Cycling the Tour de Habitat

Hi friends. Its been a super busy weekend. Finally I have some time to sit down and tell you about it!

Today was the Tour de Habitat, the cycling even for charity. This being my first biking event, I had no idea what to expect or how many people were going to be out there biking.

Chris, myself, and our friends Caitlyn and Rob were signed up for the 25 mile portion which starts at the Pump Station in Albany, goes 15 miles to the town of Feura Bush and then back.

There were not that many cyclists in this ride today…I was pretty surprised.

Hi Caitlyn!

When we checked in, we each got a set of directions on where to go. I figured I would be following the other bikers. No such luck.

Me and two other girls were last in the group. (I blame my mountain bike), so all we had was the map to find our way through the course.

The directions were pretty bad. Thankfully I know my way around the area very well otherwise I would have gotten completely lost. I was cycling by myself through the city for the first few miles. It wasn’t too bad, I just kept worrying about if I was going the right way or not.

Eventually we made it to Delaware Avenue where another woman riding in the event caught up with me and we rode together for awhile.

Soon we were in the country…AKA my homeland. 🙂

I was chugging along on my bike a few miles from the turnaround spot and I spot Chris! He came back to ride the rest of the way with me! 🙂

We got to the Turnaround and everyone was gone. No water, no food…completely gone. Thankfully I wore my camelbak and packed a Clif Bar so I stopped and refueled.

Chris and I rode all the way back together, which was nice. It was such a beautiful day!

I’ll admit, biking on such major roads is kind of scary. It wasn’t too bad since traffic is lighter on Sundays, but I can’t imaging biking at rush hour.

Nearly three hours later we made it back to the Pump Station.

Time for food and beer!

Cherry Brown — a new (to me) beer at Pump Station!

The food was buffet style upstairs, they had a pasta salad, ziti, mashed potatoes, roast beef and green beans. Tasty.

Chris enjoyed it, too!

Overall–today was definitely an adventure. I had no trouble physically biking 25 miles, but because the course was not marked made it a little bit annoying. If I hadn’t met up with Chris in the middle the end of it would have been extremely boring…but at least we did it.

Would I do it again? Maybe…if the course was a little bit better.