2020, Days 23 & 24: Bass Ackward

Here's the thing: mom and dad are used to living in a grid system these days. If a road goes a direction in Utah, it's likely north, south, east, or west facing, and the next intersection gives you an opportunity to progress in a new direction. Make a wrong turn, and you only have to make two more wrong turns to be going the right direction once again.

In much of New England, not so. Paths were designed not to be easily navigable, but to get you to where the important things were. Churches, shops, city centers, workplaces, and so on. Pre-master city planning, naming a street 30000 South or 200 East must have been boring, and not suitable tribute to local celebrities, former presidents, famous universities, prior hometowns, etc. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a street named "Harvard" or "Washington," I could maybe afford a house on one of those streets. The culmination of this direct-to-destination practice of building roads resulted in a bog of pavement not particularly friendly to tourism, or, especially... enthusiastic cyclists and their directionally-challenged spouses. Can you really blame mom and dad, so accustomed to ease of navigation in a city planned around industrious and sensible square blocks, for being waylaid by misleading roadways? They seem to be frequently ending up bass ackward and downside up, only to wheedle their way back through ribboning streets to common locations. I hate to think what would have happened if they'd done this, say, 25 years ago, prior to popular use of mobile phones, GPS, and G-speed internet.

TL;DR: Thank Chuck for Google Maps, once again.

Not very many exciting things happened in the last couple of days, other than the standard get-lost-incident each day, so I've provided you (and me, having fallen behind) a two-fer. Dad's cruising days ahead, and I'm shaving corners to catch up.

September 30, 2020

I really appreciate my smart phone that can give me hour by hour weather forecasts. We saw that it was supposed to rain until about 10:00 and then break up for a while. So we got up later, stayed in the room until about 9:00, went out and got breakfast, then packed up the car. We started riding at 10:50. The roads were still damp. There was a good tail-wind, and the first 15 miles were pretty flat. The next section, though still along the Mohawk river, had some pretty good ups and downs. Then we headed up into the hills and got a couple of really steep ones.

The roads, and the road signs, are still a little confusing. As are the navigation programs. Mom and I were both on Highway 67, but we were on two different roads that eventually ended up in Johnstown. I also nearly got us on the wrong road in Johnstown. Highway 29 comes in from the north to the center of town, and goes out to the north a few blocks to the east. Mom, seeing the sign that said 29 West, caught me, turned me around (about ½ mile up the road) and got me back on track.

We finished at Vail Mills, 59.9 miles in 5:08. 1/10 mile short? It was a good stopping place. We’ll get it tomorrow.

By the way, we are developing a real affinity for Dunkin’ Donuts.

October 1, 2020

Tail winds are so nice. I started off with about a 15 mph tail wind today. I had about 7 miles to reach my highest point on the road today. Did it in about ½ hour, then I had a mostly-downhill ride for about 15 miles. Very easy and fast. Then we got to Saratoga Springs and heavy traffic and somewhat confusing highway signs. Again.

At one point I decided to ignore Garmin and Google Maps and do what I thought was right. Dumb idea. That took me a couple of miles out of the way before I realized I was heading west, not north, and redirected. Then Mom, driving ahead, saved me from some really nasty hills and redirected me again. The road through Fort Edwards (a US Highway) was so narrow, I actually rode on the sidewalk for about a mile to avoid all the large trucks passing me.

We finished in Hudson Falls at 47.4 miles in 4:08.