I only just now realized I’m truly tired. Earlier today I had been telling people it was our fifth day, when I started writing this, the title read “Day 7” and yesterday’s post has “Day 6” on it. Oh boy, that should have been an omen…

After our excellent times two days ago, maxing at 26 seconds, we fell yesterday to 1:46. After staying up until 12 trying to track down the errors that had caused it, we woke up this morning much more tired and none the wiser. After exhausting all possibilities, Nick settled on the clock being miss-set. I settled on our starts and splits. A quick clock cross check (say THAT five times fast!) showed that no, our clocks were on time, but Nick was convinced our splits were perfect, so instead we set off late to try and cancel out the consistently early times.

It…. Didn’t work. Something like -34, -8, -28, -41. Total 2:02. We beat Old Age today, but when it’s a five-second difference on a two-minute stage, it’s not really worth bleating about. What’s truly flabbergasting is the difference between our expected times and the actual. It’s not that we can’t figure out where a second is coming from (which would most likely be our speedo), no. On leg one, we started late, held a late tally (our count on current timing), and hit the checkpoint with a +23 tally, or 23 seconds late. Leg one was -34. A 58 second discrepancy is something very difficult to NOT see… But we can’t. Nick is convinced it’s the car’s fault (as any navigator would be, I suppose), I’m convinced it’s in the splits.

Anyway, now that we’re back in NY, I’ve encountered two familiar things. One, the return of proper backroads. Canada seemed to have had its roadways laid out so that people could get from point A to point B. Not very interesting overall, when it means you’re just doing endless speed changes on one road for an hour. But in NY, lots of backroads follow old cart tracks that meander, and intersect and can get you from one city to another without hitting main roads. That makes for much more interesting routes. One such route was another loop, but with a checkpoint, so we knew we’d hit it again in about P05 minutes, after 4 stops which always add time (or should). Meant we had to make up time fast. We hit the checkpoint again with a late tally. We got an early score. Really not sure what’s going on.

The second thing that NY displayed again was the really bad driver. I don’t know the requirements for getting a license in Canada, but the first day back in NY tells me they must be harder. On the highway, during RUSH HOUR (that was NOT fun in our little VW), the lady who followed us for a while decided that proper following distance was about 10 inches. That’s NOT something I miss…

Thanks to Fairport for hosting lunch on an interesting venue… We don’t usually eat on water! Buffalo hosted dinner in the Pierce-Arrow museum as well.

It’s a bit short, but after staying up too late last night for no apparent gain (which likely caused error today), it’s time to go to sleep.