Final Days

Just before crossing the border into New York, we (Michael and I) came across a couple riding with trailers. We stopped to talk with Katee and Bob who were just beginning their trek from Rochester, NY to Portland, OR. We were shocked that they were starting their first bike touring trip so late in the year, but the shocking news continued. They were on their way to Erie, PA that night (after going through Erie, it is not the kind of town you would want to find a yourself camping in) and when I suggested that they might not want to camp their, they said they were going to call an old friend that they hadn't talked to in a couple years and try to stay with them...Bold. Finally they said that they started the trip with two dogs! I can't imagine riding with more stuff than I have, let alone more stuff that is for an (most likely) unappreciative, non-pedaling, drooling member of the trip. I will never be a Sherpa for my dog. To top it off, the dogs were 40 and 80 lbs!!! There is a thin line between bold and stupid. Katee and Bob tripped over that line when they began the trip with the dogs. They stumbled through the first 2 days when they realized it wouldn't work out with the dogs and finally caught their balance again when they sent them home. You can read about the adventures of Bob and Katee here: http://pedalingwestwithdogs.blogspot.com/

Recently I have been using warmshowers.org to find a place to stay. Its a directory/network similar to couchsurfing.com; people place profiles and contact info online and you can send them an email requesting to stay with them for a night. During one of my stays with someone from Warmshowers.org, I was hanging with a guy I will call Larry. Due to the nature of his actions I will not give his real name or where he lives. Before heading to the grocery store he asked if anyone needed anything. "Really anything at all, I don't pay for it, so if you need it, say so." To which I replied "what do you mean, you don't pay for it? You just steal it?"
"Yeah."
"You just walk out of the store or what?"
"Yep. Well, you can only do it at this specific store, because the doors aren't behind the registers. Also, my girlfriend used to work there and said that the workers are instructed specifically not to do anything except go find or call a manager if they suspect someone is stealing."
It turns out that Larry has not paid for a single item of food in the past 8 months! I had to see this to believe it, so I went with him. Just like he said, he just went and picked up the things he needed and walked out casually as if nothing was wrong. The security guard behind the registers didn't notice and neither did the cashiers, the guy mopping the floor, the cart boys, or the guy in front of the building on his smoke break who looked like the MOD. It wasn't just little stuff either, Larry walked out with a full weeks worth of food: juice, eggs, fruits and vegetables, spaghetti, cereal and even a 6 pack. When I asked him if he felt bad about it or if he thought it was wrong, he replied, "nobody is hurt by what I do except the corporation that owns that store. Yes, stealing is wrong, but its not like the people working in the store aren't going to miss next months rent as a result." I am simply impressed that it has been 8 months and nobody has noticed or done a thing. This is another scenario that flirts with the Bold vs. Stupid line.

About 40 miles outside of Rochester, while riding with Michael, we had a bit of a collision. We were riding side by side when my back panniers (bike bags) linked up with his front panniers, some how causing him to wipe out and me to get pushed off of the rode. As I looked back to find him on the ground, I saw a car miss hitting him in the head by about a foot or 2. Even after swerving the car just drove away, didn't stop to see if he was alright or anything. Aside from a sore wrist, Michael was uninjured. I was fine as well but I found out later that my bike took the hit for me. I managed to crack a second rim sometime during the crash, leaving me with 40 miles to the nearest bike shop on one terribly out of true wheel. 40 miles is a long time with a crooked wheel. During the ride to the bike shop/Rochester I was listening for more cracking and rode as cautiously as possible, fearing the wheel would fold in half at any minute. Despite my worrying, I made it into town just fine. We had been contacting people on warm showers the day before and had managed to secure a place to stay for the night in Rochester. When we arrived at the house we would be staying at, we received a warm welcome by Ann and Stu. They were a very friendly and hospitable people. Ann's son did his first bike tour this summer and she has signed up to host people to ensure good karma. As soon as we arrived, Stu took me over to a bike shop to see about a new wheel. The nearest place only had one wheel and it looked as if I could destroy it in about 3 miles of casual riding. Noticing my hesitation, Stu offered to check out a couple other places. We called up a couple other shops and all of them were closed. We went back to the house to eat a wonderful dinner and a homemade cherry pie for dessert. It was great! Every time that I have stayed with people on this trip I am surprised by how generous they are. I woke up the next morning to a fresh hot cup of coffee and a gloomy, rainy autumn sky. Coffee tastes best and has the most noticeable effect when you haven't had it in about a week. The last time I had coffee before this was in Cleveland nearly a week before, so it was a welcome treat. Just before the stores opened up, Ann and Stu took us out for a delicious breakfast, which was followed by trips to other bike shops. Eventually we found a shop with a strong rim but the wheel would have to be rebuilt, which would take a day. Stu and Ann put us up for another night and I was able to do exactly what I had wanted to do after waking up that morning, sit around and watch TV.

Along the ride in NY I kept seeing signs that said "blind person area" or "deaf person area." For some reason every time that I saw one of these signs, I imagined blind and deaf people walking around in big open fields. In my head, the deaf people were always playing tag or games that blind people would be terrible at. Meanwhile the blind people were talking smack about the deaf and trying to convince them to go to the pool so they could play Marco Polo or some other game that deaf people would be terrible at. I want to see a conversation between a blind and a deaf person. I realize that this sounds awful and I don't intend to be cruel or laugh at others misfortune, but these are just the sorts of places that my head would wander to in the loneliest reaches of New York state...the fields of the blind and deaf.

Speaking of the lonely reaches of New York - just before riding into the Adirondack mountains, I stopped at a gas station in a small town for some water and a bite to eat. There was a high school kid working there who was curious about where I was going. When I told him I started in Portland, OR he looked at me blankly and said "where's that?" I said "The state of Oregon, right below Washington..." Nothing. "I started at the pacific ocean." The guy freaked out! He started bouncing around and said "wow" and "oh my god" and "holy shit" several time very enthusiastically in that order. I started laughing somewhat uncomfortably because he was bobbing around in a motion similar to a kid that has to pee really bad. (I encountered another person on the train home that was unfamiliar with the geography of the US. This woman was talking with another when she said she was headed to Kansas. The other woman asked, "where's that? Missouri, Illinois?" "No its a state.") After the kid in New York managed to calm down, he started telling me that I was in the middle of nowhere and I was in for a lot more nothing. If he had only seen Idaho or Wyoming. He was right, there wasn't much until I arrived at Blue Mountain Lake, NY...

In Blue Mountain I met an interesting and very different guy. His name was Charlie and he was visiting his parents from Troy, NY where he did work on hardwood floors. He said he is 50 years old but looked a bit younger. He was clean cut and wearing a backpack, teal sweatpants, and a tattered t-shirt with a dolphin on it (very similar to one of those air brushed shirts with the howling wolves and a full moon in the background). Charlie and I talked for a bit about where I was going, where I was from, what my plans were from here, and the usual stuff. All of a sudden he had this look like he just realized something and immediately opened up his backpack and pulled out a notebook with tons of notes. He said, "I better write this stuff down. I write everything down. I try to keep an account of everything in as much detail as I can. Little things like the spider web right there and that stone on the ground. Someday maybe someone will find this stuff and appreciate it and will be able to remember all of this. I found some letters and a journal of my dads and I'm rewriting it. Its takes a lot of work but maybe someday my nieces will find it and appreciate it, or maybe they'll think I'm some kind of fruitcake or something. Maybe not guys like my brother, he's kind of a jerk. I don't know, I'm a different guy, people don't understand me." He just started talking and writing. He wrote nonstop. Everything we talked about, he wrote down. It was almost as if he was afraid to forget anything that has ever happened to him; like a nervous tick to keep track of everything. Charlie was right, he was a different dude. In fact, I have never met anyone like Charlie before...ever.

The impressions I had received from others regarding the Northeast, was that it was full of natural beauty, old stuff, and assholes(specifically in New England). It lived up to my expectations. I only have one addition to this description, which can only be fully appreciated by someone that has taken a loaded tour; the roads in New England are the worst in the US. The roads in Missouri compete but are not nearly as consistently shoulder-less and pothole ridden as the roads in New England.
From the Adirondack Mountains all the way to the coast was gorgeous. The mountains are covered with maples, oaks, and pines that were just beginning to change colors and paint the hills in every color that one expects to see in September. As I rode I would randomly stumble upon small calm ponds, eerie marshes, and lakes that stretched on for miles. I rode along the streams and rivers that connected each body of water to the next. The water seemed to run in, over and through each and every hill. Water poured out of the sides of rock over falls and looked cleaner than the stuff that comes out of a Brita filter.
The buildings in the towns and in the fields were old, REAL old. An old that one does not find anywhere in the US except the East. Buildings looked like they would crumble with a strong wind and others already had. Towns with absolutely no plan or organization to the streets were a refreshing change from the "cookie-cutter," built in a factory barracks that lined the Midwest. Like a pair of old jeans, the towns of the East have taken on the distinct character of the people that have lived in them. They are worn in, patched up, and display an individual identity created by, or as evidence of, the events that they have lived through. Each town proudly displays when it was chartered as you enter, but the only way to distinguish how old a town really is, is to look at the cemetery, each had at least one. The gravestones in the young towns still had names engraved on them and visible from the road. In the old towns, the engravings were simply worn off, or the markers had broken and were laying on the ground.
People in New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine were the parts that I visited) seem cold, inconsiderate, and tactless. There were no manners. Waiting in line at a deli a woman came up and ordered in front of a few people. I said, "Mam there's a line here." She turned, looked me up and down and then turned back to the deli in disgust. At a gas station I held the door for a clean cut fat guy wreaking of cologne. After making a selection, I opened the door to the fridge to get a drink out when the same guy stepped in front of me and grabbed his drink first. I looked at the guy and said, "Oh, excuse me. Am I in your way? Let me get the door for you." He didn't even look at me, he just walked up to the counter and paid for his drink without exchanging words with anyone in the place. Note: New Englanders do not respond to passive aggressive comments. The men no longer gathered at a local diners to discuss life over coffee as they had in the Midwest. There was no small talk at gas stations and local markets. People went about there lives disinterested or apathetic to the world around them. Nobody held doors for one another and in the instance that I would, there was not so much as a simple "thanks," or head nod to acknowledge the gesture. I felt like Brooks Hadlin in Shawshank Redemption, "The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." This was not true for the entire Northeast, the people of New York were great. They were very hospitable, curious, and helpful. They were harsh and critical at times, but you could always count on them for conversation. I came to find out that the few people I met who helped me out or talked with me in New England were from New York or somewhere else in the country.
In Vermont I saw a couple on the side of the road who were on a bike ride when one of them got a flat tire. I stopped to see if they needed any help, but they were more interested in finding out what I was doing and giving me advice on the nicest route to take than accepting help. Once they patched things up, I rode with them for a bit until my final destination for the day. They stopped to give me more route info and eventually invited me to come stay with them for the night. Of course I took them up on the offer. They offered me a guest room in their home which was built some time in the 1700's I believe. They have since remodeled and added additions, but it still felt old. They made a big dinner for me and gave me all the advice I could ever hope for on my upcoming rides. They even let me do a load of laundry. I was beginning to change my mind about people from the New England, and then I found out that they were originally from New York. Joy and Bill, thank you for taking me in for a night, the excellent hospitality, and maintaining my ignorant opinion of New Englanders.

I woke up at 6am eastern time almost everyday of the final two weeks of the trip. My phone alarm is set for 630 but I wake up at 6 without fail...damn my internal clock. The routine continued while I was riding the train. With nothing else to do, I headed to the dining car. When I arrived I saw my old train riding friends, the Amish. They must have sneaked on sometime during the night...they are a stealthy bunch. There was a whole crew/gang/pack, actually I think the correct term is a Gaggle of Amish (There is a loose affiliation between Geese and Amish because of their appreciation for bread and Mother Goose was Amish) in the dining car who were clearly of the Indiana persuasion. I know this because they were smiling, laughing, and enjoying each others company, a trait rarely seen among the closely related Pennsylvania breed. I originally went to the dining car for coffee, but the guy working the diner said there was a ten minute wait for a new batch. I decided, what better way to kill 10 minutes than by talking with Jeb and Jake. As I approached, the whole Gaggle took notice and turned to look at me. I said, "Hi, where are you guys traveling to?" They looked at me blankly and and at each other, then the oldest looking man said something to me in their Pennsylvania Dutch. I couldn't believe this guy was playing the ignorant Amish card. Pretending not to speak American...Sly. I just walked away awkwardly silent after that, disappointed in my weak attempt to fit in with my bearded friends. They shunned me away (shun, shun the non believer!). Today was the first time I saw an Amish person smile and they easily have worse teeth than the English. I was hopeful that I would come upon an Amish village sometime in my travels, no such luck though. The hope was to go around the village taking pictures of everything and all of the people. Most of all, I wanted a picture of me with my arm around the shoulder of some unsuspecting Amish (very similar to the self portraits you see on facebook). I would have a big stupid smile on and he/she would be looking at me in fear. I have never seen a red haired Amish. I bet they drown the red ones at birth out of fear that they are witches or because they weigh more than a duck. One cant live life thinking that they are bigger than the gaggle. A couple of fun facts I found when I did a Google search on Amish: they are allowed to use in-line skates (this I have to see), men don't grow mustaches because of the mustache's association with military, Amish dress the way they do in order to NOT stand out, Amish dolls do not have faces on them (that's creepy), and they refuse being photographed because the bible tells them not to.

-Marcus