Syracuse NY to Little Falls NY

5 hours and 1 minute to tide 78.2 miles.

Woke up to find that it rained last night and the sky looked black. Patty and Cindy let us know that their friends would have coffee and doughnuts at the 12 mile mark for all the riders. She said that we would need it with the rain. It took a little while to get out of Syracuse as they wanted to make sure that we stayed off the busy roads. Our group will never pass up food so everyone stopped for doughnuts and met some nice people. At mile 23 we were coming to a stop sign and it was time to change the direction sheet. The "A" team passed us just before the stop sign and rather than stop to change their direction sheets they tried to do it on the move. Somehow two of them got tangled up and we saw John suddenly fall! We stopped and I got off my bike to help. Right away I could see John was in pain and could tell this would not be good. We eventually managed to borrow a chair from the maintenance people that worked in the building where we were. We had already called the staff and an ambulance was on the way. As soon as John tried to stand he looked like he was going in to shock. There was nothing the riders could do so people started to leave as he was well looked after. At mile 32 there is the "Smallest chapel in the world," with room for two people to be married while everyone watches from boats or the shore. We arrived at the SAG at mile 33 but there was no new news on John.

After the SAG all the riders started to get worried about the rain so started to push on. There are lots of small towns and villages as we go so we were having trouble making good time. We were on a quiet road with fresh asphalt and made time but then ran in to some chip seal which immediately slowed us down.

With about 3 miles to go Barry had another spoke break. Rick fixed it so we are good to go tomorrow.

As we arrived early we were able to go
to town for a nice lunch and then walk to see the Erie canal. This is one day it paid to be a little slower as the fast riders all got wet in the last 8 miles before the hotel. We had wet road but even it was not bad.