When my dad opened the front door of our place in Albany this morning as he loaded the truck with gear, my mom and Jimmy commented on how nice the sunshine was. Blue spots broke through clouds and there was a cool breeze. After riding for more than 40 miles in incessant rain yesterday, we were all glad for the shift to dry weather. The whole crew worked toward the goal of leaving our place in Albany for good and heading west toward the next segments of this journey.
It was what we refer to as a move day: a day in which we check out of wherever we are staying and move on to other accommodations. Because we are on the move across the state of New York, we can only stay in any given place for 2 nights at most before travel to and from becomes cumbersome. You might wonder why we don’t just move to a new place every night. There are times when we stay somewhere for just a night before moving on, but sheer logistics and health concerns dictate that we try to stay consecutive nights at places. It’s a lot to move all of our (and yes, mostly my) gear, and move days break any semblance of routine. For people with high spinal injuries, a high degree of routine is needed to maintain health. For me, one of the most challenging parts of these types of journeys is just trying to sleep in foreign beds with varying firmness and heights that are changing every day or two and how much my routine is disrupted. Certainly, my regular routine at home is a distant thing right now, but the day to day variations within a trip are difficult for me and by extension for my team. Staying two nights at a place leads to a stay day in which we don’t need to reinvent everything, therefore leading to some modicum of routine that can help iron things out a tad and hopefully lead to a touch more sleep.
Thanks to my incredible team, we packed up and left Albany efficiently and arrived at our starting trailhead in Pattersonville with ample time to get the day’s ride in before meeting Mike at Rock Valley Brewing Co. Again, we all relished the dry weather and the intermittent sun felt so good. We took off from the trailhead and just half a mile in we left Schenectady County and entered Montgomery County. Not long after that came a reason to be thankful for yesterday’s rain: we passed by two quarries with lots of machinery and heavy trucks going by, but dust was minimal due to the precipitation. The recent rain also resulted in hella fresh smooth parasols (also referred to as white agaricus mushrooms) on the sides of the trail.
As we rolled along, we passed jewelweed, white snake root and white wood aster, all of which we saw 4 years ago as we traveled the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio) Canal and the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP). We even saw the occasional pawpaw. Some of the hills and bluffs made us think of the GAP. Jimmy would stop to botanize, then would catch up and fill us in.
The day started near Lock 10. Unlike the defunct and antiquated C&O Canal, the Erie Canal still operates, primarily for recreational usage. At one point later in the day we saw a large recreational motor boat cruising eastward and we were curious to see a lock in operation with a boat in real time. Only very occasionally are commercial goods moved through the canal: trains, trucks and planes have supplanted many canals as preferred ways of moving cargo. The advent of trains led to the retirement of the C&O Canal, the dilapidated remnants of which we traveled along 4 years ago. When we did so, the trail stuck very truly to the old tow path alongside the old canal carved into the landscape along the Potomac. Here, however, it isn’t always obvious where the original path is related to the canal and what is just a ditch as opposed to a historic Canalway. Over the course of at least a couple of hundred years, the Erie Canal has been widened and updated as former infrastructure falls to the wayside via the various forces of sedimentation and erosion. So it isn’t always clear to us what is going on.
On we rolled through diversely mixed hardwood forests, the path at times alive with chipmunks, squirrels and rabbits darting to and fro. We passed other friendly cyclists. Just before we reached the town of Amsterdam, Andrea from the New York Power Authority joined us for a while. Her agency is canal focused but works with Canalway Trails in that there are overlapping infrastructural projects that require coordination. She chatted with the three of us and rode with us until about mile 18.
Whereas yesterday featured a number of tunnels today we went over a lot of bridges. The transitions from the paved path to the mostly wooden planked bridges were quite smooth. My progress was initially not the smoothest as we worked through some kill switch issues. (I have a switch in my headrest that I can quickly bump with the back of my head to immediately kill power to my drive motors.) At some point Jimmy shifted the wire at its point of entry to the switch and that fixed its intermittency. Another thing that wasn’t smooth at a couple of points was the trail due to root buckling, particularly in the couple of miles leading to the town of Amsterdam. That at least partially led to me losing a fender off my chair at some point today.
We again experienced a lack of signage in towns where they are most needed. Often the trail signage is most clear where the trail is quite apparent and then the signs drop off where the trail is least apparent, usually when we are led onto surface streets. We imagine that some of this is tied to interagency and municipal challenges, but our biggest recommendation so far for the Erie Canalway Trail is to install better signage at transitory points along the trail.
However, from lock to lock, bridge to bridge, town to town, through forested areas, the trail is altogether delightful. Temperatures were lovely and we relished in being dry. We crossed paths with two garter snakes, the second of which had a still living frog halfway into his or her mouth.
Today we had our first significant stretch of non-paved trail, which consisted of packed gravel fines and which was quite smooth and nice. This brought us through some of the most remote feeling areas of the trip so far.
Finally, as our odometers were approaching 50 miles for the day, we went by Lock 17 and went through beautiful rocky canyons as we neared the uniquely scenic town of Little Falls. The three of us rolled right up to Rock Valley Brewing Company where Mike cheerfully welcomed us. My dad and mom caught up with us. Dave Warner from The Daily Post interviewed me. Mike showed Jimmy the brew equipment and they talked shop. We all sampled beers and had great conversation. Rock Valley Brewing Co. was supposed to be closed today, but as Mike assured me he would do by phone a couple of weeks ago, he opened up for us despite having just hosted a music festival over the weekend. We very much appreciate his generosity and his hospitality (or should I say hopitality!?) and if you ever find yourself in Little Falls, NY, check out his cool spot and have tasty beverages!
The evening ended with us settling into a new house in Rome, NY. Tomorrow is a stay day. And my intrepid caregiver Edwin arrives. Phew! There’s not a lot of routine right now, but plenty of adventures and fun!
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