Day 54

AUGUST 1 Fulton to Boonville NY

We were up and out of the Fulton campground early the next morning, still enjoying the thrill of being back on the road. After a brief detour to view Lake Ontario (our third Great Lake), and an encounter with a rider from French Canada, Guyton Champagne, dad and I arrived in the town of Pulaski around 10:30 in the morning. Since our ride was going to be on the shorter side, we decided to stop for an hour or so to use the computers in the Pulaski Public Library. We rode up to the library and propped our bikes against a wall. A man leaning on the wall a few paces down looked over at us, "Where ya comin' from?" he asked.
"Washington State, just above Seattle."
"Gah'!" he exclaimed in an east coast accent, "An' where're ya goin' to?"
"Bar Harbor, Maine."
"Chris'! You guys're crazy! Good luck!" He stood up, shaking his head and smiling, and wandered away.

I walked into the library, still grinning at his surprise, and confidently stepped up to the Librarian, "Can I get on a computer here?" I asked.
She eyed me suspiciously, clearly thinking Another one of these cyclists!?! How many are there? and gestured at a sheet of paper, "You can sign in there, but there's a 45 minute wait." Crestfallen, I scrawled my name on the line and walked back outside, shaking my head at dad.

I pulled out the bag of gorp, and dad and I were just planning our next move (Lunch in the park? Wait the 45 minutes? Ride on?) when a man walked out of the library and right up to us, "Sorry, I have to ask, cross country?" He said eagerly, grinning like a kid.
"Yeah."
"West to East or East to West?" he asked.
"West to East. We..."
"I don't know why anyone would do it the other way! The head winds would be awful! So, are you ending in Bar Harbor?"
"Yeah... How do you know so much about this? Have you followed the Adventure Cycling Route?" dad asked.
"No, just lots of cross country riders pass through Pulaski. Following AC, then? Going into the Adirondacks?" he didn't wait for a reply, "So, tonight you'll stay in... West Leyden?"
"That's the plan..." dad responded.
"It's beautiful up there... here, let me see your map!" he sat down on a stone wall next to the road, letting his feet dangle above the ground. Dad and I climbed up on either side of him, "Oh, here in Old Forge, they rent Kayaks... and there's a really nice hike up over here, up to an old viewpoint... and over here..." he listed off all the possible tourist attractions in the area. "Well, I have to go, off to my own bike tour. We ride through Canada every year. You should check out the park... the Lion's club is barbecuing chickens as a fundraiser. Have a great trip, guys."
"You too!" we called as he walked away, waving over his shoulder. Dad and I ate a chicken lunch in the park, watching the BMXers do a very different kind of biking, then left Pulaski.

The hills began just outside of West Leyden, the first since Montana. The pavement dropped out below our front wheels, then rose steeply in front of us, time and again. By the time we reached the town, both of us were more then ready to stop for the day. We pulled into a convenience store that our map said let cyclists camp out back. As soon as we stopped, a quartet of mountain bikers made their way over to us, "You don't happen to have a pump for presta tubes? The little valves?" the lead one asked; he wore a cowboy hat and jeans, and had a scraggly brown beard.
"Yeah, actually we do!" dad said as I took my frame pump off my bike . Although dad had drilled both of our tires to accommodate Schraeder valves (the big ones), because they are easier to find in small towns, our pumps could be converted for use with the presta valves as well. I switched my pump around and handed it to the man in the cowboy hat.
"Thanks, man." he said and began furiously inflating his tires, "So, where're you guys headin'?"
"Maine." I said casually. He looked up at me, his eyes round.
"Really?" cooed the girl standing next to him, "That's a long ways."
"And where are you comin' from?" a third mountain biker asked.
"Washington." dad said in the same casual voice I had used.
"As in State?" the girl asked. Dad and I spent the next five minutes reveling in our celebrity status until the leader had pumped up the tires. "Good luck!" they all called, heaving their mountain bikes into the back of a muddy pick up truck and driving away.
As soon as they left, dad looked at me with a mischievous grin on his face, "Wow... she was... well-endowed. I kept telling myself, look at her face, Chip, look at her face!"
I laughed, mildlyshocked, "I kinda notcied that too, but I don't know if you're allowed to think that!" I said indignantly, "You're my dad!"
"What's that got to do with anything? I was just noticing it..." he turned around and walked into the store. Minutes later, he returned, rolling his eyes, "They don't know anything about letting cyclists camp out back. They said Fred and Glenda who used to own the store might have done something like that..."
Sighing, I pulled out the map, "Looks like our next option is in ten miles: Stysh's Big Barn... that sounds sort of ominous."
"Don't really have much choice, do we?" dad asked, climbing onto his saddle. I shook my head, and we rode on to Stysh's Big Barn.

It turns out there was nothing ominous about the Big Barn. In fact, it was the very opposite: our site was cheap, the showers were free, and we even had a little kitchenette to use for cooking dinner. Dad and I showered and ate, and were just starting the dishes, when the three girls rode into camp. We finished cleaning up, then walked over to talk to them. The oldest, Liz, who we had met in the library, was showering, but her two younger sisters were starting to cook dinner: Cate, who has just finished college, boiled water for noodles, while Sarah, who is a freshman studying physics at Princeton, diced a Cucumber. Dad started talking to them about the ride, while I stood on shyly listening to the conversation. Liz returned and set up their tent, then joined the conversation. "So, whose on the Trek 520?" dad asked, pointing at a bike identical to ours.
"That's Cate's." Liz said, "Sarah and I decided to go with the cyclo-cross bikes. Cate just wanted something different."
"Her name's Wanda." Cate interjected.
"So how're the cyclo-cross bikes working?" dad asked.
"Fine for me..." Liz said, "Sarah's has had a few problems..." Dad raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"Well, I broke a spoke, and the back wheel is getting more and more out of true." Sarah said, "We just keep loosening up the brakes when it starts to rub."
"We haven't been able to find any good bike shops around." Cate said, "Like one of the ones we found was called Pedals and Petals, as in they sell bikes and flowers."
"We had nicknames for ourselves in the beginning." Sarah put in, "So I was Gravel Panda Bear at first, because I fell down whenever I hit gravel, and now I'm just General Chaos Panda Bear."
"Hear that, Seth." dad teased, "Your not the only one who has trouble staying vertical." he turned to Sarah, "General Chaos? Has something else happened to you?"
"Well, besides the spoke, I lost a pannier..." she said.
"Lost it?"
"Well, yeah. I was riding down the road and I looked down and realized one of my front panniers was missing. We rode back ten miles to the spot that I thought I had lost it, but we never found it."
"Wait, you rode ten miles without noticing your pannier was gone?" Sarah nodded, "And you're a physics major at Princeton?"
"I know, my parents gave me a lot of crap for that." she laughed, "I kept saying, 'Can't you give me some sympathy?'"
"So you're still riding with a broken spoke?" dad asked. She nodded again.
"We met some people who were having wheel problems." I put in, thinking of Greg and Caroline. I stared at the table while I spoke, for some reason too nervous to make eye contact, "And I read on their blog that they just got skunked...." Everyone grimaced.
"I heard somewhere that if you get sprayed by a skunk, you're supposed to capture it." Cate said, "And then you take it to the vet to get de-stinked. Then you can keep it as a pet."
"I wouldn't think that's a very good idea...." dad said.
"But they're so cute!" Cate said.
"And they have sharp teeth."
"Ah, well...." We spent hours talking to them that evening until it finally got to dark to see. They invited us to eat pancakes with them the next morning, then we all headed off to bed.