Day29: A short day to Malone with another act of kindness

Monday July 15, 2019

My room last night had central air rather than its own unit through the wall. That made the room much quieter - no fan noise - and it was much better isolated from outside noise. Despite the fact that it was on the end of the building closest to the highway, I didn't even think about using earplugs. My fancier and more expensive room in Malone tonight is much noisier.

Yesterday and today were days when I was pleased to be able to take short days because my legs were tired and achy. Both days had under four hours of riding. Tomorrow, a 60+ mile day with 1000 feet of climbing, should be challenging.Tomorrow will also have a lot fewer services and no motel options except possibly one at the end of the day. It does have two Dollar General stores in the first half of the day and several small towns so I should be OK for supplies and water even if the possibility of a mom and pop motel there doesn't work out.

This evening, I bought some generic Aleve. I'd stopped using that many years ago because my cardiologist said I should, but it was the best thing for muscle pain and my muscle pain while riding seems to be getting worse. Hopefully Aleve will help limit it tomorrow. So will the forecast strong wind from the SW ;-}.

My ride today was mixed, but had an act of kindness that brought a smile to my face and kept it there for quite a while. About 10 miles from Malone, I needed to stop to rest and snack. I wanted a place to do that in the shade, so, when I saw a perfect place, I stopped there even though I could see it was part of a yard.

It was not visible from the house and I wasn't going to leave any trace, so I figured it was OK. Then, as I was making my peanut butter and nutella wrap, a truck stopped at the mailbox to get the mail and then pulled on into the driveway. I was very visible to the person in that truck and hoped they didn't take offense at my sitting on their property. Maybe 15 minutes later as I was finishing my snack and rest, a man came walking over. He brought a chilled bottle of fancy green tea as a gift and asked about my tour and my bike. We visited for 10 minutes or so and then he went back to his house. I finished packing, rolled my bike down to the road, and rode away feeling thankful for that man and the kind of person he was.

I'm also thankful that, after I got to Malone, I finally got the minor on-line banking issue I've been dealing with since Watertown fixed.It only took an hour on the phone and three different bank reps to fix it! I spent at least another hour on the phone with two other bank reps when I was in Watertown. Earlier today I thought I had it almost fixed after I discovered that, at a Tim Horton's near the border, both of my phones worked! The Canada SIM phone was still in Canada and the US CDMA phone was picking up a signal from a US CDMA tower.

I used the Candian phone as a hot-spot for my Chromebook and the US phone to call the Bank 'from the US'. I got the bank, was put on hold for six or seven minutes, got a rep for two or three minutes and almost had the first part of the problem - the part that I needed the US phone for - fixed when my phone service figured out that I was still in Canada and cut the connection.If I had had another five minutes on the phone, I wouldn't have needed to go to the US to fix the other stuff if the web interface had been properly designed. Of course it isn't or I wouldn't have needed an hour on the phone with the other reps this afternoon, but that hour could have been from Canada.

Oh well, I'm looking forward to riding up US 11 to where it starts. I've always though of 11 running from Canada - actually the place where NY,VT,and Canada meet - to New Orleans. Before I-81 it was the national main road between those places. After tomorrow, I will have ridden my bike on almost all of US 11.

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