Cooking in NY

6-4-10 Day 7: Whitehall, New York to Duanesburg, New York: 97.5 miles in 6:20 hrs

We ended up camping up at Lake George, what’s supposed to be a premier Upstate NY destination. Well, in my book – and Bill’s – but not Judy’s, this place is the penultimate tourist trap, complete with Goofy Golf, water slides, bumper cars and more tourist shit than you can fully take in in a week’s worth of “camping.” The town’s streets of Lake George are lined with every crappy little souvenir shop imaginable – and guess where we had dinner…….you guessed it Lake George at the most expensive restaurant there – the Lobster Pot, courtesy of Miss Queen Judy.

Ok, so I talked briefly about that in the last blog. But how about our campground in the fabulous Lake George region….a freaking nightmare. This is like the campground from hell, where everyone is drunk and yelling; where campers drive around the camp circle like it’s the freaking Indy 500; and where pissed off girlfriends lock themselves in a car and their boyfriends beat on the car for 15 minutes yelling “Goddammit open that door” and where the stupid girlfriend eventually opens the door only to have the car alarm go off for several minutes. I swear this was the campground of Dumb & Dumber!

So we made it through the night, woke up and drove back to my end point in Whitehall from the previous day’s ride. Ate a quick breakfast at the Captain’s, a great little mom and pop place that looked like it was dying a slow death with today’s economy – we were the only patrons until an elderly gentleman came in as we were leaving. Matter of fact you can see how the current economic situation has affected the small businesses up in the Lake Champlain/Adirondack region as all sorts of businesses were OOB (out of business). Small motels, cabins, restaurants, outfitters, you name it, many were OOB. Very depressing to see so many independent businessmen and women not being able to weather the current economy.

So Bill and I started out this morning at about 8:30 AM, and rode a nice leisurely pace on Rt 4 through Fort Ann, Hudson Fall and eventually down to Troy. Now this is part of the lock system in NY that forms a 524 mile long stretch of old canal when coupled with the Ohio and Erie. The section we were along was the Champlain canal along the Hudson River, and it was very picturesque and made for some quite easy cycling on the flats. Couple that with the nice northerly tailwind and we were flying. The for an hour or so you could see the Adirondacks on the right side and Vermont’s Green Mts on the left as we were cycling in this massive flat river valley of the Hudson. By the time we got to Troy – goodbye mts.

Once we got to Troy we were in a whole different scene, a world away from the backwoods of Northern Maine. This was inner city with row houses and OOB businesses by the hundreds along the road. Very old and very depressed. Now there were a few nice, old sections of town in Waterford and Troy, but mostly it was pretty crappy. And from Waterford south, it was all inner city riding, dodging bad sections of road, trying to time stoplights without stopping, and dealing with heavy traffic – total culture shock for me who just craves the backroads and little sign of humanity.

Now we saw this chick in Troy, well, not exactly a chick, an old Harley Babe – about 81 years old – sitting out on a porch, and I goofed on Bill telling him “there’s your Cougar.” Now this babe had long grey hair down to her butt, was dressed in like these obscene hot pants and a skimpy tank to, with legs about 5 feet long, and she was taking a long, hard drag off of a cigarette. I mean she was a sight to be seen for sure. And the more I thought about it, the more I decided that she was definitely NOT the definition of a Cougar. Nope she was well beyond a Cougar. She was a Yeti for God’s sake! Yup, and I told Bill and we both started laughing so hard we damned near crashed our bikes.

We weaved out way through Troy, and it seemed like this place would never end, just one 1-way street after another, with a light every block. But eventually we did this long climb out of Troy and we thought we had dodged the bullet by bypassing Albany – which is what I totally wanted to do. So we met Judy at the intersection of Rt 4 and Rt 20, and Judy got on the bike and Bill took over say. And what do you know – the road started heading right into downtown Albany. I mean we got on what looked to be these ON ramps for the interstate, these bridges that towered over the city, and started heading dead into the downtown. I was cursing like a sailor at that point and poor Judy didn’t know what to think, since she had let Bill ride longer so that she’d avoid riding inner city. Now SHE was getting a massive dose of inner city. So after nearly getting taken out by two cars on those ON ramps, we got off in the center of downtown Albany. And the Rt 20 west signs just keep taking us deeper and deeper into the city. And at one point Judy though we had taken a wrong turn, as we were just meandering through dead center with no Rt 20 signs to be seen.

Then Bill passed us, and I flagged him down and he agreed with me that we were on the right road. So we kept riding, and eventually got a couple of miles out of the downtown and finally saw a sign for Rt 20 west. It’s like we were on Western Ave, and we asked a couple of people if we were on Rt 20 and they had no idea, saying “your on Western Ave that’s all I know.” Now I live off of Darrow Rd at home, and it’s also called Rt 91. I bloody well know that it’s called both Darrow and Rt 91. I’m no freaking Einstein, but come on folks?

Anyway, we rode another 5-8 miles and finally got away from the Albany/Schenectady traffic, which was dbl lane and just vicious on Rt. 20. THEN we had 2 pretty big hills to climb, and what with the 82-degrees for the day, and the humidity, it cooked us totally. The final time I saw Bill we agreed to stop at the Rt. 20/I-88 jcn and call it a day. Judy had gotten popped on the second climb, and managed to tough it out to the end. When we stopped we were both pretty done.

I had wanted to go more than 100 today, but we had lost a ton of time in Albany, so by 4:00 it was just time to be over. We loaded up the van and headed back to the east to a little campground at Thompsons Lake. And here we be, well fed from Judy’s amazing dinner cookout and waiting to get a campfire going. My total for a week of riding is about 640 miles. Not bad! Probably will take me another 6-7 days to make it back to Hudson to end stage one of the trip. Having a blast………pete