Day30: Testing my body, riding to Rouses Point

Tuesday July 16, 2019

I'm in Rouses Point, NY tonight after almost ending this tour today. I've booked two nights here because the weather forecast was for lots of rain tomorrow and because I want to see how things are going with my body before I commit to going back into Canada. Quebec is only a few miles north of this motel. Montreal is 50 miles away.

At about 2 AM this morning I was hurting. The Aleve I had taken before supper didn't seem to have helped much and when I got up to go pee, I literally had to lean on or sit on the bed multiple times getting to and from the bathroom. This was repeated at 4:30 AM. That time I took my second Aleve. At 6 AM my right leg calf muscle cramped and got me out of bed. I decided to stay up because breakfast was available. My legs were working better and I started looking for a rental car. That is when I discovered than there were no car rental agencies in Malone!

I searched using the excellent wifi at The Sleep Inn + and found Enterprise car rental agency with good ratings in Plattsburgh NY at about 50 miles away 20 miles south of my intended route and Watertown at about 100 miles in the opposite direction on 11. It would take two days to get back to Watertown, assuming the winds weren't a problem, and one day to get to Plattsburg. Either of those routes would be ending the tour, A third option would be to ride the route I'd planned which would leave me about 20 miles from Plattsburg with the option of heading down there and abandoning the tour or going into Quebec. the bad weather forecast for tomorrow would probably make actually getting to either Watertown or Plattsburgh tomorrow unlikely.

Abandoning this tour would make it much more difficult to even start future long tours. A lot of being able to do what I do touring is due to simply believing I can deal with whatever I run into on a tour. This would seriously damage that belief and, at my age, that would be very hard to recover from.

I decided to test my leg problem today by riding the route I had planned and by taking a rest day tomorrow - which probably would be a rain day anyway - and deciding the next day to continue in Canada or head for a car rental in NY.In making that decision I also have to consider the difficult of doing the rental car trip home. That isn't going to be easy if I can't walk after driving for a few hours!

My actual ride today was very enjoyable. It did have a lot of climbing in the first half which I was able to do in the bike's middle ring and a lot of great, moderate speed, long descents in the second. It also sprinkled on me quite often, but never got past the zip up the vest stage. I enjoyed both parts and I enjoyed simply being on US 11 for all of the ride. It also has hundreds of megawatt wind turbines to watch slowly - 14.1 rpm -turning generating lots of power in today's wind. They must be fairly new because I never heard any noise from them or saw any that weren't turning.

I got here about 3 PM and had no problem getting a room at the, relatively cheap motel. Over 3 hours later I still haven't been able to connect to the internet at the motel because their wifi isn't connected to the internet. This is not an uncommon problem in cheap motels. Hopefully it will get fixed, but, if it doesn't, there is a coffee shop half a mile away that has open wifi and leaves it on even when they are closed! I should be able, even in the rain, to get there tomorrow morning and get this up on crazyguy and out to email. My US phone has a very weak signal here and my Canadian phone won't work so I can't use either of them for data or voice.

Since I may be facing a rainy day all day tomorrow, I walked the village, Rouses Point, this evening to buy supplies from the Dollar General at the other end of town. That store is the only place in town to buy groceries and lots of the kind of stuff a grocery store would carry. I did note that my walking is not good although it still gets me there. I saw a fellow sitting on a bench outside the coffee shop which was across the street on my walk out using his phone as a computer. I stopped there on the way back to use mine to check my mail. There is an interesting place called Sandy's Deli over there as well which has beer and food and is open till 9 tonight. I may walk back there tonight to check it out before the ran hits (if it does) tomorrow.

The view out my window is of Vermont on the other side of a very wide - mile+ - Lake Champlain. It is quite nice and the net reviews said the sunrise view is truly spectacular from this motel. If he forecast is right, it is unlikely to be that way tomorrow.

Next morning at the coffee shop having breakfast:

The Deli really is a nice, not fancy, restaurant with some beer and other small items for sale. Very nice folks, very limited beer variety, I bought a can of Canadian beer and carried it back to my room.

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