My Stubbornness Backfires
Steve Danberry and I had talked about going away camping over Memorial Day weekend. I was excitedly awaiting that weekend but at the last minute came down with some kind of bug, giving me fevers and chills. I decided I was going to go regardless. Then Steve backed out and I was upset. I packed the BMW with my camping gear and donning my snowmobile riding suit (the warmest clothes I had at the time) I set out for the Big Meadows campground on Skyline Drive in Virginia.
It was cold and I was glad I remembered to install my “elephant ears” over the handlebar. This is a modified muff women my mother’s age used to wear in Hungary or football quarterbacks wear now during those winter outdoor games to keep their hands warm. It slips over the end of the handlebar and is secured with Velcroed straps to keep that end closed. The other end is open and is wide enough to slip your arm into it. It really works well and most times keeps the hands warm enough, even when not wearing gloves.
I was approaching the tool booths at my exit for Route 81 heading south. There was a car in front of me paying his tolls, so I stopped. I took my hands out of the elephant ears to find my wallet and as I was moving around the seat to get to it, I felt the bike lean to the right. I had just enough time to grab the handlebar through the elephant ears and I tried with all my strength to right the bike. I was able to stop it from going over farther but I couldn’t persuade it to come back to the middle. I struggled with it for what seemed like hours, but I finally capitulated and gently laid the bike down on its right cylinder. This would have been a fairly easy task for me were it not for the fact I was not feeling well and that the bike was fully loaded. After several unsuccessful attempts I had run out of strength and ideas. I looked behind me at the tractor trailer, which was one of those snub-nosed jobs, and I looked at the driver. I couldn’t be sure, but I think he was grimacing while shaking his head from side-to-side in disapproval and disappointment. I think he was saying to himself and me at the same time words I didn’t want to hear at this crucial time. Words like: “If you want to pursue a man’s sport, you gotta be a man!”. Despite my pleading eyes he didn’t budge from his seat.
The Lake Piseco/Lake Placid Trip
Using the trailer in Montour Falls as a base camp, we set out to explore Upstate New York State. We made it as far as Lake Piseco on the first day. Coming from a highly “civilized” and populated area, we took some careless assumptions. The most important of these was that there will be gas stations every few miles, so there’s no need to watch the trip odometer, just enjoy the ride. Although the Maxim got good mileage, it was loaded up pretty good, which always diminishes the distance that can be squeezed out of a tankful of gas. About 20 miles before we got to Lake Piseco the engine sputtered and I had to switch the petcock to reserve. We started to actively look for gas stations. We were on Route 8 coming from Utica heading north. Towns were far and few along the way and I was starting to seriously worry about running out of gas.
When I saw the sign for Lake Piseco I turned and much to my relief we found a gas station connected to a little store and a restaurant. After filling up we found some leftover donuts from the morning and they were excellent. Not too far from the store was a state campground and being a little tired we decided to stay there. There weren’t many people there, so we found a nice site and pitched our two-person Eureka.
After a good night’s rest we set out for Lake Placid. We explored the location of the 1980 Winter Olympics and had a great time. We didn’t keep good track of time and it was late when we started back to camp. We were only halfway there when it got dark. I never realized it could get that cold in the middle of summer. We were both freezing by the time we found our tent, so we crawled inside and quickly fell asleep. Mary woke me up some time later, saying that her sleeping bag was sopping wet. It was so wet that she couldn’t use it. Luckily mine was bone-dry, so we slept cuddled together for the rest of the night.
In the morning we discovered that in my haste I pitched the tent over a rain runoff area and while the rest of the tent stayed dry, the seam of the tent wicked some water inside, right into Mary’s sleeping bag. Three lessons learned here: give some more thought to the location of the tent, pack some warmer clothes and treat the seams of the tent with seam sealer. All in all, it was a great trip.
I Discover Letchworth
It so happened that I ended up with an extra week’s vacation one year. It felt really strange to be by myself but I decided to make the best of it. I started by riding the Maxim up to the trailer in Montour Falls, where I formulated the rest of my trip. There was a time when I entertained thoughts of visiting every state park in Pennsylvania. By then I had been to many of them, so it was doable. After looking at the map of New York looking for green areas, the color of parks, I found one just below Rochester. It had a strange name: Letchworth. I decided to make it my destination.
I entered the park via the Northern entrance and almost immediately came to the visitor center, where I learned a little history of the park. Bisecting the park is the Genesee River, flowing North through Rochester. In the past from time to time the river would flood the city, so a dam was built, which can be seen just a few steps from the visitor center. The dam totally prevented further damage by the river. It is a large dam and is quite a distance below the lookout place. The upstream part of the river is littered with tree trunks, which resemble toothpicks from that distance. I enjoyed the sights and sounds for a few more minutes, then continued to explore the rest of the park. I came to the campground next, so I picked out a site, pitched my tent and unloaded the bike. The site had electric hookup, but I had nothing that needed it.
I checked out the camp store and bought a package of hot dogs, buns and a plastic container of milk, all of which I placed on the picnic table. I mounted the bike and continued south. The road loosely follows the river and every so often there are places where you can park and after a short walk to the edge of the cliff, see the river far below you. Each of these stations is different and the vistas seemed to be increasingly more pleasing to the eye. Eventually I arrived at a building, which I learned was an inn and restaurant and once belonged to the man the park was named after.
I also learned that when this man was just a boy, working on the railroad that traversed this area, he noticed the indiscriminate destruction of the surrounding forests by logging companies. Eventually he became a prominent lawyer and accumulated enough wealth to purchase several thousand of the surrounding acreage, vowing to forever protect the land. At his favorite spot, by the largest of three waterfalls, he had a house built, in front of which I was now standing. I walked inside to look at it and a couple of rooms were still furnished with his original furniture. There was a very nice souvenir shop, which is also where reservations could be made for the inn. These were kept in a huge book, in which the entries were hand-written. I noticed that many of the guests were dressed up for the occasion, wearing suits and ties and long gowns by the women. I was wearing my jeans and boots, sporting a three-day beard, with my camping knife attached to my belt. I approached the maitre d’, who was also in a gown and asked if someone looking like me would be allowed inside. She smiled and said yes and showed me to a table inside. I was feeling a little out-of-place but quickly noticed that nobody gave me a second look. I had a great meal and left with nothing but great feelings.
It was getting late, so I headed back to the tent. In my absence critters had visited the campsite and had taken bites out of both the bread and the hot dogs. I threw out what didn’t have bite marks and put them inside one of the plastic saddlebags. They didn’t bother my milk, so I left that out on the table. I concentrated on building a fire and communing with nature. Several times I heard rustling in the area and saw several raccoons, pretty big ones, I might add, who seemed visibly upset that I wasn’t going to bed. I could almost swear that I heard one sigh, when he saw that I was still sitting next to the fire.
The next morning, I awoke to a soggy picnic table, as the raccoons had chewed through the hard plastic milk container and the seat and saddlebag of the bike containing the food were filthy with muddy raccoon footprints. They must have been really frustrated not being able to get to the food inside. The next day I continued the exploration of the park and learned of the story of Mary Jamison, a 15-year-old abducted by Shawnee Indians, who killed her parents and sold her to the Seneca tribe. She stayed with them and became a prominent leader of the tribe preaching peace between Indians and the white man until her death.
Some buildings still remain from that era and can be visited.
The Route 6 Motorcycle Trip
I decided to explore the majority of Route 6 in Pennsylvania on my Yamaha. Along the way I visited the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, climbed down into the ice mine in Coudersport and walked out on the Kinzua Bridge. The ice mine was an unexplained geological phenomenon inside a rather shallow in the ground. During certain summer weeks ice forms on the walls of the shaft. Whoopie! The Kinzua Bridge was a railroad trestle made of wood, spanning more than a half a mile, traversing a deep valley. Since then, I re-visited this site and was sad to learn that a strong gust of wind blew most of the bridge into the valley below and access is now not possible. See pictures below.
Before
After
I drove through the Allegheny National Forest and almost ran out of gas. On my way to Oil City I observed many oil derricks in operation. This area must be where Quaker State oil comes from.
When I looked at the map of Pennsylvania in my atlas I noticed a ghost town, so I had to investigate. The following is from the website for Pithole City: “Oil production was centered in the valleys of Oil Creek and the Allegheny River when the 250 barrel-a-day Frazier Well drilled along Pithole Creek came in. Numerous other gusher wells in this isolated part of Venango County attracted thousands of fortune-seekers to the area and a town called Pithole City sprang up on the Thomas Holmden Farm in May of 1865. By September, 15,000 people lived in Pithole which had 57 hotels, a daily newspaper, and the third busiest Post Office in the state, handling more than 5500 pieces a day! But Pithole declined almost as rapidly as it grew. A combination of oil running out, major fires at wells and hastily constructed wooden city buildings, and new wells in nearby places caused the population to shrink to less than 2000 by December 1866. Today, little remains of this boomtown but cellar holes in a hillside meadow.”
The Orientals
I wanted to get away for a weekend of motorcycle camping. The destination I picked was French Creek State Park in Pennsylvania. It was still pretty early in the year, so I wore my snowmobile suit, just to be safe. When I got to the campground the first thing I noticed was that I was alone. Normally I don’t mind being alone, in fact, at times, I prefer it. Plus, in this case, it was easy to pick out a site to pitch my tent. Once I picked a site, the second thing I noticed was that there were several inches of ice on the picnic table. Putting it in the back of my mind I didn’t think much more of it and kept busy setting up the tent and performing other nesting chores.
Once done I was sitting on the bench of the table, communing with nature, when a car came into sight. They made a little circle, looking for a camping place and I was very angry to see them pull into a site that was only two over from mine. I was fuming! Why did they have to be so close to me? I mean, the whole campground was deserted! Then the car doors opened and a bunch of Orientals exited. They started to unpack the car. One of them opened the trunk and took out a couple of large speakers. Oh, my God! That’s it! I was over the boiling point and was seriously thinking of packing up, when soft sounds of classical music wafted over to my ears. Classical music is my favorite! I settled back down onto the bench and my anger dissipated in no time at all, in fact, I was embarrassed for my earlier feelings.
A few minutes later I wanted to build a fire from the few measly branches I had collected earlier. No matter what I did, the fire would not start. Before I knew it one of my neighbors came over to me and handed me a cup of coffee and proceeded to put a can of Sterno into the fire. He covered it with the wood and then lit the Sterno. Before long I had my fire blazing. When I went to bed, I found out that an air mattress is not really a good thing to sleep on when the air and ground are freezing. I was shivering before I realized drastic changes needed to be made and I spread the snowmobile suit on top of the mattress, put the sleeping bag on top and crawling inside I was finally warm enough to go to sleep. When I woke up the next morning and went to the bathroom, one of the Orientals was waiting for me with another cup of coffee.
Things like this have been happening to me all my life. I have truly been blessed to always have “my Orientals” around me when I need them. And I always say “thank you” whenever it happens. The story above is just one of literally hundreds of examples. Most of them are smaller but I always notice and say, “thank you”. The list of notable people elsewhere in this document is a list of “my Orientals”. People who are or have been my friends, people with whom I’ve had the pleasure of sharing a workplace, have all helped me at one time or another. It is my hope that they can all say the same about me.