Tuesday June 23, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy
Another lazy sleep-in day because we have an appointment at 9:30 AM at Binghamton Honda, just minutes from our hotel, so Frank can look at my cruise control problem.
Kitty packs up our drinking water in the cooler, ice-cold bottles of water that have been immersed in an ice bath all night. By giving them a new ice bath in the morning, we always have ice-cold drinking water. Kitty will sip on cold water all day, while I will down a bottle periodically at rest stops.
Binghamton Honda is just across the river from our hotel, but it’s a 6-mile ride to get from one place to the other. I suppose it’s the confluence of river and mountains, but this town has the most fascinatingly bizarre intersections and service roads I remember seeing. We arrive a little before 9:30 AM, unhook the trailer, and Frank goes to work while we sit outside and Kitty reads her book.
In less than an hour Frank comes back and says “I think your diagnosis was dead accurate. I took apart and cleaned the cruise control switch. It was pretty cruddy and not very eager to light up my test lamp when I tested it.” So by 11:00 AM we are headed out, and for now my cruise control is working as we head in the general direction of Lake George, NY. Frank did us a great favor by working us into the schedule, and I ask permission to put in a good word for him and the shop. He certainly did right by us! Incidentally, he is looking for a pulse generator for 1200 Limited Edition (was that a 1985?) that apparently has been discontinued by Honda. Anybody out there who knows where to get one?
After about 40 miles on I-88 headed east toward Albany, I decide I really want to get off the Interstate. NY 7 parallels the Interstate between Binghamton and Albany; I think I rode this once, or at least part of it, many years ago, before I-88 was completed. I remember having what I believe was my first A&W root beer at a little stand along this road, and to this day I wander I-88 looking for that root beer stand. I haven’t found it. It’s probably a parking lot now. Route 7 turns out to be the perfect choice for this slow-down day, and I set cruise exactly on the speed limit. This is, I have to admit, not quite always the case. Some days I’m trapped in a hurry-up mode on a slow-down road, other days I’m in a slow-down mode but have a destination to make, but today is a perfect example of “All those who wander are not lost.”
Route 7 is a non-technical but winding road that runs roughly along the Susquehanna River as it meanders through the mountains at about 1200 feet above sea level. It’s a beautiful ride, with towns small enough to add interest but not big enough to be a hindrance. For someone who loves arts and crafts and quaint little shops, this road could be a three-day ride! Unadilla, Otego, Oneonta, and many other towns are all filled with quaint shops, restaurants, and crafts establishments.
“Do you want to stop at some of these places?” I ask Kitty.
She responds with a decisive “No.”
“Why not?” I ask. “At home, you’re all over shops like this, but why not while traveling?”
“Well,” she replies, “Because we’re traveling!” I scratch my head at this logic — actually, it’s a virtual scratch, because I’m wearing a helmet. We usually don’t really look for a lot of things to do while traveling. Mostly we ride to enjoy what’s there — doing what’s to be done there, well, usually, not so much.
I decide to get back on I-88 for a few exits to bypass the town of Oneonta. But in a perverse twist of fate, I’m too late, and by the time I find the next entrance to the Interstate, we have nearly passed through the town and it’s a moot point.
A few miles out of town I am startled by the sight of an old, apparently abandoned locomotive. A sign appropriately enough, reads “Dead End.” We talk for a while with the man who lives on the corner, Mike. “There are only three of those engines in the world, he says, “and right here are two of them.” It turns out they are apparently relics of the true electric train era, where the electric power was supplied by huge batteries instead of current locomotives that use diesel. "They are going into the Smithsonian," Mike explains."So when we go visit them in three years," I tell Kitty, "we'll know exactly where they came from!"
“This road will be the demise of those rubber extrusion thingies on the tires,” I tell Kitty. “These curves will bring them to
a swift end.” At Cobleskill we stop in a little park to eat our small picnic lunch, and I inspect the front tire. Sure enough, the rubber thingies are gone at 416 miles into the trip, save for some survivors along the edges of the tire.Route 7 has been the perfect ride for a perfect day, and I decide to bypass Albany by finding some other routes. This is called making it up as you go! But I wait too long to find an alternate route, and when I find a waypoint on Route 50 that I can use for the GPS to bypass Albany, it is once again too late. The GPS generates an insanely complicated route. “This will be complicated,” I tell Kitty, “and I have no idea where I’m going.” We’re in the town of Scotia, New York before I know it, and then we’re on Route 50 and two-lane roads that are not bad, but the congestion is too much for me to really enjoy. In an ironic twist, I think I should have stayed on the Interstate. In slow-down, make-it-up kind of touring, not every choice gets a gold star.
Nevertheless, after a short day in which I did not cruise above the speed limit, we get to Lake George around 5:00 PM and I route to a motel I remember. But it’s the wrong one, so we ride around trying to find the one I want, but it has changed names I recognize it by the roof line. We check in and inexplicably the clerk upgrades us to one of their best suites at no extra charge. I’m pretty sure this will be the nicest place we stay in during the whole trip!
After we do our workout in the motel’s gym, I clean and cover the bike (yes, I still do that every evening!) and we walk together to the Gold Post Grille, attached to the motel, for dinner. Kitty is looking good in a nice-jeans, nice-shirt, cool-spiky-hair, really-friendly biker chick kind of way, while I’m slumming it in my sneakers and an old pair of cutoffs, wearing a T-shirt given to me by my boss: “If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
I have my BlackBerry in silent mode during this trip, but I glance it and notice the red light blinking. It’s an email from Greg DeNoyer, a WOTI (Wings on the Internet) friend with whom I’ve ridden some thousands of miles: “George Hockousen and I are in Lake George right now!” I fire back an email telling him where we are, and about 20 minutes later, in walk Greg and George in person. Mostly we know each other from the WOTI newsgroup but we've run into each a time or to before, but not for a long time. They have a seat while Kitty and I finish eating, then Greg takes us all to Martha’s for ice cream. Everyone who comes to Lake George has to go to Martha’s for ice cream, and it is just as I remembered it: dozens of people lined up for their ice cream sundaes, banana splits, and ice cream cones. We have a great time renewing our acquaintance and talking about the various interesting ways to ride from Lake George into Canada, where we plan to be riding tomorrow. What a surprise to run into two of my friends here!
We rode only 193 miles today, 509 for trip total, but what great day of stretch-out-the-miles, slow-down touring this was. Next time, I will look sooner for alternate routes to avoid Albany.
Tomorrow if all goes as planned we will cross into Canada, eh? Now just where did we put those passports?
We will learn what tomorrow holds when it arrives.
GPS Track, Day 2
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