kristingbridges
29 Miles from Schenectady to Albany
Getting back on the trail for the final day is always bittersweet. I’m looking forward to being in the same place more than one night at a time. But it’s fun seeing so many new places, and this is vacation, so after the ride we have to go back to reality.
Something we’ve learned over the years is that it’s usually very hard to tell how we’re going to feel on our bikes for the day until we actually start. My knees only hurt when I’m pedaling, for instance, and the seat soreness is very specific to that bike seat most of the time. The day before was that unexpected short day due to the nearly 70 miles on the previous day. This proved something. A rest day, even a partial one, does a world of good. On longer trips, we work one in, but this was a compressed trip to fit it into the time we had. After just the half day of rest, we both felt better for this 29 miles than we had for the last several days.
At some point, we hope to do a cross-country trip, so knowing that rest days help so much is reassuring. The way I felt the previous few days wouldn’t be sustainable much longer. Sometimes the body just needs a little time, and TLC, to restore and heal. It’s actually amazing how well it does with just a little time.
The trail was mostly a paved path today, but there were some onroad portions. The hardest part of the day was actually on the bike path. There is a massive GE research facility just outside Schenectady, followed by a Navy nuclear engineering facility. To get around those, the path goes up and away from the Mohawk River. And when I say “up” I mean way up. The steepest portion was a long 18% grade. I walked a portion of that one, but Brian made it up riding. But there were several other double digit climbs after that. Have I mentioned climbs make me grumpy? I did all the others on my bike. Finally, after getting past the super secret “Hawkins Labs” (for my fellow Stranger Things fans) with all the “Danger! Keep out!” signs and fences and guarded gates, we were back down by the river and on mostly flat trails.
We passed a really nice guy running that looked maybe our age or slightly older. He asked if we were doing the whole trail and told us he had just done a portion of it with his adolescent grandsons He was super nice and commented on the tough hills we had just passed. He assured us the rest of the trail to Albany was “literally all downhill.” Nice guy, but a liar 😉 There were more climbs, but they just weren’t 15-18% climbs. Still, the trail was flatter and nicely paved the rest of the way.
During a brief road portion in Cohoes, Brian suddenly stopped at a business drive and I thought he saw that we had missed a turn off onto the trail. Nope. He spotted a BBQ place! And it was just in time for lunch, too. We were just starting to look for a rest stop that might have a bench and a port-o-let. This was even better. Super friendly staff, nice clean restroom, good food, and picnic tables outside for a nice socially distanced lunch! Checked all the boxes for us!
After that lunch, we only had about 10 miles for the whole trip left. Getting into Albany was a breeze. There’s a very large, modern pedestrian bridge from the river/trail up over the highway that takes you right to Broadway St.. The city streets for the handful of blocks up to our hotel were pretty much all uphill. And since we had to walk our bikes up the bridge, then down the stairs (there was a bike rail to help get our bikes down the stairs), we just walked the rest of the way. We enjoyed an outside dinner at the local Irish pub, which was owned by a proprietor, Tessa, who was a stitch. Most of the people there were her regulars and the banter as she ran in and out of the building taking care of the patrons was fun to be part of.
We’re on the Amtrak back to Buffalo now. As always, getting the bikes on the train was the biggest challenge. We got Business Class seats, which is nice for the power outlets and because it’s sparsely occupied. We reserved the trip including the bikes (a must) but there is one rack per car and no rack in the business class car. Brian helped me get mine in the rack closest to the business class car at the end of the train, then went back down onto the platform to get his bike on the second from the front car. We thought we only had 10 minutes to load, but this is the US, not France, so the train didn’t leave the station until about 20 minutes after we were all loaded up and in our seats. When the train pulled into the station, it was already running 8 minutes late and now it’s showing that it is running 30 minutes late. At least we don’t have any rush to get anywhere. So, it’s time to sit back and enjoy a teen-tiny bottle of wine and watch all the towns we passed through go by much faster on the way back.
