Schenectady, NY to Pittsfield, MA

51 miles. A challenging ride, but a good day nevertheless as we crossed our last state line (Massachusetts). For the first half of the day, we navigated through the Schenectady-Albany metro area. We arrived at the west bank of the Hudson River in downtown Albany without any major problems, but had trouble finding a way onto the bridge across the river (which serves an I-787 as well as the state highway {Route 20} that we were following). Since guys like me are pretty much incapable of bringing themselves to ask for directions, Penny asked a policeman for help. He told us there was a pedestrian bridge that cyclists were to use, which was welcome news to us as we did not relish the idea of riding on a bridge serving busy interstate and state highways. But after riding back and forth along the waterfront bike path for awhile, we couldn't find the pedestrian bridge. So (gulp) I asked a couple walking along the path if they knew where the pedestrian bridge was. They turned out to be tourists from Cape Cod, but he had just moments before noticed the pedestrian LANE attached to the I-787/Route 20 bridge, which was literally over our heads at that point. They appeared to be amazed that we had successfully ridden over 2,300 miles through 8 states yet we couldn't see a gargantuan mesh metal-enclosed bike lane that we could nearly reach up and touch.

We managed to find our way onto the lane (basically, a sidewalk separated from traffic) and successfully (and safely) crossed the river.
Once we cleared the suburbs on the east side of the river, the road began to climb and fall significantly as we approached the border and the Berkshire Mountains. There were a couple of fairly steep climbs of 2-3 miles in length and we were frequently using our lowest gears. There were some steep descents as well; even with the drum brake on the tandem + trailer hit nearly 40 mph on a couple of these. The compensation for having to do these long grinds was the superb scenery along the way, as you can hopefully see in the pictures I took today. The hills and fields were bright green from all of the rain this year and the creeks were running clear and full. And the weather was again near perfect - cool and partly cloudy.

The elevation graph of tomorrow's route looks like the EKG readout of a heart attack patient, so it will likely be an even more challenging day. But it's hard to complain about riding through such a beautiful area.