Therese Marie

…This doesn’t end with me giving up.

But, I’ll admit that I wanted to. I guess it wouldn’t be a real adventure if I didn’t have a bad day.

I made mistakes, I rode in the terrible heat of the day, I wasn’t prepared for the amount of incline I’d have to bike up, and I got cranky about it all. Balancing work and biking far enough is hard.

So, I freaked out. And I think I was too dehydrated to cry.

Everything’s fine and I’m still going, it was just a bad day.

Alright, here’s the skinny, in a list:

1. Apparently I lost one of my front brake pads. When? No idea. Does it still work enough? Yeah. So, not getting that fixed right now, it’s fine! (it’s fine.)
2. I absolutely should not ever never again bike during my lunch breaks. Always an awful idea. It hasn’t been a good idea yet. Unless I have somewhere to go that’s only a few miles down the road, it’s gonna to be a no for me dog. So, Therese, stop! doing! that!
3. I’ve got to send some stuff home because my packs are just too freaking heavy and I AM OVER IT.
4. Speaking of heavy, there’s just NO NEED to carry so much water. Today I carried 2 LITERS???! WHY?
5. My butt bones hurt more than I ever imagined they could. Is it possible for bone to bruise? The pain is so strange.
6. I’m thinking about rearranging my packs and putting my tent on the front. That feels smart.
7. Sometimes, after being in the saddle for over an hour, my fingers start to get all tingly. And then they feel like the nerves are vibrating, or someone’s hitting my funny bone. Don’t know what that’s about. Probably not great.
8. But, FINE, I’ll end on a happy note: I LOVE MY CLIPLESS SHOES.

The section between Kingston and Hudson is beautiful and hilly as hell.

My thighs were on fire, my muscles wanted to give up so bad by the end of that section. Really, truly beautiful area. Exclusively on roads, but I felt pretty safe the whole time because of the low-traffic. The little villages like Tivoli and Bard College are wonderful. And there are apple orchards everywhere!

It’s just the hills. Damn those hills. If my phone battery wasn’t so close to dead, I would’ve recorded the elevation gain. It felt like a LOT. But alas I am left without numbers; only complaints and sore muscles.

I’d failed at putting any serious amount of miles under my belt during lunch. So I had to do the last 25-30 (unsure) after 4pm. And those hills really just slowed me down.

7:30pm rolled around, the sun fully set, dusk crawled in through the trees

And I just barely made it to my destination. Again, I was graced by a wonderful host who let me shower and gave me so much inspiration and advice. She’s a total bad-ass and has been on so many bikepacking trips in so many cool places!

Sleep came slowly. I woke up almost every hour in a panic – I had stress dreams about vampires and inconveniencing my host. But it all turned out fine, obviously none of it was real (…right?)

The next morning, rain pattered on my tent.

I spent the morning and afternoon working from a Stewart’s and then the local library (which was a very very cute place). It worked out just fine, I got a whole 8 hour day in without having to stress about where I’d be working or if my laptop would get wet in the rain. Success! Stewart’s proved to be a very local place full of gossip and community. I had no idea, but I loved watching it all while I worked.

Eventually, it came time for me to leave town, and a 35 mile trip loomed in the distance.

From Hudson to East Greenbush. But first, sustenance! It is just amazing to me that I can decide “you know what? I would like a sandwich from that diner!” and I can ride up to it, get a tasty sandwich, and then go about my day. I haven’t done a trip like this.

This leg of biking really drove home the fact that I am terrible with numbers and time management. I knew I had to do 35 miles. I knew that takes about 3 hours. AND STILL, as I stood outside this diner talking to my dad eating a tasty vittle at 5pm, I was like, “everything is fine! I’ll be in a room by 7:30pm no prah-blem.”

35 miles still takes me at least 3.5 hours to complete no matter what time of day I start.

And yeah, if you’re calculating correctly, you’d know that the sun still sets at 7:09pm. Which means it gets QUITE dark by 7:30. And 7:30 is only 2.5 hours after 5pm. See how this is not adding up in reality?

I had a grand old ride at the beginning.

Going through beautiful farmland, picking up some delicious apple cider, feeling safe because I was on rail trails again. I made some phone calls, took deep breaths, enjoyed the ride.

And then the sun started to set more and more, and that’s when I looked at the map. Holy shoot was I still very very far away from where I needed to go. And you know what else? The hotel I was planning on staying at was actually the CLOSEST hotel possible. Yeah, so I couldn’t even freaking bail on my plan. There was literally no where to stay in between me and my destination.

Nassau. Stupid. I called it “Nothing Nassau” in my mind. How could there just be nothing? There was a lake. But barely even a town. Just houses speckled amidst public land trusts. Cool. That didn’t help me at all.

It got darker and darker and I was biking through a land trust and it was desolate. Mist leaked out of the dark dark forest. I thought about when I used to work in wilderness therapy; kids would be scared all the time. What did I tell them when they came to me, frightened of the dark? Tell a story.

So I started telling myself a story, I made one up about The Girl Who Was Afraid of Everything. I talked to myself for an hour while the stars burned bright above me, dodging frogs and rabbits in the path. Oh, the other delightful piece of all this is that my phone had been whittled down to 1% battery.

Oh my gosh don’t worry, I MADE IT.

I rolled up to my destination, exhausted beyond belief. The day was over, I was safe, it all worked out. It all worked out. It’s nice having tangible evidence of everything working out. Then I can be like, “Hey! Brain! Stop it, you’re imagining chaos, you’re creating anxiety that’s not based in reality. Look around. You’re all good, everything is good.” I said “thank you” to the sidewalk, because it kept me off the road away from the fast cars. It was a pretty great sidewalk.

Even for all the fear I felt biking in the dark, it wasn’t that bad, and I almost miss it now. I had fun! Tomorrow, though, I will knock out some miles in the morning. And then it’s on to the next place, and the next, and the next.

Until then, Fly on

Lil