Cayuga Lake - mission accomplished

***Please visit my fundraising page here***

The best part of this project - besides all the money for a good cause - has been getting to spend most of a Saturday or Sunday with a lot of friends and family I don't see as often as I'd like to. I haven't had a good long talk with my high school friend Buddy Nyhof or my cousin Matt Gracie for ages. John Forbush and David Riley gave me some parenting tips. My sister Laura rode up and down Skaneateles Lake in the rain without a complaint.

I guess it's pretty standard adult behavior to fall away from spending time with people you care about, and to regret it. But the most shameful example for me is that even though I live within walking distance of two of my best and oldest friends, Mark Wyand and John Fornof, I sometimes go a month or two without seeing them. It's stupid.

So, for the final and longest lake of my summer, I got the two of them to ride along with me, and to split it into two days with a night camping at Taughannock Falls State Park in between. That was this weekend. We went 93 miles around Cayuga Lake; when we finished Sunday morning, it meant the end of my little adventure.

The first day was long and hot. We broke it up with a dip in the water near Ithaca, then a great meal at the Ithaca Beer Co. brewhouse. Mark's girlfriend Zeynep came up huge, bringing our camping gear up to the site in the evening then coming in the morning with bagels and to take our heavy stuff back again.

The second day was short and rainy. I meant to jump in the lake at the end of the ride - I was soaked through anyway, and it would have been a fun video for the blog, after I bailed on my original promise to post videos of every ride. But the water up at that end was not very appealing, and we decided instead to go for breakfast at a diner in Waterloo. It was the smarter choice.

So, that's it. I finished all the lakes and I raised my $3,000 (though I'd be grateful for late donations). I'll have two wrap-up posts in the next week or two, then stop cluttering your Facebook feeds for a while.