Day 57

August 4 Fort Ticoneroga NY to Middlebury VT

Exhausted after our ride into Fort Ticonderoga, dad and I slept in till nearly 8:00 the next morning. When I woke up, my tent was full of sunlight and I heard dad talking to a couple in the next camp site. Ron and Suzanne were just on a weekend vacation up to the Adirondacks from their home a couple hour drive away. "We've had some weird weather." Ron told us, "about six days of sunshine in all of June. The rests been all rain."

"There was even a tornado up in Vermont last year!" Suzanne put in. This trend of strange weather had been true all across the country: the great plains were a lot wetter than usual, which explained why they were so green (I expected North Dakota to be a dead brown) and why there were so many mosquitoes; Ontario, and now New England, were being doused by rain; and every time we called home to mom, she told us about the weather in Oregon, which certainly didn't sound normal. The odd weather did have some pluses: we never rode in extreme heat (I expected 120 degree days, but the worst we had was in the upper 90s); and the humidity, though annoying, was never absurd.

Dad and I took a lazy morning, stopping for breakfast in the town of Fort Ticonderoga (I had some blueberry pancakes that left me nauseous for the rest of the morning) then rode a short ways to visit the historic fort. Leaving the fort at about 11, we crossed a cable-ferry into the state of Vermont (state number nine!) The ferry deposited us on the opposite shore, and we rode off along narrow winding roads, through rolling farm land and wooded hills. The scene, with the sun shining as it hadn't for the past week, looked like it came out of a story book about quaint, rural America. Unfortunately, the roads steadily deteriorated the farther we got into Vermont: after stopping for a picture of an 18th century blacksmith shop, fissures and pot holes began appearing in greater numbers, ready to grab our wheels and pull us to the pavement. After 20 miles, our shortest 'riding' day of the trip so far, we entered the town of Middlebury, home to Middlebury college, and full of stone buildings and surprisingly patient drivers.

Dad and I maneuvered our bikes through the streets, searching both for a bike shop to fix my rack, and a hotel to stay in. We found a bike shop first, and I went in to ask about replacement parts while dad tried phoning hotels in the town. "Ah, excuse me." I said to the mechanic, "I'm on a bike tour and my rack's broken... you wouldn't happen to have any replacement parts, would you?"

"Oh, I bet not. But how but we take a look at your bike and see what we can do." He came out to look at the broken supports and shook his head, "Nah, the best I could do is sell you a new rack, and that's probably more than you want to spend on this. Hmmmm... You could try the bike shop just down the street; they usually have more of these spare parts just kicking around. And if they don't, c'mon on back. I have some zip ties and we'll see what we can do."

"Thank you." I said, beginning to panic that I would be stuck with a broken rack all the way to Maine. I picked up dad and we rode over to the second shop.

The second shop looked much more like a true, hard-core bike shop: where the first had been on the main street, advertising skies, snow boards, and bikes in the window, this one was tucked away on the far side of a little plaza; it's single window was plastered with bicycling posters, and the inside was dark, lit by a dull yellow light coming from in back. Bikes lined the floor, and hung from the ceiling, and bike posters covered the walls. The mechanic, a white haired man, leaned on the counter talking to a customer about an up coming bike race. As I walked in uncertainly, my eyes adjusting to the dark interior, the customer looked over, "Looks like you have some business." he said to the mechanic, "Talk to you later."

"You too." the mechanic replied, then turned to me, "So, what can I do for ya?"

"I'm on a bike tour, and the support from my rack to my seat stay is broken... do you have a replacement part?"

"I bet so... Let's see the bike." he followed me outside and waited as I took off my panniers. He glanced at the broken parts and nodded, "Yeah, I have some of those." he wandered back inside and reappeared moments later with the pieces I needed, "En garde!" he said, waving one in the air and then handing it to me. He and dad watched as I sweated (partially from the heat, partially from the scrutiny) to remove the broken pieces and replace them with the new ones.

"That piece there looks like it's been held together." the mechanic said, pointing at the contraption of bolts and washers.

"Yeah, a mechanic in Ithaca did that. He said that it should hold together until we got to Bar Harbor. He was sort of right: that was all that was really holding the rack together till now."

"This mechanic... was he an older fellow?"

"Yeah, probably in his 50s or 60s. He's a machinist at Cornell and runs a bike shop at night. I guess he used to be a pretty good bike racer."

"Yeah, I know him." the mechanic nodded, "Glen something or other. I used to be faster than him."

"So, are all the roads round here as bad as the one we came in on?" dad asked,

"You think the one you came in on was bad? That's the good road for around here. Wait till tomorrow... you're going over the Middlebury Gap, right? That road is terrible. And steep! It starts out at 18%. And going down the other side..." he shook his head, grinning bemusedly, "just as steep and the road is even worse! You have to be really careful." I finished the repairs and dad paid the mechanic 3 dollars total for the pieces, and then we went off in search of our hotel.

The Middlebury Inn was a ritzy hotel, but then, all the hotels in Middlebury are pretty ritzy; the whole town is a bit of a tourist trap. We got to the hotel just in time for afternoon tea. When dad checked in, we both took a couple of the complimentary scones, then, after dropping off our bags, we returned for more. We sat in the fancy, high backed chairs in the lobby, feasting on scones, cookies, and lemonade, leaving a healthy halo of crumbs. "This is probably the last time they let cyclists stay here!" dad joked.

"They should expect this if they offer us free food." I replied.

Dad and I lounged for the rest of the evening, going out for pizza and wandering through the cute little town. As we wandered down a side road, a man with matted blond hair and mismatched socks stared at us, not looking away for even a second. Disconcerted, we hurried on, stopping to look at the town's waterfall before returning to the hotel to go to bed.