? BBQ chicken, corn on the cob and sauteed zucchini.

 

These longer ride days make it hard to get much else done because we spend most of the day on the bikes and then feel to tired to start any big projects.  So, we settled in with our new fire pit and an adult beverage 😀

 

Yard work can be done on other days, right?

 

It was really a beautiful weekend. Spring has finally arrived.  After doing a lot of landscape work, John and I wanted a ride for some ice cream since it was so warm.

Ready for the riding season. It may be the first couple of days of May, but my skin is so sensitive and especially after this winter, I got out the big guns riding with exposed skin.

Ready for riding!

We had just gotten started on the ride and were on the main street.  I saw a cop car pull off the side of the road (no lights) and get out of his car. He then flags John and I over.  I was thinking “WTF?” What could we possibly be doing wrong? Well, turns out that he saw us riding with all the proper gear and obeying traffic signals and wanted to reward us for doing that. So, he gave us each a coupon for a free scoop of ice cream!

 

He said it was a new program (more aimed towards kids) to reward proper riding and educate. So, if anyone rides in Glens Falls – wear your helmet and you, too, might get free ice cream! This coupon will be saved for another day, though.

We did a fair amount of road riding.

 

I have always loved this old building.

It’s been for sale for years. I think it was an old schoolhouse that ended up being converted to a warehouse of some type. It would be a cool artist community building or something.

Finally back onto the path after 10 miles or so.

 

We took a lot of the same route that I did by myself last week, only we didn’t stop at the greenhouse…

Snack time!

 

Dates or dried pineapple are my favorite ride snacks. Quick calories and they don’t sit in your stomach like a lump.

My riding partner:

We had about 7 more miles to go to get to ice cream, so back to riding!

 

On to famous Martha’s!

 

Great Escape isn’t open yet, but Martha’s has been open for almost a month and it was packed on this beautiful sunny day. Lucky us, they opened a new window up right as we walked by it and got served right away.

My sundae:

I am in a rut at Martha’s. I love this sundae. It has hot fudge, raspberry sauce, and cookie crumbles.  Very ride worthy 😀

Also very filling.  We were at 20 miles at this point and wanted another 10, so we took another road loop around, so not too many pictures for safety sake.  We did stop at a pretty country club, though.

 

Note that the trees are starting to leaf out now! With the wamer weather, it’s like it happened overnight.

Home again!

 

Ride stats:

Total miles:  30.8

Average speed: 12.2 mph

Top speed:  25.7 mph

Ride time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Calories burned: 1067

Felt good. We almost were going to do a ride closer to 40, but I am glad we changed the route. 30 was a good point where it was a great workout and didn’t push the distance too much.  We will be there shortly.

And speaking of things popping out overnight, my tulips finally woke up! I had a bloom today:

I am sooooooo happy to see this. It has been a long time coming. There should be a bunch more opening this week, so I will actually have blooms for Friday’s What’s Blooming post!