Bicycling New England, the
Erie Canal, & around Lake Ontario 2005
Putnam to Enfield CT

June 28, 2005
Distance 42.3 Miles

We woke up early this morning because we thought that the temperature was going to be similar to yesterday's temperature, very hot. We planned to begin riding at 7:30 AM so we would reach our evening destination by early afternoon. When we looked outside there was no sunshine and the Weather Channel showed a rainstorm headed our way shortly. We ate breakfast at 6:30 AM and began to load everything on the bicycles. As we looked out the window, we saw that it was raining rather hard. We sat back and stayed in our motel room and waited for the rain to pass. By 7:45 AM the rain storm was over and we began to travel west across northern Connecticut.

As we left Putnam, we began to climb up a very long gradual hill. It seemed that we would never reach the top of this hill. We went over the top of the hill, coasted down a short downhill and started up another hill. For most of the rest of the day we would climb a hill, coast down a hill and climb another hill. The problem was that we spent more actual time going up the hills then we did going down the hills. Going up the hills our speed was usually less than 7 miles per hour but going down the hills our speed was greater than 15 miles per hour and sometimes our speed going down exceeded 35 miles per hour. We ended up walking some of the hills because the grade was greater than 10%.

By the time we had gone 20 miles we were very tired and badly needed a rest. Just as we got to the top of one hill, Mary Kay saw a sign for a country store. It was actually a working dairy and a cheese factory where they made goat cheese. The good news was that we were able to get something to eat and our bicycles were under a roof. We had an excellent goat cheese omelet, with home made bread. All day it had looked like it would rain at any moment and in many places the road was very wet because a rain storm had just passed by. While we were eating and resting, it began to sprinkle and when we left our glasses had enough raindrops hitting them that it was difficult to see. Within a couple of miles the road was dry. About 5 miles from the end of our ride we stopped at a Donald's, for ice-cream and before we left it again began to sprinkle but in a mile or so the pavement was dry again.