A Blast From the Past

This was the view today of the Lake Champlain bridge, connecting New York and Vermont (and here's a short video). It was closed the Friday I left on my trip to Maine, and I ended up taking a ferry down between Shoreham, VT and Ticonderoga, NY when I was heading back home. From what I read today, the cement piers had no rebar, and the repeated freeze/thaw cycles of the lake had rendered them unsafe, with catastrophic collapse a possibility (they closed it to even pedestrian traffic). It would have been a cool bridge to see, 80 years old and with some rather interesting architecture, but as a tradeoff, I did get to ride alongside Lake George, so I am definitely not complaining!

An End to a Cold Weekend

As she had threatened, my grown up cousin came charging out of her bedroom at 8:30 on Saturday morning and proceeded to dive onto the air mattress in the living room that I was on and pummel it to be sure I was shaken awake. And then she sicced Sidni on me, who was more than happy to bounce up and down on the mattress until I acted like I was going to get up.

I need more than six and a half hours of sleep.

We sat down to pancakes and scrambled eggs at 9 a.m., enjoying what may be a Conway tradition of having peanut butter on pancakes. Butter, peanut butter and maple syrup. Try it some time. It may be an artery clogger, but it's a mighty tasty one! After breakfast, I started packing up for the departure. Sidni went for a walk with her Grandpa Don, so I got a couple of hugs and pics with her, telling her she'd better mind her mom so I don't have to ride out to Seattle and deal with her. She was real intimidated, I could tell.

I didn't want to leave later than noon, just for the sake of getting home some reasonable time, but I also didn't want to leave too early, because it was 33 degrees outside when I woke up. I managed to get everything wrapped up right around 11 a.m. and got all of my farewells and last minute pictures. Karen's driveway is small pea gravel, so I made sure not to spill the bike on my grand exit, and once I was on firm asphalt, I looked back and gave a couple of farewell blasts with my lovely air horn :)

I had directions to take a couple of country roads that would connect me down with I-75, well south of Lexington, and I followed those about 75% of the way down. Once I got into one small town, I saw a sign with an arrow for I-75, and I figured I'd just jump onto that and head to the interstate that way. That turned out to be a really fun road. Nice sweepers, and rolling hills. Once the bike crested the hill, it would sink faster than my body would, so it was a bit of a roller coaster effect which increased my smiles per gallon exponentially!

Truth be told, the road itself ended up losing me some of my southern angling toward the interstate, but it was fun enough, I don't regret the few miles I gave up. Once I got onto 75, it was a pretty boring ride for a while, and I started to feel the effects of being up past 1 a.m. for the past two nights. I set small goals of where I'd let myself stop next, and ended up getting enough of a second wind around Knoxville, that I didn't stop until I had to get fuel, right at the exit for Gatlinburg (same exit and fuel stop I'd made when coming back from Fargo in May). It finally had warmed up to where I could take off my fleece pants and long sleeved t-shirt, and I got on the road for the last push right at 3 p.m.

Going back this time, I had to deal more with the rock slide on 40, and the posted detour was to take I-40 to I-81, go 53 miles and then get onto I-26, taking it back down to where it connected again with 40. That's a pretty massively stinky detour, adding 70 miles to the trip, and googlemaps showed an alternate that I planned to take through Newport, TN. Once 81 split off from 40, the traffic thinned to a dribble, and most everyone still on I-40 at that point was getting off at the Newport exit. All went well for, oh, about three miles. Then you started to come into the middle of town and there was a wall of stopped traffic. And it wasn't going anywhere. I stuck it out for a while, but about 90% of the forward movement was due to people ahead of us doing u-turns to get out of the traffic and head back the other direction. I saw a bunch of pickups with folks in the back, an older lady in a classic convertible dressed to the nines (the lady, not the car), and another pickup pulling what looked like a parade float, so I'm guessing they had roads blocked for their Christmas parade.

After 40 minutes of creeping forward for less than a mile and no idea of when it would clear up, I joined the u-turn brigade and headed back to the hated detour on I-81. By now I'd lost nearly an hour, the sun was sinking, and I was getting ready to head through the mountains in the dark. I rode as far as I could with my dark shield insert before pulling off at the shoulder on an exit to switch to the clear pinlock insert on my helmet. Once again, it was a matter of picking small goals instead of focusing on the endless miles in front of me, and I made it just past I-40 to Fletcher, NC before pulling off for fuel, a bathroom break and some food. I was pretty beat, but by that time, I was only an hour from home, and I knew I'd warm up some once I started losing elevation toward Greenville. It was 6:30 by now, and after 30 minutes, I was ready to attack the last chunk. Up to this point, I'd never yet used my heated vest on its highest setting, but at 7 p.m. on a Saturday night going through the NC mountains, it was time. I love my vest. A lot.

The last hour passed quickly...I felt like I was practically in my back yard when I'd stopped for supper anyway. I walked in the back door at 7:55, welcomed by a cold house. It was 52 degrees outside and 53 degrees inside. I've used space heaters in my house since January '08 when the ancient oil furnace died, so when I was gone for the weekend, I'd turned everything off.

Before I went to mom's to get my dog, I turned up the heaters, and put on jeans and a sweatshirt over my double pair of long underwear. I got a coffee from Starbucks and went to her house, loading up Riles into the crew cab of my truck before going inside and visiting with mom for a while. Around 9:40, I left, cranking up the heat in the truck for the ride back home. I still hadn't warmed up from the coffee or the time at mom's. Once back home, I saw that the house had warmed up to a whopping 61 degrees. I prepared to go to bed (even the sheets were cold) and made a cup of hot tea. As an afterthought, I poured something a little stiffer - double shot of Knob Creek bourbon.

And that, my friend, is one amazingly effective way to warm up :)

Family Times!

When I was growing up, we lived in Nebraska for about a year and a half, and since my folks worked, I spent most of three summers (the last one being after we'd moved back to NC) with my cousins in Kansas. I've seen a picture of the house on Maple from street view on Googlemaps, and it seems smaller than I remember it. Of course, most houses seem big when you're 10. At that time, Anna was 12, and her brothers Donnie and Daniel were 16 and 15. The guys are all grown (and married) now, and go by Don and Dan, but they'll always be Donnie and Daniel...sorry guys. Same for my cousin Johnny, who has moved on to 'John'.

I've been to the weddings of all of my cousins (except Johnny - boo hiss that I missed it), and the last time I saw the three from Kansas was when Donnie and Jessica were married, seven and a half years ago. I'd caught back up some with Anna earlier this year on email, and she'd commented a few times that she wished we could sit and talk face to face. I was contemplating a ride out to Seattle, where she now lives (what better excuse?), when I got an email from my aunt Karen, inviting anyone in the family to come to Wilmore this Thankgsiving, and mentioning that all of her kids would be there. Once I knew Anna Banana (among others) would be a mere 350 miles away, it was a no-brainer to plan a trip.

The family that was there included my aunt and uncle, Karen and Don, who are the parents of my three cousins of the Kansas fame. Another aunt and uncle, John and Wai-Ming were there, having driven up from Cumming, GA. Their son, John(ny) and his wife Robyn were there, along with their two daughters (Madeline and Sophia). Daniel and his wife Renita drove in from Lexington, and as mentioned before, Anna's two kids were there. Donnie and Jessica brought the newest addition to the Koehn side of the family with little Kru, who was all of about three weeks old. Jessica says she has to wake him up for his evening feeding, which is pretty amazing. She looked great for being such a new mom :) In addition, a co-worker of Karen, along with his family were with us for the meal, bringing the entire group to 24.

We had two turkeys (a 20 and a 24 pounder), and enough food to feed an army. We'd set up four tables with 6 settings at each, so everyone got to mingle in smaller groups. Lunch began around 2 p.m. and lingered until around 4. Even after the food was done, there was some pretty good visiting going on. I took my leetle computer and had all of my pictures on here, regaling folks with stories of my rides. I managed to get some knitting done while talking with Uncle John, and took a few candid shots while food was getting prepped and while cleaning started.

The last of it was wrapped up close to 8, when the last load of dishes were going in the dishwasher, the tables and couches were restored and Karen was running the vacuum cleaner one last time. We ferried the leftovers back to Karen's, while Daniel and Renita took the remaining turkey to their house for a gathering on Saturday. When the dust settled, it was probably after 9, and Anna and I had our chance to talk and we seized it. We talked about old stuff, about new stuff, shared struggles and blessings. Until. 2. a.m.

Hiawatha!