Oh What A Beautiful Day

Wow--today was a perfect fall day--blue skies, no clouds, temperature in the 70's. I started the day with a workout at Fitness Together and then went cycling with Liz and Gina. We planned on going via the bike path to Easthampton, stopping for brunch, and then taking the back roads home. 20 miles we figured.

I was a little concerned about going on a long bike ride after a workout, but I felt incredibly strong on the ride to Easthampton. I felt so good, I considered going for another ride by myself after we finished--it was such a beautiful day and who knows how many more like this we'll have before it gets cold.

We found a diner in Easthampton using Yelp (the Internet is fabulous). Here's a picture of Liz at the front door:




Well, that doesn't look like Liz at all. I took a picture of her, and now she's no where to be seen in the picture. Weird. Anyway, we had a big breakfast--bacon, eggs, toast, hash browns.

We headed out to do the rest of the bike path. It starts about two miles from our house, and goes about 10 miles--it's really a cool path. At the end we got onto the road for the trip back. We took a tour of all the Hamptons--Northampton, Easthampton, Southampton, and Westhampton. Unfortunately, we missed a turn and our 20 mile ride turned into a 30 mile ride. I was really tired for the last 10 miles. I could feel the exercise from the morning, and we hadn't biked more than 11 miles since before I got my appendix out. We saw some great views on the trip back--beautiful autumn leaves, meadows leading to mountains, waterfalls, and a flotilla of Canadian geese hanging out in a pond, resting up for the next stage of their journey. Here's a waterfall:




Well, the picture really flattens the scene, which removes all the drama from a waterfall. And here's the goose-filled pond:




The little white specks are the geese. Boy my photography is leaving something to be desired today.

Once we realized we'd missed the turn, Gina suggested we bike to her house (no steep hill to get to our house, and she'd drive us home). The closer we got to the turn to our house, the better that idea sounded, so that's what we did. Here's the map of our route:



The line heading north to the green pin is the road to our house. We overlapped the bike path to get to Gina's house at the red pin. She lives about 3 houses from the bike path. A fun day!

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