Last night it rained for most the night. When I woke up, I looked at the weather on my phone and this is what the radar looked like. The rain line was centered over me, that blue dot.

I had left a cup on the picnic table and it had about 3/4 inch of water in it this morning. I packed everything up wet and found a picnic shelter in which to have breakfast.

It drizzled on and off all day. I put on, then took off various pieces of foul weather gear depending upon how wet things felt. Most of the trail was the crushed limestone, not my favorite type of trail.

Just after I crossed a road, a repeated clicking sound started coming from the rear of the bike. Next thing I hear is a loud psssst. Yep, I had my second flat. Something must have stuck in the tire, then when it got knocked off, all the air rushed out the new hole. My rear tire is pretty much worn out, but I’m not going to change it unless flats become a repeating issue.

I’m going to have to go through the entire bike when I get home. When this adventure is over, I’m thinking of retiring this bike from loaded touring and put it back into its original sport touring setup with lightweight wheels and higher gearing. I’ll search for a solid mid-80s full touring frame to build up. Full touring frames from that era had braze-ons for low-rider front racks and longer chainstays, two things I wish this bike had. I think touring bikes from that era have the right combination of features and performance for my needs. I believe modern adventure bikes are overbuilt, have unnecessary features, have too fat tires and end up weighing more than necessary.

Todays ride was a hard, slow grind. At one o’clock I had only covered 37 miles. I must have been paying the price for yesterday’s effort. The poor weather and crushed limestone trail couldn’t help either.

I didn’t see too many photo ops today, but this reproduction barge under the protection of a roof was cool.

A somewhat disappointing 50 miles today lands me in a motel room in Utica. All my wet stuff is out, hanging around the room, as I attempt to dry it out. Today’s 50 miles added to the 88 from yesterday added to Sundays total of 3143 moves the total miles to 3281

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