That Warming Feeling.

I realize this post has been long awaited for considering I haven’t updated my blog for some time now. I’m sorry!! I will try to update more often, it is just sometimes difficult to get the motivation when I am sitting in my tent, tired, with low wi-fi signal. Maybe this is only an excuse. Either way, I am going to make three posts today for you to read, one of which will be recent pictures. I have a juicy story to tell you about a situation I was faced with while riding through the Adirondack Mountains just southwest of Lake Placid, NY.

               It started on a rainy morning at Raquette Lake, NY on my primitive camp site at about 8am. The rain was no surprise after hearing the constant barrage of weather updates which called for a 100% chance of rain for the day. I like those odds. I rolled my wet tent, packed my gear, and ate the only can of tuna fish that I had in my pack from the previous day. It's just one of those days. My first objective for the morning was finding somewhere to eat a solid breakfast, preferably something hot. After finding a little hotel nearby, I ate 4 slices of French toast, eggs, ham, and had a cup of coffee. As a side note, I was served by a very nice woman who had previously lived in Tucson! What are those odds?

               You may be thinking “This isn’t juicy” …which at this point is very true. I have to preface this story several times just to tell it, for my reputation’s sake. Actually, now that I think of it, for those of you that know me and especially my sister, this next experience isn’t even all that surprising.

               I started my ride by fitting my feet with socks that were advertised as “waterproof,” which soon proved to be anything but resistant to water. Epic Fail. About 3 miles into the ride, the rain had saturated my shoes, filled my polyester socks like water balloons, and damped my shorts. My raincoat held in heat so my upper half was surprisingly comfortable despite the steadily growing icy feeling in my toes. As the speed of my downhill decent increased, so did the numbness in my toes. The wind forced its way through the ventilation holes in the bottom of my shoes and created wind chill that magnified the effect of the water and 50 degree weather. As I felt numbness crawling up the bones in feet and into my calves, I knew something had to be done before I suffered more serious complications. Initially, I stopped, dried my feet, and placed zip-lock bags over them in the hopes that they would remain dry. Epic Fail again. My feet were wet within 5 minutes and cold as ever soon after.      

               At this point, miles from civilization in the middle of the forest with my feet frozen and numb, I decided I had run out of options for ways to keep warm. I looked like a soaking cat after an unwanted bathing, and was so uncomfortable I even made desperate feline sounds as I pedaled in agony.  I stopped, and with my bladder full of urine, the idea hit me like the bird that crashed in Fabio’s face. I would just pee on my shoes! Juicy. So I unleashed my steamy stream which had the instant effect of reviving the feeling in my toes. The numbness subsided and I was back on my bike comfortably pedaling towards the next city. Epic Win. Upon arrival to the next gas station, which was about an hour down the road, I filled my insulated bottles with the near boiling waters of the coffee maker. I then used this water to continually douse my shoes as they slowly numbed throughout the ride.

               I rode 60 miles to the town of Boonville, NY where I stopped at a hotel. I was purple, shivering, and my teeth were chattering. In the lobby I met a couple, the man looked at me with a grin and said, “It must be Halloween out there, because there is no way you’ve been riding in this rain.” Trick-or-Treat! The front desk clerk at the hotel must have been turned off by the fact that I was leaking on the floor. I thought I had washed the urine out with the boiling water, but perhaps she had a nose for that. Either way, she said that they had no place to put my bike, no laundry capabilities, no wi-fi, and apparently nothing else that they could offer to me. When she recommended that I go down the street to another motel that could accommodate me better, the gracious couple I had been talking to offered a room at their house. WINNN.

Needless to say it was the best shower and spaghetti dinner I ever had. I cannot thank Jerry and Terri enough for their random act of kindness. Events like these are what have made this trip great, even if it did require me to urinate on myself to get to that point. 

tl;dr - I rode through the rain and peed on myself to warn my feet and then luckly found an uber nice couple who housed me for the night.