I slept incredibly well last night! Evan (my composer friend from Vanderbilt) put me in his kids' room, which had blackout shades and made the morning very easy to sleep through. So, it was really easy to get at least six to eight full hours of sleep. I even woke up to him making some eggs for breakfast, which was awesome.
After breakfast, I had to fix my bike. I had hopes that it wasn't anything serious that I would have to waste half of the day going to the bike shop for. Turns out there were no indication that my tire had been penetrated, so that's good. I took out the tube and put in a new one and everything went rather smoothly. This was my first time changing out a tube in the rear tire and I was pretty impressed with myself! The whole thing took about 15 minutes and I was ready to get on the road shortly thereafter.
Once I got on the road, it was 8:20am, and, oddly enough, I didn't feel pressed for time. I had a flight out of Boston the NEXT DAY and I didn't feel pressed for time to cycle 191 miles through unknown terrain to Boston. I knew that this was it. I knew that I could take some leisurely breaks today as long as I cycled until I could not possibly cycle anymore, even if I went through the night.
The first thirty miles out of Albany were very hilly. I worked very hard, but didn't take many breaks (if any) because I was super excited to cross the Massachusetts border. Then it finally happened - I was in the final state! I then prepared for two very serious climbs that were coming in the next 30 miles. I had some extra motivation because I had arranged to have lunch with a friend of mine in the Berkshires.
The climbs were difficult, but not the most difficult thing ever and not as bad as I thought they would be. In retrospect, climbing 4,000 ft in 60 miles isn't that bad - nothing like the Rocky Mountains. I made really good time going through western Massachusetts and got to my lunch exactly when I thought I would get there.
After my friend left the restaurant, I waited around a bit longer because a rainstorm was rolling through, so I took care of some business for another hour before I got back on the road. Those two hours that I could have spent pedaling would come back to bite me. That 30 miles lost would make for an ::interesting:: night ahead. I used the time at the restaurant to charge my watch and my phone one last time on this journey, which would be much needed later.
Once I set back out, I had 127 miles left to Boston. It turns out that it would even be slightly less than that because I found a better route than Google Maps suggested. Seriously, Google Maps needs some work.
Nothing eventful really happened until it started to get dark. At that point, I was still about 70 miles away from Boston and starting to get tired. I was going through one small town after another and stopping at a lot of gas stations to continuously eat and stay fueled.
As the miles passed, it also got darker and the weather got more questionable. Eventually, the mist that had been keeping me cool turned into an all out heavy rain. This was problematic when navigating short Massachusetts back roads in the dark and needing to consult my phone every two minutes to make sure I wasn't taking wrong turns.
It then got so late that I would consider it "REALLY FREAKING LATE". At some absurd hour, most likely 12:30 or so, I stopped at a gas station because my phone had almost no charge left. I found some place that had tables that you could eat at and was hoping that they also had an outlet by those tables. No such luck. While my phone had a 4% charge, I was frantically writing down directions before it died.
It crossed my mind to just get a hotel then do the last 40 miles in the morning. Unfortunately, all the places I called didn't have ANY rooms. I consulted hotels.com and only found one room within several miles for $549. No way I was going to pay that for 4 hours of sleep.
So I pressed on. I didn't take the long, elaborate, twisty back road nightmarish route that I had just written down, though. No. I was one mile away from Route 9, which was a major highway that went straight into Boston. I decided to take this route. The good thing about this was that there were at least sporadic street lights and car lights. My headlamp was growing increasingly dim and I could barely see two feet in front of me anymore. The last thing I wanted was for it to be 3am and stuck on some back road in the middle of nowhere and not be able to read my written directions or have a phone to consult. That would be absolutely horrible.
When I got on Route 9, I summoned every ounce of remaining energy I had to finish this journey. I was still 30 miles away from Boston and I went into "beast mode", as some of my friends call it. I pedaled hard and there were only a few moments of dark highway and a near-dead headlamp that were scary. I hit some kind of metal that almost caused me to have another accident, but I was lucky.
I passed Framingham, then Wellesley, then I knew the skyline was just around the corner. It seems like every curve was teasing me at this point, then it happened. I overcame all the moments of despair and hopelessness when I saw the Prudential building in the distance. I was going super fast at this point. More than the idea of seeing the ocean, all I could think about was going to sleep in a comfortable bed at my friend Amy's apartment.
Here was the problem - when I stopped at the gas station 30 miles back to write down the directions to Amy's house, that was taking all the back roads. When I decided to jump on the speedy Route 9, I had no way of knowing how to get to where she lived, even though I had been there many times in the past several years. Boston is a crazy city and the roads just don't make any sense whatsoever.
I got to downtown Boston and stopped right by NEC and Symphony Hall. I didn't really know what to do, so I went to what I thought would be the cheapest hotel in the area to see if they had a room. Turns out the Mid-Town Hotel was all booked up. Now I really didn't know what to do. I almost hailed a taxi to take me to the Forest Hills T Stop (I would know the directions from there). It then occurred to me to ask the hotel if I could use an outlet for five minutes to charge my phone a bit. I then found the directions and pedaled the remaining 4.5 miles to her place.
I got there at 4am and took a shower to get all of the dirt and dead bugs off of me. Then I passed out into the most wonderful sleep. It would have been even more wonderful had it lasted for more than 4 hours.
