chasms and fences, mushroom elvis, michigan hot dogs, the laundry room, jetted tub

September 14, 2022

I had a hard time waking up this morning. Well, yes, that’s true every morning (I once slept through a hurricane - my dad became increasingly concerned that the high winds were going to blow out the window above my head). Even considering that, this morning was particularly difficult. There’s something about the droning of a fan that induces a sleep coma in me.

I was packing when Jean came in without knocking. It happens frequently when I'm bike touring, regardless of whether there’s a Do Not Disturb sign on the door or not (there was).

This morning I put on the same jersey I wore yesterday because it got washed all day yesterday and smelled perfectly clean and fresh this morning. I did, however, wear different socks.

When I rolled away from the motel at 10:00 it was 66 degrees, and I began an immediate climb out of town, after which there were some small ups and downs. My ever present companion, The Headwind, accompanied me all day.

In the small town of Wadham (pop 518) there was a beautiful chasm.

imagine being able to see this every day

shortly after that I passed a peony farm

then some rolling hills through farmland

there are a lot of these old fences, which I think look cool

I saw a lot of grapes just randomly growing along fences

Shortly after Boquet I dropped rapidly into the quaint, touristy town of Essex, which is on the shore of Lake Champlain in the background.

It's true.... it IS possible to achieve that speed on a bicycle. I know, because believe it or not, it was me.

I arrived in Essex just as the ferry to Charlotte, Vermont, was leaving.

Beyond Essex, the houses, all on my left and set a distance back from the road, had expansive lawns surrounding them. Across the street on my right were their rocky beach counterparts with accompanying No Trespassing signs. Passing these stately lodgings, I could smell the aristocracy in the air.

I stopped briefly in Willsboro at a convenience store to eat a protein bar and drink some PowerAde as I called a bike shop in Montreal about getting a bike box. As an afterthought, I asked what it would cost for them to box and ship it…. it’s something to consider now that I’m getting lazy in my old age.

There was a steep climb going over the pass after Willsboro, and some blind curves during the ascent. “Blind curves,” as in the road curves to the right, so that I'm invisible to the speeding cars approaching from behind until the last second. Fortunately, traffic was light and no one ever passed while I was on those sections.

This mushroom pushed everything out of the way in its struggle to grow and survive. Also, at least in this picture, it looks a little like Elvis to me.

This 24-second clip shows what my life was like for the day, and for most of the entire trip.

I reached the highest elevation of the day at around the 25-mile mark, after which there was some downhill into Keeseville. Lunch consisted of sitting on a bench outside of Giuseppe's Pizza Shop and eating a pretty good pizza.

...then on to Ausable Chasm. As usual, the pictures don't do it justice. The little pink thing is a tent, not a table

this and the following pictures were taken from the opposite side of the bridge

"So, kids, you don't want to camp on Rattlesnake Mountain? That's okay... I found someplace BETTER! Bears AND swamps.... Who WOULDN'T want to stay here?!?!?

The sign is there just in case you don't see the underpass right in front of you.

a few miles past Ausable Chasm and I would again be on the shore of Lake Champlain, which you can see in the distance

Just like the snowmobiles, I'll keep an eye out for any snowplows

except for an everpresent headwind, nice riding conditions with a decent shoulder and a view of Lake Champlain

I passed the Stone Ledge Sculpture Garden and took some terrible pictures of sculptures. Although you can't tell from the photographs, many of them were actually interesting.

riding along the coast of Lake Champlain

I noticed a number of advertisements for "michigan hot dogs ," which seemed odd considering I'm in New York. When I looked it up I found it's a specialty in and around Plattsburgh, and not really known in Michigan at all.

I’m getting a hotel in Plattsburgh tonight because I have tickets to a livestream of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at the Hancher Theater, our local performing arts center. Weirdly, all of the hotels are on the west side of town, and not a single one is on the east side.

I was pretty excited about my hotel because I coughed up the extra twenty bucks for a jetted tub and was really looking forward to it.

Google maps had worked uncharacteristically well when I was leaving Amsterdam a few days ago but now, using it to get across Plattsburgh, I can’t imagine a worse route. It actually took me the wrong way down a one-way street, then down a busy road with no sidewalk, followed by a road with no shoulder. Not Google's fault, but it was also uphill with a side/headwind the entire way. At the very end of my ride, the cherry on top of it all, it started raining again.

I just came from that direction. There aren't even any handicapped-accessible curbs.

For the cost, the hotel was a disappointment. It was a dark, dank-smelling room with a hole in one of the walls. Regardless, I was willing to overlook bloodstained walls, bullet holes, and used syringes as long as it had the jetted tub. Still, the fact that the room had a mildly sleazy look to it made me feel the tub was more along the lines of a coin-operated vibrating bed than the glamorous hot tub I had envisioned.

After I got settled in I went looking for the laundry room and found it to be padlocked on the outside, so I had to walk all the way back to the front office to get a key.

When I returned, I found that once the padlock was off, you still couldn’t open the door because the arm gets stuck:

….so I went back to the office again. In addition to the receptionist I’m getting to know (third visit), the manager himself was also there. He came back to the laundry room, unlocked it, noted the same thing I did, then lowered his shoulder and slammed it against the door.

BOOM! The door opened as he stumbled in. Problem solved. He looked back at me with a sad expression reserved for those with double-digit IQs. It was a look that said, “Duh, it’s pretty simple, bro… just fracture your shoulder as you slam into a hard, immovable object.” I was ashamed I hadn't figured it out myself. Probably the double-digit IQ.

He left, and I went inside to a space that looked like a long, narrow closet. It looked like a long, narrow closet because, apparently, it was just a long, narrow closet. There was a messy array of mops, sheets, and disinfectants crowding the left side. In the back, it was barely wide enough for a single washer and dryer. Also on the shelves: stain remover - lots and lots of stain remover, which kindled my imagination about why there would be such a huge need, but once I started thinking about the answer I shut that down like a lid on a trash can fire.

The only item it wasn’t storing was laundry detergent... nor was there any place to buy some.

I walked back to the office for the fourth time and the receptionist, who was becoming less friendly with each visit, let me know where on the grounds I could find a dispenser. It wasn't near the laundry. At LAST I'll be able to wash my clothes.

I walked over to the dispenser, only to discover that it didn’t take credit cards or bills larger than a $1.00 bill, so I went back to the front office for the fifth time to get change. The tread on my shoes was wearing as thin as my patience. At last, I got a load of laundry started.

Exasperated, I went back to my room, but was at least reassured that I'd be able to jet it all away in the tub later that evening.

I bought dinner from Anthony’s and took it back to my room where I stuffed myself with lobster bisque, fettuccine alfredo, and crème brûlée, accompanied by a pinot grigio. The great food chipped the corners off the frustrations arising from the hotel.

The Woodward and Bernstein talk was fantastic, and now that it was over it was time to climb into the jetted tub.

I turned on the water then busied myself with other things for the ten minutes it took to fill. Climbing in, the water was almost too hot, but the jets would probably cool it down quickly so it wouldn’t matter if it’s a bit toasty to start. I pressed the jets button…

...and nothing. It was as if it was superglued into position. It was so immobile that I thought maybe the controls were somewhere else, but after a thorough scouring of every fixture in the bathroom I determined that this was it. I looked closer at the button, and noticed that it had what appeared to be dings, most likely placed there by others as they tried to get the jets to work by hitting it with subsequently harder objects... a tube of lipstick inside a fist, then high heels, then a hammer. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one desperate for a jetted tub.

I considered storming down to the office for a sixth time. However, wearing only a towel, my credibility would've been strained while water, along with my pride, dripped onto their faded carpet. Plus, I suspected the manager would just come down and slam his fist onto the button, crushing several carpal bones in the process as he freed the trapped jets.

America’s Best Value Inn is woefully misnamed.

Heart

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distance:   47.6 miles
elevation:   +2632
total time:   6:45:28
moving time:   4:36:58
average speed: 10.3 mph
max speed:   36.3 mph
calories: 2773

Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km)
Total: 550 miles (885 km)

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