Almost home...

Greetings, Gentle Reader, August 31, 2008

So much for my promise to "get back soon." And…I left you in Amsterdam. Yikes!

I can offer no real excuse except the rigors of preparing for another school year. This year's run-up is exacerbated by the fact that this year, I and many of my colleagues will be teaching in "Learning Modules" (fairly swanky trailers, actually) while our school builds a new Middle School building. The teaching spaces are spacious, the numerous "modules" are interconnected by a summery boardwalk, and the whole place has the feel of quite a nice little campus. I'm especially grateful that the designers and construction crews made a point of working around and saving the numerous old trees sprinkled around the lot.

I offer this excuse because setting up for the year has entailed essentially starting over, unpacking the boxes I hastily filled in June and reconstructing furniture in a hapless simulation of the night before Christmas. But….egads…I left you in Amsterdam!

Let's get back to the row, shan't we? We're so close to home.

Saturday, 7/5, was the next-to-last day of my row. I bid adieu to Peg and Kathy who had to head back to Baltimore. One couldn't ask for a better support team; even while they were galavanting around the countryside sightseeing, they always knew when and where to appear with ice, Yoo Hoo, Gatorade, salty snacks, and egg salad sandwiches. Their psychic powers enabled them to appear on bridges, at docks, and even from seemingly inaccessible woods to deliver the goods, and of course our end-of-day meal and shared tales were among the highlights of each day. Peg & Kathy, thanks for traveling so many miles and especially for building your vacation around my own adventure. You guys rock!

As Peg & Kathy pushed off for Baltimore, they passed their logistics baton for the day to Peter and Karen, dear friends from Vermont. Peter, you may recall, peddled much of the Hudson while I rowed it two years ago on my way to Baltimore, offering logistical support and also tips on rowing, as Peter had rowed competitively at our shared alma mater. They had brought their bikes and made use of the excellent bikeways along the canal. Fifteen miles later were they were waiting for me at the famous Jumpin' Jacks in Scotia, right along the Mohawk River. I scarffed down two vanilla malts, a couple of cheeseburgers, and onion rings under their skeptical gazes (they're healthy and fit; I was hungry and unsupervised), and I later enjoyed a leisurely afternoon on this stretch of river. I had lived and worked in the Albany area for most of my life and yet had never seen this part of town from the water. The Mohawk serpentines back and forth under some impressive cliffs, and it is clear that the folks of the capital district know how to use the river: rowing clubs, environmental facilities, and beautiful homes line the banks.

A few miles further downstream, the Schenectady Yacht Club hosted me on my last night on the river. They asked only for "some good press" in the blog, and I herewith offer it now. They let me pitch my tent right by the dock, granted me access to a perfectly clean shower room and a delightful pool, and all of this enabled me to spruce up for the arrival in Waterford tomorrow, my final day.
Their hospitality on my last night prompted me to reflect on how such small acts of kindness can mean so much to a traveler, and how over the last two weeks the kindness of strangers made this row so much more than a traverse of New York state. There was Harold on my first night way back in Lockport, my middle-of-the-night visitor who braved the rain to bring me items he scoured from his home that he thought would be useful. His care was the best item of all. Days later, the Morehouse family adopted me in Cayuga. They and their friends shared their time and history, and they let me pitch in and make me feel a part of their gathering. Joe of Cross Lake introduced me to the impossible idea of using a Venetian gondola for my kind of traveling…and opened his home (and refrigerator!) for a much-needed respite. Fellow mariners, friendly lock-keepers, and the scores who waved and shouted encouragement from the banks all contributed to a special camaraderie on this trip. I came to see a canal as a continuous community, the shared waters connecting folks in a way more poignant than town boundaries or zip codes.

So, Schenectady Yacht Club, I am in your debt for your final act of kindness to a stranger. Tomorrow I will head for the dramatic final "flight" of locks leading to Waterford and the Hudson. That I will arrive shaved, showered, and quite well rested is due to you, and on behalf of those who will meet me and perhaps might be moved to give me a hug, I thank you.

Three hundred twenty five miles down…fifteen to go.

Sweet.

More soon…..very soon!

Hugs,
Mr. Frei

Picking it Up Again

Greetings, Gentle Reader, August 20, 2008

I know that I've taxed even my most faithful readers with this inexcusable lapse. I last wrote in mid-July and left you hanging in Frankfort…much as I myself was hanging on to my tent and worldly possessions during a midnight thunderstorm. In the same way that I at that moment asked, "When will this ever end?", so too must you be wondering, "Al, when will this (blog) ever end?"
Soon, Gentle Reader, soon. Gotta get you (and me) home first, OK?

But…why the lapse? In a word: sloth. I spent two wonderful weeks with family and friends at my mom's camp at Lake George, rowing in the mornings, feigning home improvement projects in the afternoons, succumbing to a nap by three, taking a refreshing swim and rejuvenating libations by five, and generally living the life of a teenager….all under direct parental supervision. My daughter and I built a Potato Cannon on my birthday – just the activity to busy a summering teacher and an aspiring doctoral candidate – and it performed magnificently, lofting Russets hundreds of feet behind a gout of flame and my mother's protestations. (I highly recommend William Gurstelle's Backyard Ballistics, which Dava Sorbel refers to as "the official manual for REAL boys." I concur. The Cincinnatti Fire Kite is another personal favorite, but watch that wind!)

So, where were we? Oh yes, Frankfort. After gathering the trail of debris left by the storm, I packed the boat and made a largely rainy 30 mile day of it through four locks, one of which – Little Falls – presents, at 41 feet, the greatest vertical transition on the Canal. Believe me, sitting at the bottom of that lock in a rowboat is sobering as you contemplate both the ancient concrete and the 1919-vintage machinery protecting you from the deluge upstream. I felt like the proverbial rubber ducky tub toy when the lock keeper opened the lower doors. As an aside, the acoustics of the Little Falls lock are truly superb; my blues harp was never far from my seat, and as I bent a few notes before I headed out, I imagined Muddy Waters in the back seat, providing that back beat and soulful vocals. Muddy Waters on the Erie. Oh, yes.
The St. Johnsville Marina offered a clean campsite and showers that night (7/2). Of the three boats transiting the canal tied up there that evening, lo and behold, two of the three families had Boys' Latin connections. One fellow's son had graduated a few years before, and another fellow's wife had dated a BL student "back in the day." I couldn't clarify what she meant by "back in the day," and decorum prevents speculation here. Nonetheless, Peg, Kathy, and I hit an Italian restaurant in town – as did my fellow transients- and I loaded up on carbs. If I were at a wheel instead of at my oars, I'd weigh 300 pounds after an Erie journey. Note to file: keep rowing.

July 3rd dawned sunny and calm. Four locks and 34 miles later, I pulled up just west of Amsterdam, a town still reeling from departed or marginalized industries. We had heard that there would be quite a fireworks display that evening, but it never happened. Instead, as Peg, Kathy and I sipped a saucy merlot at sunset along the canal, we were visited by two kids on bikes. Sal and Robert started the interrogation with zest. Who were we? Where had we come from? Where were we going? Was I really sleeping in that tent over there? What did I do for food?

As conversations with pre-teens often do, the questioning eventually turned to "How old do you think I am?" as Sal and Robert challenged me to guess their ages. Six years in an 8th grade classroom have taught me that in the interests of domestic tranquility, it is always wise to guess low. I came comfortably close with Sal and Robert (10 and 11) and then made the mistake of turning the tables. "Sal," I asked, "how old do you think I am?" Sal sized me up, discreetly conferred with Robert, and then confidently pronounced, "Seventy two." Cripes, had I not just told them that I had rowed the boat before them over three hundred miles in the last ten days? As Peg and Kathy wisely opined after a few more glasses and many laughs, to a kid on a bike, anyone over 20 is an enigma; 32, 52, 72….if you're ten on the canal in July, what's the difference, really? Of course, Sal and Robert staged a comeback when they sized Peg up as "about 37" and Kathy as "forty-something."

Sal and Robert…the Diplomats of Amsterdam. Sigh.

More later, and soon, 'K? We're almost home.