Day 59

AUGUST 6 East Middlebury to Brandon, VT

In the middle of the night, I woke to the persistent sound of raindrops on my tent, a few of them finding their way in through my open rain fly. Groggily, I zipped my fly door close, then drifted back to sleep.

By 6:00, I was half awake, listening to the raindrops still hammering on my tent, waiting for them to stop so I could get out of my tent. I waited for an hour and the rain didn't slacken even once. Around 7:00, my whole tent suddenly shook. Ah, great, hear come the winds. I thought, wondering if we were still planning to meet up with Michael and Steve at 8:30. "Hey bud," I heard dad's voice and realized he had shaken my tent, "Time to get up." I mumbled a response, then started packing up my gear.

As I rolled up my thermarest, I noticed that the floor under it was the only wet spot in my entire tent. I put my hand on the wet spot to see how much water had really got in, and the whole floor rippled: a lake was forming under my tent! I redoubled my efforts to pack up my gear and get ready to leave. As I crawled out of my tent, I saw dad already loading bags onto his bike, "I was figuring we'll skip breakfast and pick something up later," I nodded emphatically, my head already soaked from the ten seconds I'd been outside, "How'd your tent hold up?"

"Pretty good. The floor's leaking some, but then there's a bit of a lake under it." I strapped one of my bags onto my bike, "How about yours?"

"Sierra Design is getting a letter from me when we get home. The fly leaked, the floor leaked. I have standing water in their right now." We both rushed to get everything on the bikes, taking down our tents very last. "Y'know, Seth. I'm thinking today would be a good day to find a hotel and dry everything out. We can ride again tomorrow when it's not so bad out." I nodded hesitantly, reluctant to stay behind a day if Steve, Michael, and Jerry planned to keep going.

We got to the gas station we had met Steve, Michael, and Rick at the night before around 8:00. Dad had just pulled out his cell phone to call them about maybe not riding today, when all of them, plus Jerry, rode up out of the rain. After an hour of eating gas station muffins and breakfast sandwiches and drinking gas station tea, Steve had us all at least mostly convinced we should push on (dad still wanted to go find a hotel some where, but I wasn't ready to lose all of them after just catching up the day before, so we pushed on).

At 9:00, we decided that the rain didn't look like it would get much better, and started off, riding toward the Middlebury Gap (what an ideal situation? Going up an incredibly steep climb in a Noah-style deluge.) Nearing the base of the hill, we heard a roar and began catching whiffs of a muddy, rotten smell. Around the next corner, we discovered the source: a river, swollen by the rains and turned the color of hot chocolate by all the mud in it, raged along next to the road. Beneath the the overall roar, we also heard a dull thumping: boulders rolling along the bottom of the river.

We crossed a bridge, but stopped in the middle of it to take pictures of the river. A green Subaru zipped down the mountain, then stopped next to us on the bridge, "Are you planning on going over?" we all nodded, "There's four or five inches of water on the inside of the road, and the outside is crumbling away as you watch-"

He was interrupted by a little white car coming down the road and honking. When it came level with us, it stopped and the driver stuck her head out the window, "You can't stop here!" she said angrily, "It's not safe! Get off the road!" The man in the Subaru shrugged helplessly and drove off. We started up the climb.

Dad and I chugged away up front in our smallest gears for about a quarter of a mile. "Turn back! Turn Back!" Rick started to shout from behind us, "The road's completely washed out!" Looking back, we saw him talking to the driver of a truck.

As we started to turn around, a little blue car drove down the mountain. Dad and I waved frantically at it and it squealed to a sudden halt, "How is it?" dad called to the driver.

"Terrible!" she told us, "Half of the road is gone, and the other half is under three to five feet of water. It was the scariest experience in my life!"

"That makes the decision pretty easy." Michael said as she drove away.

"Yeah, it sounded pretty conclusive." I agreed

Just as we decided to turn around, Jerry came puffing up the mountain, "Whew, what a climb."

"Bad news, Jer." Rick said, "We have to go back down. The roads washed out."

"We have to go back down? Aw, gee..." We all did an about face and rode through the continuing rain back down the road, stopping at the bottom of the hill in a small parking lot. Steve went inside to ask for an alternative route, Dad called a bike store to ask for direction, and Michael looked over his map. The rest of us watched as a road crew drove up and stopped in front of the parking lot. They unloaded a "Road Closed" sign from the back of their truck and began shutting down the road and re-routing traffic. An hour later, we left the parking lot headed south, hoping to cut over the Green Mountains down the road. The weather cleared as we pedaled, and eventually we had all stripped off out rain jackets and thinking we might actually make some miles before the day was over.

Apparently we had hoped too soon: a few miles down the road, we pulled into a small convenience store, big clouds growing overhead. Steve wandered in to ask directions to a hotel or camp ground. He returned a few moments later, "Well, they're saying the road behind us has been washed out, and the road we want to turn on has standing water a couple of feet deep. We can camp here, or there's a campsite a coupla miles down the road. And there're two B&Bs around here."

"We can't really camp." dad said, gesturing at himself and me, "Everything we have is soaked. It would be completely miserable."

"Why don't we look for the B&B's?" Michael suggested.

"If everything's flooding, they'll be full." Steve waved off the idea, "Lets try and ride on. We either make it over the gap or stay at the campground up the road."

"Seth and I can't camp." dad said.

"And that standing water..." Michael said, "It won't be just standing still. It'll be rushing across the road."

"Well, if it's rushing, we won't go through it." Steve said. At that point, there wasn't much use left in arguing. We tried dissuading him for a few more minutes, but before long we were back in the saddle, riding on towards the Green Mountains.

By the time we had reached our first patch of water, about 100 feet across and clearly rushing, Steve had changed his mind, "Ah, that doesn't look so bad! I'm gonna try going across." He pedalled off, water spraying up behind his back wheel.

Michael shook his head, "Y'know, they say not to do that in a car! And here Steve is on a bicycle."

"I think Steve likes all this shit!" Jerry said.

"I know Steve likes all this shit!" Michael agreed.

Before any of the rest of us followed Steve across the water, a sheriff car pulled up, "Where ya all headed?" the man inside called to us.

"We're going to Bethel, over the Brandon Gap."

"No you're not." the sheriff said, "I just came down this road, and I past through at least a dozen spots like this. And I haven't even been to Goshen; it's always worse up there. You'd be crazy to try to go over the gap today. Your best bet is probably Brandon, about five miles south of here."

"Is there any hotel there?" dad asked.

"Yeah, the Brandon Inn. It's pretty nice." We thanked him and headed off, but not before asking a car driving across the water to tell Steve (who was already out of site) where we were going.

The Brandon Inn was a beautiful brick building first built in 1786. Before long we were checked into our rooms and spreading our gear across the furniture to dry. For the rest of the afternoon we lounged about, eating lunch at a local cafe, and wandering the town. A river runs through Brandon, over a small set of rapids; when we first saw it at lunch, it had over flowed its banks, flowing the same muddy color we had seen that morning. The pub situated above the river, which normally had a nice view of the waterfall, was closed in case the supports gave way under the torrent of water. After such an eventful morning, it was nice to have so much free time in the afternoon (although I didn't get a chance to write on my blog since the Library closed down it's computers in case of lightening strikes).

After checking in at the library, I wandered back to the hotel and crawled into bed for a nap. When I woke up, the room was empty. I wandered the halls, searching for dad, Rick, Michael, or Jerry, but I couldn't find any of them. When I couldn't find him in the inn, I became more frantic, expanding my search to the neighboring buildings: the bookstore/cafe, the antique/ice cream shop, the library (where I asked if the librarian had seen any other cyclists dressed in goofy clothes come through). I even walked down to the waterfall and the surrounding restaurants.

As I walked back to the hotel, beginning to panic (the dark sky had already set the mood, and I was beginning to wonder if I had been dropped into some horror movie, and everyone else had been axed) a woman in a pink sweater, wearing a gaudy white necklace, stopped me, "Have you been to the water works?"

I nodded distractedly, "Yeah, they're pretty full. Have you seen any other cyclists around? Four guys wandering around somewhere?"

"I haven't, but I'm going up Franklin Street, so if I see them, I'll tell them.... what was your name?"

"I'm Seth."

"I'll tell them Seth was looking for them. Where are you riding to?"

"We want to get to Bethel, over the Brandon Gap."

"Oh... I think 73 and all of 100 are closed. Those are the roads over the Gap." her tone changed slightly, "Don't go near the water: it's so dangerous! I saw some boys over by the falls looking at the current. I warned them to be careful. This water just scares me! Well, Seth, good luck finding your friends." I thanked her, promised to be careful, then walked into the hotel.

As soon as I stepped in, I spotted dad in the back. I hurried over to him, and discovered that he, Rick, Jerry, and Michael had been in the bar all along. "Always check the bar first!" Rick told me. We went out to dinner (bland shepherd's pie) at the tavern over the waterfall, now open for business because the water had receded. Then, we went back to the inn, organized our gear, and went to bed.