Another Awesome Weekend Finger Lakes Ride

The weather has warmed up for the weekend, so in anticipation of it getting colder and rainier, I went for another nice ride with Robert and Charlene. We drove up to Lodi, on the east coast of Seneca Lake and took a nice tour that brought us to the west coast of Cayuga Lake and through the Finger Lakes National Forest (see map below or follow this link), picking up some local honey and goat cheese along the way - nice presents to bring home to Cindy who was hosting 5 girls (plus Erik and Inga) in a pre-homecoming party. (Presently, they are all --- except Cindy --- at the homecoming dance). We had lunch on the shore of Seneca Lake. The lake was amazingly calm and placid. We watched a couple launch a pair of kayaks - it seemed like a perfect day for that. We ate curried tuna sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, chips, grapes, chocolate-chip cookies, a pear, and a coke.

On this week's ride we only managed ~3300 vertical feet of climbing, this along with not having any particularly steep climbs, which last week pushed me into the red zone, enabled me to complete the entire ride without cramping up.

It was a particularly spectacular ride; the sky was a beautiful blue, the trees were in fantastic form, the temperatures were in the low 70's, and the humidity was low (at least by East coast standards). Throughout the ride I kept saying, "This is so awesome." It reminded me of Hope's recent catch phrase, because I kept saying it, to the point of not realizing that I kept saying it. It was an awesome ride.