Russ Nelson's blog

[ Home | RSS 2.0 | ATOM 1.0 ]

Fri, 15 Jun 2007

Ride starting Fri Jun 15 10:11:06 2007

108.78 km 356883.86 feet 67.59 mi 24246.00 seconds 404.10 minutes 6.74 hours 10.04 mi/hr

Longest ride I've been on in a long time. In September 2004 I went for a 57 mile ride. I want to work my way up to a century ride later this summer. I'm 2/3rds of the way there! Unfortunately, I was pretty darned sore by the end of this ride. Not tired, just sore hands, a sore elbow, and mostly a sore butt.

Went from Latham to Dunsbach Ferry to Cohoes, then backtracked. The railbed used to go across I-89 at grade, from 1959 to 1963. Now, you detour down to the Thaddeus Kosciousco bridge and cross under it on the road. Shortly on the other side is a ramp heading back up to the railbed. You stay on the railbed until the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna. They don't want people wandering around on their property, so they have the railbed gated off, and the railbed is routed up the hill, and around that facility, and the GE facility to the west of it. Then it's a fast ride down a steep hill with a 90-degree turn at the end to get back on the railbed.

More railbed riding until you get to the far (west) side of Union College. The bicycle trail seems to disappear at that point. If you ask a few locals, you'll find out that the bicycle trail continues near the community college. It's not following any railbed at that time, but fairly soon you connect up with the old Erie Canal towpath. There's the ruins of a pair of locks. More straight, flat riding until you get to Lower Rotterdam Junction, where the path is closed and re-routed up to the highway. A bit of highway riding gets you back to the trail, but your happiness is limited. A short distance after Rotterdam Junction the bicycle trail disappears. I asked inside a shop, and the shopkeeper said that it continued "a little" further on. I rode a little and didn't find anything, so turned back.

posted at: 05:08 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry

Made with Pyblosxom