Tonight's blog comes to you from sunny (or twilight) Colorado Springs, where your faithful scribe is attending a Gurian Institute seminar on gender-based learning research and consequent teaching strategies. It is fascinating stuff, explaining a lot about how boys and girls learn differently and how we (teachers and parents) can adapt some –or much - of what we do to better effect. I've only been here for a day…but this promises to be very useful information indeed. Sadly, none of it yet explains my three-time pass at Algebra I. That must be a different seminar.
Sadly, multi-day seminars present the allure/danger of the ever-present feed bag. This morning I found myself totally unsupervised in front of an enormous platter of corned beef hash. Not good. I need to be very, very closely monitored and counseled in such a setting. I went back twice. Three times, actually. Then, four hours later, it's lunchtime. Meatloaf. Uh oh. You get the idea.
So… this evening's Blog is written in lieu of dinner and will be followed by a vigorous amble (I can hardly call it a jog) through the hills surrounding the University of Colorado campus where we are staying. This setting enjoys a commanding view of Pike's Peak and Cheyenne Mountain across the valley, the air is as dry and cool as Baltimore's is hot and wet, and all of this simply must prevent me from sitting in front of my third square meal of the day.
Having re-read my last blogs to catch up, I am concerned that there is too much slow-moving pedestrian detail and not enough punch. I can't guarantee punch, but I can skip some of the tedious blow-by-blow stuff because, let's face it, this was a row, not a Rolling Stones tour. Suffice to say that the next three days (6/24, 25, & 26) were spent slogging through Rochester (big and animated by the confluence of the Genesee River), Pittsford (classy), Fairport (classy, but not very welcoming; they, too, suggested I "look for better options" further along the canal), Macedon (the Lockmaster at 30 mercifully let me pitch a tent after a long, long day and the rejection in Fairport), Newark (nice shower in the Welcome Center), Clyde (see Brian's comments….not deserved), and finally, through the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge (grassy, great birds) and the short Cayuga-Seneca Canal (up) to Cayuga Lake. That's a blessedly short overview of three days and 77 miles…but it gets me to Cayuga Lake so that I can riff a bit about the Morehouse Boat Company and family, a far more stimulating topic than my own labors at the oars.
On Thursday the 26th, shortly after I came through Lock 1 on Cayuga Lake (and got up close and personal with the Zebra Mussels congealed on the lock walls…a nasty miasma of shell and goo and skanky slime; if Peg will download the pictures, you'll see what I mean), I headed towards Cayuga Lake State Park, on the northwest shore of Cayuga Lake, where I hoped to spend the night and await Peg & Kathy's arrival on Saturday.
Rowing up to what looked like "the Park building" (it wasn't), the first person I met was George Zeth. George coached me through a strategy to pitch a tent close to the water at the Park without getting hassled (proved successful), regaled me with the local history of the Park and then, more interesting to me, of his forebears' boatbuilding business. George gave me a private tour of the charming waterfront museum which commemorates the Morehouse Boat Company and Cayuga's general boatbuilding and Park heritage, including a look at the very jigs and frames Morehouse used for decades to build a wide array of power and sailing craft in that building. He even allowed me to lend a hand at the Morehouse Boat Reunion at that very site over the coming weekend…and then let me off lightly on the heavy-lifting tasks. George is a great guy, very knowledgeable, and a fine host. All of this is just to say that when a random encounter on a rowing trip includes meeting guy like George at your first "hello," you have to count yourself lucky.
I won't butcher the history of this fine family's business by trying to recount it from memory (I think Kathy has afforded you the chance to look at it through a link to the museum), but I will simply say that the Morehouse story is the classic story of a small, enterprising business focused on quality and service, founded and built by very hard-working people who did whatever had to be done to keep it going through all seasons, economic cycles, and trends, and which morphed over time as circumstances dictated. Finally, for the myriad reasons that afflict so many small family businesses, it ceased to be. Gentle Reader, go to the site. It's fascinating, familiar, and now, for me, personal.
Yet happily, over the weekend of June 27th, I had a hard time believing that the Morehouse Boat Company had "ceased to be." For three days Morehouse family members, customers, friends, boat-nuts, historians, local politicians, and neighbors told story after story of colorful times, displayed their Morehouse boats (and their justifiable pride in them), and proved that as long as we remember them, the events, people, and objects of our nostalgia continue to live. To George, Betty, Jenny, Mike, Rob and the many others who hosted me so graciously over three full days and brought me into their pasts and presents…thank you. Your hospitality was a highlight of my trip, and I couldn't be more grateful to all of you for adopting me for a weekend.
On Sunday I was delighted to take Peg & Kathy on a wine tour of Cayuga and Seneca Lakes (in Kathy's Subaru, not my boat). Suffice to say that if I were a vitas vinifera, I could think of worse climes in which to spend the summer. (Winters I'd want to spend south.) Both Seneca and Cayuga lakes are cupped by gently sloping hills – framed by long, oblique "plateaus," really – and we tasted some very fine stuff. Being the Designated Driver on such a tour poses some restrictions on how much you can taste, but we ended the day with a full wagon.
I myself capped the night off with a guilty Vanilla Malt, knowing that three days of lallygagging around the Finger Lakes was not getting me any closer to the Hudson.
The calluses were softening. It was time to go.
Tomorrow's Blog: The Amazing Gondola Man…and The Big Waters.
Rocky Mountain Hi,
Mr. Frei
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