Day 5

Weather couldn't decide what it was going to do yesterday, but today it decided, and the answer was rain, lots of it. Had thunderstorms all night while I tried to sleep and in the morning, the downpour was real.
Tried to make oats but the stove conked out halfway through so just ended up eating half cooked, watery oats. A great start to the day. Was soaked to the bone before the first 10 miles was through. Even put on my booties

The grit and grime from the side of the road was so rough, pretty soon every peddle felt like I was crushing fresh pepper. No good. Tried wiping him clean as I went with a rag but it didn't help much after the grime got inside the chain.

Nasty stuff. So I peddled slowly into the next town (Fulton, I think) and found a bike shop. I told them what I was doing and what I needed. They hooked me up with some heavy duty degreaser and a floor pump which really helped me out. Nice fellas.

While I was outside going at the thing a fellow walks by looks at the bike and says "Man, that your ride?" I says yeah, and he goes "man that bike is baaaaaad."  and he meant it in the best of ways. "How many speed?" 27 I says. "Dayum. Thats a sweet ride. But you aint got no riiiiims."  He goes on to tell me that he's been building bikes since he was 8 years old and currently builds "little trick bikes them young dudes like to ride" and how he has a bunch of sweet rims laying around that he'd sell me for 25 bucks. Told him I wasn't really concerned with the look of my ride, so he went on to make a deal with the fella from the shop that was there with me. But before he left he shot a finger at the bike and looked at me and just said "baaaaaaaad."
Rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Going through Fairhaven a man drove past me and said "have fuuuuun." I thought, " wow, how supportive" but then I rounded the corner and saw this:

Biggest hill I've hit yet.
Finally made it to Sodus Point, and pulled into a little RV park run by a nice lady named Carol. Stove is still on the fritz but my neighbors were kind and fed me a turkey sandwich and some leftover rice for dinner. Nice to know you're not really alone even when you're alone.