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Day 50 - July 27 - Albany, NY to Northampton, MA - 83 milesI lost the GPS tracking data for this day and the next, so the maps are from the routes I plotted out. It's close enough to what we actually did, but I'm still upset about losing the actual data. In addition to not having a complete record of the trip, this means I've lost the elevation data for the impressive ride over the Berkshires, and I can't determine exactly where a picture was taken after the fact. (I do this by matching the time-stamp on the picture with the track-log data.)
I had some trouble in the morning with the GPS. The heavy cloud cover meant that I kept losing satellite reception. i.e. The GPS couldn't figure out where it was. Just when I needed it most. You see, I figured out the route on the computer a couple days ago, and downloaded it to the GPS, but I didn't remember every turn, so I really needed the GPS to tell me where I was going. Today was the most climbing we've had since the approach to the Sierras, back on day 4, and the highest elevation since we left the Rockies. (Actually, western Kansas is higher than the Berkshires, but it's such a long, gradual descent that you don't notice.) We had four big hills - one going over the Taconics in New York, two going over the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and one in what we refer to simply as the "hill towns" of Western Mass. At the top of the highest one, a 2000-foot climb, we found ourselves in the little town of Windsor, MA, where they were in the middle of the annual volunteer fire department barbequeue. $8 bought half a chicken, corn on the cob, baked potato, cole slaw, roll, watermelon, and a drink. They put on quite the feed, and we waddled out of there quite a while later. At the BBQ, we were mistaken for bike racers. Mind you, I ride a touring bike, and Andy rides a low-end hybrid, and furthermore refuses to dress like a biker. But it turns out that the Northampton Cycling Club's Tour of the Hilltowns was that day, starting and ending in Windsor. As we left lunch, and started the long downhill, we saw a couple hundred riders laboring up the hill to the finish. As we got closer and closer to Northampton, and into territory that I recognized, I was almost indescribably happy. I haven't lived there for 15 years, but it's still home. Home is where you're from. Every teenager wants to get away from it, and some adults want to return to it exactly the way it was when they were kids. But one thing I like about Northampton is that it's very dynamic, always changing, but has resisted becoming a strip-mall of new construction of chain stores. I know it's not the same town I left, but it's still recognizable, and the underlying essence is still there. Of course, I noticed the tendency to describe buildings and places in terms of what used to be there. (Dan took a side trip through Vermont, on his way to Greenfield, and experience the same thing. Home is home. He's lived all over the country, recently moved from Oregon to North Carolina, but plans to move back to Vermont at some point.) Anyway, Andy was very patient as I pointed out where I went to Scout camp (up in Chesterfield), where my dad's office is (in Florence), which bits of the high school are new (about a third), etc. We skipped past my parents' house so that I could show him around the Smith College campus and downtown Northampton. I spent a while chatting with the owner of a restaurant I worked at for a year, 15 years ago, but which was still one of my favorite jobs. Finally, we went to the Northampton Brewery, makers and purveyors of fine local brew. Life was very good, until we tried to get beer to go. They sell half-gallon growler jugs, but we had the bad fortune to be there on Sunday. Massachusetts still has "Blue Laws," which forbid retail sale of alcohol on Sundays. In recent years, an exemption has been made for communities within 10 miles of the New Hampshire border, including the town I currently live in. I'm pretty sure there's also a state-wide exemption during Christmas shopping season. Anyway, beerless for the rest of the evening. My older brother Doug came over for dinner, but my youngest brother Neal wasn't feeling well. (My other younger brother Jim lives in Wisconsin, and wasn't expected to show up.) My parents had just gotten back from England, so they had to show us pictures and maps of places Andy was familiar with, or alternately, places he'd never bothered going. It was a fine day. |
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Day 51 - July 28 - Northampton, MA to Lowell, MA - 92 milesHaving gotten down to Northampton, we now had to get back on route. In the end, we didn't intersect the official route until we arrived at the hotel, to the extent that we arrived from the opposite direction. We got off course a couple times, because the GPS display is black and white, and the route (a heavy dotted line) is sometimes hard to make out when you're barrelling down a hill, trying to stay alive. So there were a couple unnecessary miles where we had to backtrack. We rode out through the farm country of the Connecticut River valley, affectionately (or sometimes disparagingly) referred to as the "Happy Valley." Large-scale agriculture disappeared from New England when railroads made it easy to import food from the flatter and more fertile midwest and west. But a lot of local agriculture remains - dairy, sweet corn, and other market produce. There used to be a significant amount of broad-leaf tobacco, for cigar wrappers, but I gather that's mostly disappeared.
Along the way, we also found a covered bridge, and a sucession of abandoned textile mills. At the top of the biggest hill of the day (see yesterday), in the town of Rutland, we found excellent lunch at Lisa's Center Diner. Grilled ham and cheese on rye never tasted so good. I hadn't consciously planned it that way, but I got to show Andy another bit of my past. We went through Littleton, where my wife Francie grew up, and right past the church where we were married, almost 15 years ago. As we approached the hotel, we got into some kind of gnarly traffic and road construction. But on the whole, it was another Fine Day. Francie and Kylie came up to meet me. After dinner (at the Ground Round - oh boy), there was an awards ceremony, and I went home for the night. Home to my own bed, and my own dog, and everything, for the first time in almost two months. |
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Day 52 - July 29 - Lowell, MA to Portsmouth, NH - 62 milesSeveral days ago, Suzanne and I mapped out an alternate route to the beach, to go along the Merrimac River. This is where we trained, and I thought it would be a prettier ride than the one we took through New Hampshire. (And I was right.) But I didn't know where the junior high school was in Rye, where we were supposed to meet our police escort. So in the end, we stayed on the official route. Today and the last two days were an eye-opener about what the tour chooses to show you, versus what you go see on your own. The ride to Albany (day 49) also drove that one home, where we went to the Revolutionary re-enactment site, and Julie and Sandy went off-route to follow the Erie Canal. Today's official route wasn't without its own charms. I wouldn't have taken a tour group through downtown Lowell, even though it's part of my bike commute to work. But there we were, and we went past the American Textile History Museum and Jack Kerouac Park. Lowell is where the American Industrial Revolution started. Seeing the English experiece of wood-powered (and later coal-powered) mills, and the attendant immigrant slums, American industrialists set up water-powered mills along river-banks, and built dormitories for the largely young, unmarried work-force. This model spread throughout the Northeast, and the industry peaked in the mid-19th century. In the early 20th century, the textile industry went South (literally). Now the remaining mill buildings are used for everything from condominiums to office space to outlet stores. Here's more information on Lowell's history.
On the way through New Hampshire, we took a detour to America's Stonehenge, a "maze of man-made chambers, walls and ceremonial meeting places, ... one of the oldest man-made construction in the United States (over 4000 years old)." However, we didn't tour the site, because there was a 10-minute introductory film, followed by about a hour of walking around. But I'll get up there again some other time. After a coffee break in Exeter (nice town), we met the group at the junior high, and waited. And waited. For about 25 minutes. Of course, some people were using their time wisely, getting everyone to sign their shirts for them, or taking pictures. Eventually, two police cruisers showed up, and we paraded down the road to the beach. As we were approaching the beach, I just wept. There was this great upswelling of emotion, and I just let it all come out. I didn't try to analyze it at the time, but it contained relief at finishing this enormous project, pride in my family of fellow riders, grief that were about to be parted, and joy at seeing the ocean, the great Atlantic ocean, knowing that it was really the end of the line, and we couldn't go any farther to go in that direction if we wanted. We (the group as a whole, not just me and Andy, as I usually mean when I say "we") spent another long time at the beach, dipping our wheels, and taking each other pictures, individually and in all combinations. Finally, we headed up to Portsmouth, with another diversion to cross the bridge into Maine. Make that 14 states for the trip.
Would you believe that America By Bike didn't schedule any official post-ride event? Suzanne took it upon herself to organize a clambake on the beach. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the permits in time, so we had a "clambake" at Warren's Lobster House in Kittery, Maine. We had salad bar (it wouldn't be an ABB dinner without a salad bar), excellent clam chowder, steamers (clams, if you didn't know), and lobster. The food was good, but I was really there for the people. This was my family for the last two months, and I didn't want to leave them. A couple people had already left - Michael was staying down in Boston, and Jim was staying in Manchester. But there we were, as many as possible, as late as possible, until I had to leave and go back to my other life. If I'd been staying at the hotel, I'd have been in the bar until closing time with Andy and Dan. But I know I'll see them again, individually if not together. When I left for San Francisco, I was expecting a challenge, and I got it. I was expecting to have fun, and I got it. I was expecting to see more of the country than I'd seen before, and got that too. I've travelled the coasts, but I'd never spent much time in between. On flights to and from California, I'd always look down, and try to imagine what it would be like to be down there, riding a bicycle along the long, straight roads of the Plains, or the crumpled terrain of the Sierras. Now I know. What I wasn't expecting was the level of cameraderie and bonding that evolved over the trip. I saw two "old farts" fall in love. Myself, I made at least two really good, hopefully life-long friends, and I'm blessed for it. It's not about what you expect to happen, but about what happens, and what you allow to happen. It's about Being There. And I was there, and I wouldn't trade even the bad days for anything.
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The rest of the group went from Albany to Greenfield, but Andy and I
went about 18 miles downriver to see my parents. We had a few more
miles, and a few more hills, but it was worth it.
We stopped at the 
This route into New Hampshire snuck in along a back road, and we never
got a Welcome-to-New-Hampshire sign. Also the roads were in generally
poor repair, and the drivers unsympathetic. But that may be my
Massachusetts bias showing.
After showering in Andy's room, I went out behind the hotel, to where
people were boxing up their bikes to ship them home. Because that's
where the action was. I'm normally something of a loner, but after
spending two months in the company of these great people, two months
of never being alone, I wanted to stay with them as long as possible,
even though the act of boxing up bikes really put the mark of finality
on the whole event.
Paul Selkirk, July 30, 2003.