T+137. Lost and Found and Lost

Centennial, Wyoming: We have just witnessed two days of gale force winds.  Yesterday, the snow was blowing so bad we could not see more than 100 yards.  We sat at the windows and heard the house shake.  We watched for and worried about the Angus yearlings on the next ranch, who were huddled up in the willows.  When we went shopping, we made sure we prepared our car for the worst: (shovel, blanket, kitty litter, emergency kit.)  Here, the earth is in charge and we best not forget it.  Getting lost or stuck out here is no laughing matter.  In central New York, we found out a little something about losing and finding.  It wasn’t funny at the time.

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Mile 3757: Rome, New York

We leave Fulton early on a Saturday morning.  It is grey and a bit chilly.  We will follow the north shore of Lake Oneida to Rome.  This was not our original intention.  We are going to Rome because it was the only place we could find lodging.  Everything on Lake Ontario was full because of salmon fishing, and everything in Syracuse was full because of the football game.  We were able to get a room in Rome, partially because the local historic attraction, Fort Stanwix, is closed because of the government shutdown.   Because the Fulton motel had no WiFi, I had to use the internet at the gas station across from our motel.   I play “hotel bingo”, book an expensive hotel in Rome, and lose.

We will have to make a long ride to get there, then use Rome as our launching point into the Adirondacks.  We leave Fulton as the sun was coming up, and enter rolling farm and woodlands, scattered with a series of tiny towns.  There is much poverty and abandonment along the way.  In the hamlet of Central Square, the volunteer firefighters are hosting a chicken barbeque to provide support for a member whose child has cancer.  This must be the tenth chicken dinner benefit we have encountered.

The chicken is not yet ready, so we ask at the local gas station about local cafes, and the skinny woman, whose bright smile was missing a few teeth, first tells us what used to be in the village, before telling us we can find a breakfast down by the freeway in a few miles.  The place is busy with lots of football fans and motorcycle riders.  We sit down to order and a family with adult children sitting next to us immediately begins peppering us with questions.  They are from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  They are up to spend a final fall weekend before closing their cottage on Lake Oneida.   They get into a debate with our waitress.   Is cycling across the country brave, stupid, or crazy?  I think they decided that the right answer was all three.   As we go out the door, a young woman just dismounting a motorcycle asks where we are going.  When we tell we are going to Rome, she asks “Today?”  As we cycle off, we hear her say to her compatriots, “I  think I would bike 10 miles…no, make that 5 miles…before I would give up.”

The north shore of Lake Oneida is ringed with cottages and small villages.  There are a number of resort attractions that have long since decayed.  We stop and stare an immense Dutch style barn, at least 200 feet long, with faded lettering announcing dancing, fine food, and drinks.  The tangled web of ivy growing over the building tells us it has been a few decades since this hand-hewn building was a destination.  There are few places to stop, and where there are active business, many have closed for the season.

Thus, Wes and I are relieved when we finally find a place to stop for lunch: a small bar not far from the shore of the lake.  The place is small, dark, and empty.  The female bartender is at first quite perfunctory when we discover that the only food available are cheese puffs and pickled eggs.  We drink a beer on an empty stomach.  Before long, a vivacious couple who knows the bartender quite well enters the bar.  Soon we are in the middle of lively conversation about the economy, jobs, dogs, and what-not.  The man runs out to his truck to get his “darlin’”, a tiny, jittery Chihuahua who runs up and down the counter and jumps into his arms on command.   He says he is “retired,” although it means he has just quit looking for work after his last lay-off.  He says he might work again, if he could find anything.  His wife snorts at the thought.   We order another beer for the two of us, but the bartender gives us each another beer. 

I am wee bit tipsy when we leave, giddily waving to the laughing couple.  We jump on the bike and have a great ride, winding up and down through empty roads and the coloring forest.  We come to a pretty meadow that shows the trees to their advantage.  I suggest we stop and get a picture.  After I get off my bike, I am horrified to see that I have left my pannier, along with my purse, back in the bar.  I know exactly where it is.  We originally sat at table when we entered.  When the chatterboxes came in, we moved to the bar, but my pannier didn’t.

Wes picks up the story:

What to do. . .what to do? I walk across the road, stick out my thumb, and the first car by stops. It was an off-duty county sheriff. I told him our problem, and he said, "We'd better get you there before one of those unemployed people discover it".  He took off like a rocket and we covered the ten miles, in ten minutes. He dropped me off, but couldn't take me back because he was meeting his son to fix his son's broken down car. Luckily, the pannier/purse was still leaning against the wall, but the minute I picked it up, Shaun's phone rings. Everyone in the bar turned and looked.

I smiled and said, "It's for me". 

But I still had to get back to Shaun, so I step out and try to wave someone down. Some kids living in a run-down apartment adjacent to the pub saw me and ran to their mom and told her some wild looking man was trying to stop cars like he'd been in an accident or something. The mom came out and asked if everything was all right.

I explained and told her my wife was on the side of the road waiting. She immediately dropped what she was doing, called her mother to babysit, and said she'd take me. We got into her beat-up old car and took off. She mentioned she hoped she had enough gas. A few minutes later, we pull up to Shaun with the pannier, thanked the lady profusely, and gave her gas money, which we hoped would keep her fueled up for the week.

 Total time since Shaun discovered the missing purse?--25 minutes.

Feeling grateful that my foolishness had not done us in (once again), we are soon back on the bikes.  Truly, God takes care of fools and little children.  It is getting to be late afternoon, and we still have close to 20 miles to go.  As we leave the shores of the lake, we go through a marshy area.  It is horrifying: the road is be-smattered with thousands of frog carcasses.  The gore lasts close to a mile.  We wonder if the cars even see these small guys.  We certainly do, and wonder why there are not viaducts under the road in obvious migration routes like this, especially given frogs’ state of near extinction.

We have travelled 45 miles, 35 miles since breakfast, when we see a store which has been in business since the 19^th century.   The building has been made and re-made, but here at the conjunction of river, lake, canal, and road, it is easy to see why folks have been stopping here for generations.  We grab sandwiches and eat on our bikes.  Time is slipping away.

When we finally make our way to Rome, we are relieved.  We have travelled 60 miles, lost and found my purse, and are ready to get to our hotel and prepare for our push into the Adirondacks tomorrow.  I call the hotel to get directions.   The young desk clerk gives me simple directions, but they don’t make sense where we are.  I tell we have just entered the town on highway 49.  She says, “Good, just take the Griffiss Park exit, you will find us on the right.”   I don’t understand how we can take an exit if we are already in town, and she repeats her instructions again. 

We figure we’ll find it soon enough, so start making our way through the small city of Rome.  This is an old city, built over an old fort, built over a central location for the Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois.  At this point in time, there are lot of abandoned warehouses, many rail lines, shuttered factories interspersed between various business and eateries.  It looks alive, but very much in transition.  We ride a long way and see no sign of the hotel.  We stop a mom and daughter combo going into a fancy barbeque place for help.  They both whip out cell-phones, then struggle to tell us how to get there, with the admonition that it is pretty far.  We get some more instructions, which are a bit confusing and keep going.   We have now ridden several more miles since entering the town.

We come to the restored grounds of Fort Stanwix and have to make a decision which way to go: freeway, small street, or main street. The website seems to say “small street”, the ladies said “main street”, the clerk seemed to say “freeway”.  Wes goes into a Laundromat to seek further assistance.  Apparently, he does not hear me say I will wait on the corner before the Laundromat.  I wait and wait, check the website, call the hotel, try to use my phone to figure out what to do.   I walk to the Laundromat.  No Wes.  I look up and down the street.  No Wes.  The sun is going down.  I call his cell phone.  It is off.  Oh, boy, now I am really getting upset.  I don’t know how to get to the hotel; I don’t know where my husband is; I am tired and in a somewhat dodgy location.   I call again.  Still no response.  A while later, starting to get a bit panicked, I call again and to my relief, I am able to leave a “where are you, where are you, where are you?” message.

By time Wes calls me back some minutes later, I am crying. He had come out of Laundromat and not seen me.  Thinking I had gone on, he had hurried up the hill to find me.  After he had gone a long way with no sight of me, he too began to worry, and stopped to turn on the phone. 

 Night and cold are coming on.  We follow the instructions from the girls in the Laundromat, which confirmed the ladies’ instructions.  We ride a couple of miles out the main street, turn on another highway and come to another junction.  I call the hotel again, and tell her we are lost.  When I tell her where we are, she says, “Great, just take the street there and follow it up a ways and you’ll get there.”  I say, not kindly, “There are four streets here, which one do I take?”  She says, “Go straight from the Burger King.”  I am angry now.  “Which way?  East? West? North? South?  Left? Right?”  She says, “I’m don’t know directions.  Just follow the road by the Burger King.”  Wes snatches the phone from my hand because I am about to go ballistic.  He says, “Thanks, anyway, I think we understand.” 

We start following the road and it is clear that we have left the main part of town.  It is quite dark now.  My emotional stability is deteriorating rapidly.  We fumble our way to an unmarked roundabout and can’t tell which way to go.  Wes calls the hotel again and gets the same poor instructions, although it is clear that we are getting closer. 

My tears and panic have returned as we fumble along in the dark, unable to find a big hotel in the ever increasing remoteness of the landscape.  Wes doesn’t know what to do with me.  I don’t know what to do with me.  We finally spot a sign to the Rome Free Academy, which I recognize from the website as adjacent to the hotel.   We make our way there at long last, we are cold, hungry, and upset.  The desk clerk stares at us with big eyes, afraid we are going to yell at her.  Wes has told me to just keep my mouth closed and I know he is right.  I say nothing.  Wes is kind to her, although he tells her that a basic skill for a desk clerk is understanding the layout of the city enough to give directions.  She doesn’t apologize, but she does let us store our bikes in the board room overnight.

The hotel is in a corporate convention center outside of city of Rome.  We have travelled 10 miles from our entry into the city on the northwest side to former air force base, now business park, on the far southeast side.  It wasn’t until we got into our expensive, soul-less room that we understood that.  Our disappointment grows when we discover that there is no restaurant, no bar, no nothing in the facility, nor within walking distance.   They have an expensive cantina, where we get some frozen dinners.   This is not a happy night for the Nethercotts.

 

The next day, we awaken to a pouring rain.  This is not the day to bike into the mountains.  We hang around, watch movies and football.  Late in the afternoon, the rain has relented, and we are a bit stir crazy.  We ask the same desk clerk for a coffee house we can walk to.  She gives us vague instructions to a coffee house in the business park.  We make our way there, walking through a moderately interesting sculpture garden.  Of course, it is closed. 

 Back at our room, we give up and order all sorts of food from a pizza and calzone delivery place.  Our eyes were bigger than our stomach and we have lots of leftovers, which seems like a problem, but proves fortuitous.  While Wes watches football, I mess around with my phone trying to find a route into the Adirondacks.  I discover a program on my Windows phone, which I have never used, that will give me detailed topographic and street maps of my exact location and will identify various businesses.  I shudder to think how many times we have been lost, when all the time I had a solution right on my phone in my purse.  Well, it may be true that God protects fools and little children, but it is also true that fools sometimes have to learn the hard way.