Today's ride was a very good one. We went 78 miles today, all on a very good road and all in very good weather. There were not much hills. Everyone enjoyed an easy and high speed ride. I made it to Little Falls at well before 1:00 PM, and that was not even with pushing very hard. My average speed was well over 17 mph for the total ride today.
It is funny how 78 miles can now seem like a "rest day".
Early in today's ride we did have a mishap. The ride had been otherwise going so well at the time. I was really enjoying the scenery and all of the other aspects of the ride. I was about to casually mention to Paula how nice the ride was going. We were probably only 20 miles into the ride, when I heard a monosyllabic expletive suddenly behind me. It was Roy, who had been drafting Greg quite closely. Greg had shifted slightly to the left, and Roy may have anticipated that poorly. Anyway, Roy's front wheel developed an inappropriate relationship with Greg's back wheel, leading to Roy's sudden high velocity smack down on the hard pavement. I had looked back in time just to see Roy's final flight into the road. It was so sudden, unexpected, and frightening for all of us.
It was really neat to see how well our group handled this. I was right there at the site, so I quickly got off of my bike and went to Roy. I kept his head and neck stable, while checking on other vital issues. Absolutely everyone else went into a sudden damage control mode as if it had been well practiced. We had riders on both directions on the road, controlling traffic as if they were experienced police officers. (I am certain that none of the automobile operators would have had the nerve to contend with them; the cyclists would have summarily ripped out the lungs of any car driver who did not cooperate with them.) I knew that I could stay with Roy, out there in the middle of the road, and not have to worry about cars at all.
We called 911 and the paramedics came soon. They took Roy away. We have yet to see him back, but we have progress reports that he is OK and will hopefully rejoin us soon.
Tomorrow we go to Albany, New York. This is getting to be very exciting. It is truly difficult to believe. We are so near the end of this long journey. We all have so many mixed feelings and emotions about that realization.
We have a probably 71 mile day tomorrow, that probably rather easy and light. After tomorrow, we will have two really arduous days. On Wednesday we will go from Albany, New York, to Brattleboro, Vermont. On Thursday we will then go from Brattleboro, Vermont to Burlington, Massachusetts. Both Wednesday and Thursday will be long mileage days with LOTS of climbing.
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That's terrifying!
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