The Kirks

Izzy and I had a fantastic time in New York.  Izzy spent a day at Goldman Sachs and then spent Tuesday and Wednesday zooming round NYC on her own.  Being a Dad, this is a pretty scary thing for one’s 15 year old daughter to do but it all seemed to work out well apart from the obligatory stalker.  We went  to the Gordon Ramsey restaurant in the London NYC on Tuesday night and ate the best meal either  of  us had ever eaten.  Sadly, it had to end and so we left NYC around 3.30pm on Wednesday to go out to JFK.  After a lot of messing around with Izzy at the Virgin Terminal, I dropped her with the UM (unaccompanied minors) people and zoomed over to terminal seven add pickup JJ.  We drove up to Warren CT in a really pimped up van which was quite cool.  We arrived at Lee’s house around 8pm and didn’t really get to see it in the light but it is truly beautiful as you can see on the left.  Lee had produced a fantastic dinner with the world’s best sausages and a lot of wine.  It’s hard to beat that.  JJ’s headset had fallen apart in the bike box but we managed to fix it in a slightly drunken way but it seemed to work.

Early the next morning, after coffee (and cigarettes for me) we headed off into a cold chilly morning.  The weather was beautiful and the scenery in this part of the USA is absolutely outstanding.  The leaf fall is in progress at the moment and the hills are covered with orange, red and ochre trees.  It is incredibly rural for an area which is about 1.5 hours from the throbbing heart of New York. 

There’s four of us doing the trip.  Lee Vance, his brother Terry, JJ McNeil from Cambridge and me.  We’re all about the same standard (i.e. middle aged blokes with bikes way too good for their cycling ability) and since all of us work or have worked in some capacity in the financial industry, there’s a certain commonality of views…Lee on the left, Terry in the vintage Eddy Merckx cycling top in the centre and JJ on the right in the Bianchi gear. 

The beginning of the route was pretty reasonable.  Not too many hills and a lot of good stuff to keep us interested.  Terry has done a fantastic job sorting out the routes and so we’re all very grateful.  However, we stopped after 37 miles (!) for breakfast and there was a little bit of grumbling about that.  We had stopped early for a “comfort break” which basically involved relieving ourselves behind a church.  I’m sure that that is illegal in Massachusetts.  In case anybody wants to press charges, here’s the photographic evidence.

Carlos is driving the car complete with  UHaul trailer and has stocked the car with Snickers, Gatorade, peanut butter and V8.

 V8 is either a delicious combination of vegetables and tomato which is packed full of vitamins and minerals or a disgusting red sludge depending on your viewpoint. Terry and I are in the first camp and I’ve had four cans already.  Yum.

The second bit was pretty tough.  A lot of really quite horrid hills and although the weather is beautiful, there was a lot of climbing and a lot of swearing.  JJ had put his back out before coming, Lee was having some…err…comfort problems, I was pretty keen on coffee and cigs.  Only Terry seemed to be without any obvious complaints although that might change…

Lunch was a repeat of the peanut butter sandwiches and V8 experience and we hung out in the car park of the Huntingdon Country Store and generally frightened the school kids by being Lycra (spandex) clad and old I guess.

After lunch it got serious.  There was a very long climb up which pretty much finished me.  Long, steady and unpleasant.  There were many moments where I thought to myself “just one more revolution of the pedals and then I’m done”. 

Then a long fast descent down into Northampton MA.  A really nice studenty town which is pretty and very relaxed.   The Northampton Hotel where we are staying is good although it took me five attempts to get into my room…

We’ve beered up, eaten some appetisers and now we’re going to go out and have a big evening….yeah, right…a few burgers and then sleep seems the order of the day.

The stats?  100 miles and one mile of climbing is the summary.  23.4km/h average which isn’t hugely fast but I’m not too unhappy about that.  2511 calories. A quite tough day and I think everybody is feeling it.  I’ve uploaded a selection of the photographs as a web album.  Click on the link below.

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