At about mile 45 each day, you stop and ask yourself why ride. With 15 – 25 miles left to go, your butt wants a new owner and your thighs feel like someone has pounded them, you need a reason to continue. Gloria doesn’t ask that question because she has chosen to be with me. So her question is simply why stay with Shaun. We’ll leave that question for another blog – or probably a book. In my case, I use several tactics to keep riding.
Food is a great reason to ride further. The further I ride, the more food I can eat without getting too fat. It’s also fun to ride to new food. This morning, being the overly friendly guy that I am (and because Gloria stopped to talk to them), I visited with two locals on the trail. When they heard we were going to Syracuse they said stop at the Dinosaur BBQ for lunch. We did. The two guys on the trail are now our best friends – whatever their names. The BBQ was the best brisket I’ve ever tasted.
This is the grimace smile of post injury riding 
Just another 40 miles of beauty
We pedalled alongside a husband and wife today for a few miles in Syracuse. They had ridden something like 9000 miles this year (albeit with electric assist), but didn’t identify any specific place. I couldn’t ride 100 miles if there wasn’t something worth seeing. Places that are beautiful, both the God made and the manmade, make riding further worthwhile. The speed of my bicycle makes seeing things more intimate and I can, and usually need to, stop frequently and simply sit and enjoy what’s around me.
Canal Boat – Not Noah’s 
The other reason I keep riding is to learn things. The Erie Canal Trail has provided an education about something completely foreign to me: canal travel and commerce while riding an incredible trail. This morning I learned that when the canal was first started dynamite hadn’t been invented. They brought in “Irish blasters” who knew how to use gunpowder to blow up rocks – and apparently each other and the British over the next couple centuries.
I also found riding a bicycle through Manhattan, Philadelphia, and even Syracuse really interesting (maybe a little terrifying) – far more interesting than simply zipping by in a car on the freeway. You also learn a lot about yourself when you ride a little further than you feel you want to or can ride. In today’s very soft world, it’s good to be uncomfortable.
Ultimately the real reason to keep riding is to get to the motel. I have a reservation and I had to cancel yesterday or lose my money.
Grumpy Grandpa's Great Bicycling Adventures 