10 x 4

I photographed this place about three months ago on my Ides of March ride. The purple beech is pretty spectacular.

I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition - the high price of gas for the boats at a Baldwinsville marina with a wind turbine spinning in the background.

The cryptic title of this post relates to the number of miles ridden today for each hour of sleep I got last night - or should I say this morning starting at 6. It was an interesting night following the wedding of two of my friends, much of it spent in a pavilion at Robert Treman State Park. I haven't been there in  a long time so it was good to go back. However, I am beginning to think I am too old to be acting this young - it really is taking a toll on me. 

That said, I did manage a 3 hour, 40 mile ride today. I left from the front door and headed north through Liverpool to Baldwinsville and then west to Plainville. Despite a poor diet and unsettled sleep, I felt really good. It would be nice if it hadn't spent the past three days raining because I would have loved to get on some single track but I fought the urge and hit the pavement instead. The one downside to the ride was the vortex of bad bike juju coming from Baldwinsville. About 10 miles in to the ride, I flatted just about at the village line. After fixing the flat, I was rolling down Rt. 31 in the village and some idiot in a pickup decided he wasn't going to wait for the car coming (or me) and nearly hit me when trying to enter traffic. On my way back through the village, a motorcyclist felt it necessary to beep at me even though I was safely out of the way. 

I enjoyed the tailwind on the return trip - many times I was averaging speeds in the low 20s. That same tailwind was a headwind on the way out so much slower speeds for the first half of the ride. Got to see a bit of speedboat racing on Onondaga Lake as I rode by, too.

This picture doesn't capture the horrendous conditions - buckled and heaved pavement, downed trees, glass and litter, overgrown weeds blocking signage and clear sighlines - fun stuff.

This is a fun crossing - you can barely see the cars coming around the bend as you try to cross. Oh, and they are speeding up to be able to merge onto another road. 

The NYSDOT's idea of bicycle facilities in and around the I-81 corridor by the Carousel Mall is a joke. Poorly marked, horribly maintained, dangerously laid out, you name it. Add to this the fact that the shoulder all but disappears on the northbound lane of the Onondaga Lake Parkway and it is one of my top unsafe rides of all time to get out to the park. Maybe a letter to the powers that be is in order... 

I thought it was cool how this window pane was fighting gravity.

The barn used to be red and white...