T+155: The Final Push

Mile 4162: Portland, Maine

We leave the bed and breakfast in Meredith and push out into traffic.  It is chilly.  We have about a 50 mile ride to the little town of Cornish, Maine.  The next day, we will only have about 30 miles to get into Portland.  We both have pretty strong homing fever.  Like horses who have been on an all-day ride, but who begin to trot and can’t be deterred once they get a sense of barn and pasture, we are singled minded in our focus.  We want to get to Portland as soon as we can.

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from missing our turn and going the wrong way for a few miles first thing in the morning.  Even though we were following Highway 25, we were not seeing the lake shore as we should.  Instead we were climbing a small saddle…and making good time, at that.  It just doesn’t seem right, I tell Wes.  Let’s stop and check.   We pull off into a public area, check the map, and…can- you-believe-it—not only have we gone the wrong way, I also have a flat tire.  Grrrrr.

It is already late because of the long conversation we had at breakfast, so we try to control our anxiety as we change the tire and make our way back to what should be a connector road back to EAST 25.    (We had been going due north on WEST 25.)  25B is a short-cut, all right, in distance.  It is straight up a steep hill we can’t ride.  After a long and cranky push, we make it to the top and see the streets of Center Harbor, straight down.  I am not completely confident in our repair, so I brake like mad down the 13% grade.   Wes shoots straight down, and when I meet up with him at the bottom, he has a bug-eyed, wild-hair grin.  Near the junction with the main road, we see a semi-truck loaded with hay just turning onto the road.  He stops his truck and asks us if this the road to Sunset Hill.  Wes tells him it is, but warns him that he may not be able to make it up that grade.  He drives off to attempt it.

We don’t tarry at the lake, even though the town looks cute.  We push through Moultonborough, even though it is on another lake and has an intriguing sign for the Cloud in the Sky house.  Nope, we’ve got homing fever.  No left, no right, just go.  The road outside of Moultonborough begins the circumnavigation of the Ossipees.  We climb up and can see its western flank with big canyons and fast moving streams. 

Ossipee Mountains

As we circle around these unusual mountains, the view to our right doesn’t change.  Unlike normal linear mountains, which have a beginning, middle and end, riding the perimeter of the volcano means that mountain seems to rotate with us.  However, once we are on the north side of the circle dyke, the views to our left begin to be awe-inspiring.  The White Mountains are just a few miles away and they are impressive.  At one point, we look north and see a jagged peak far above the surrounding peaks.  A single horn of granite, the stubborn remnant after glaciers had scraped away all else, stands 1000 feet above the rocky ridges below.  We wonder, is that Mount Washington?  It certainly was the tallest mountain we had seen since the Rockies. 

West Ossipee is at 1pm on the clock of the circle.  It is the last junction before Conway, in the heart of the White Mountains.  It is also the first place we see a road sign announcing the distance to Portland, Maine: 62 miles.  There is a busy barbeque joint right at the junction.  There are lots of folks wrapping up their Columbus Holiday weekend.  We eat in the tent outside the main dining area. 

It was better people watching than eating.  Around our table we see the following sets of people.  There is a handsome young couple, both quite athletic with the tans and muscles that come from lots of vigorous outside activities, with five children.  The oldest, a teenage boy of about 15 looks exactly like his father, who looks no more than 32 years old.  The mother has long, dark hair and a kind of casual elegance that makes me jealous.  Their youngest child is probably 5 years old. They order tons of food and eat only part of it.  They all seem very confident and relaxed.

Next to them is an intergenerational family of far fewer means.  The grandmother is on oxygen.  Her two daughters are overweight and wearing tight knit pants.  They all have their hair pulled tight into high ponytails.  All three women spend a good deal of time correcting and engaging with a young tween who can’t sit still and may not be able to read.  There are numerous questions, in quite loud voices, “Do you want the chicken?  How about the pulled pork?  Please sit down!  Did you want to try chicken, or not?  Answer me!” 

Across from us is a middle aged man of Asian descent, who has led his tiny, tottering, nearly blind mother up the ramp and to a high table, where he has very difficult time getting her into the stool.  There he explains, over and over, what this place is.  It’s not clear she understands.  When the food comes, he puts a bib around her then gently helps her take bites from her sloppy, slippery sandwich.

At the far end of the tent is another extended family.  I can’t see them very well, but I have a great view of the patriarch, with his sailor’s cap, beige windbreaker, tan chinos, and deck shoes.  He looks like he should be returning from a weekend on the boat instead of the New Hampshire mountains.  He spends the whole meal on his cell phone, only breaking his conversation once, with a loud, “Oh, all right!”  while he pulls some bills from his pocket to give to two gesticulating teenage boys, who then run into the interior of the restaurant.

When I come out of the restaurant, I see Wes in deep conversation with an odd-looking fellow.  I had seen him riding down the hill to the junction on a beater bike with a wobbly front wheel.  He looked to be in his forties.  His clothes—work boots, ragged jeans, polo shirt under a flannel shirt—were ragged and dirty.  His long blondish hair was stuffed under a mangled fisherman’s brim hat.  Still, his eyes were clear, his face was clean and smiling.  He was gesturing animatedly and pointing to his bike.  I soon learn he is telling Wes of his plans to convert his bike to a recumbent so he could take a tour like ours.  He is very fascinated by the trailers and asks Wes all sorts of questions.  The conversation starts to repeat itself and it is not clear whether this fellow actually has the wherewithal to do what he says, so we gently take our leave.  As we are riding away, a young interracial couple in full black leather come riding up on motorcycles.  We hear the cyclist tell them, “See them trailers…I’m getting me one like that and headin’ out!”

A few miles down the road, through a strip of tourist oriented businesses, we have traveled 180 degrees around the Ossipees.   The main route continues circling, but our route  turns to the east, over a small pass, heading to Maine.   The country is changing from upland hardwoods to boggy lowlands with ferns and pines.  The houses are becoming few and far between.

We stop to take pictures in front of the beat-up “Welcome to Maine” signs.  We have about 45 miles to go to Portland, and still about 10 miles to go today.   We are feeling pretty excited.  It’s hard to believe our traverse of the Northern Tier is nearly complete.

Almost immediately, we see that this part of Maine is in a very different economic state than anything we had seen in New Hampshire and Vermont.  Instead of big, well-maintained “add-on houses,” we now see bedraggled cabins or rusty, raggedy mobile homes surrounded by old pick-up trucks.  There are signs, some hand scrawled, offering firewood cutting, small engine repair, or “Maine-made” crafts.   Instead carefully tended gravel or paved driveways, there are muddy two-tracks leading to yards with falling down fences.  There are also chickens on the road with great regularity.

 
There are moments of great beauty in this landscape, however, especially alongside the Saco River.  Our minds, however, are focused on getting to Portland.  Even as we go through the little town of Cornish, with its rustic shops, outdoor cafes, and groups of weekenders pottering about, we don’t stop.  Our lodging is well outside of town, in a new-but-meant-to-look old complex.  It has a bar, restaurant, and butcher shop in the downstairs retail area, and is advertising for more renters.  It’s blinking external sign, at odds with its attempted colonial tavern design, says the motel is open, but the restaurant is only open on the weekends.

Our hostess is a young, beautiful Asian whom we can barely understand.  When she finds out that we are headed to Portland, she tells us we need to go to Kennebunkport and see President Bush—the first one—he is always there.  Make sure we don’t miss seeing the bridge over the bay, she says.   She is giving us more enthusiastic travel advice when we finally interrupt her and tell we are tired and need to get to our room.  She then apologizes several times.  We are to put our bikes in a covered awning behind the bar.  Our room is upstairs.  They will be serving until 8pm tonight and no, they do not have a breakfast in the morning.

Ok.  Putting the bikes under the awning proved quite difficult because of the chained picnic table also occupying the space. Both Wes and I end up with big bruises.  Upstairs, it is clear we are the only tenants in the motel.  The room is new and nice-ish. Like the rest of the building, it is built to look nice, but made with the cheapest materials and the shoddiest construction--the simulacrum of civility.

The restaurant/bar has a number of patrons.  Most are eating lobster, which is the special of the day.  It strikes with a blow that these are probably fresh caught lobsters.  Our minds and stomachs are still in the mountains, however, so we have stir-fry and sandwiches instead.  This was probably a mistake.

We try to go to bed early, but like kids waiting for Christmas day, we have a hard time sleeping and wake up every few hours to see if it is time to get up.  We are up before dawn and out the door just as the sun is beginning to peak over the hillside.  We are passing through numerous ups and down, with small farms and little cabins.  It is not quite as disheveled as the area near the border, but this is no high rent district, either.

The road turns south near the tourist area around Lake Sebago.  We are sure that this is a beauty spot, but nothing is going to deter us from getting to Portland as soon as possible.  We have gone about 15 miles; the sun is well up.  We need to get some breakfast. 

We find a tiny, “Mom’s diner” looking café, complete with gingham curtains, and pull into the parking lot.  Just as we are about to go into the door, a young man standing next to an old 3 speed bicycle, smoking a cigarette, accosts us.  Without warning, he launches into a big story about taking bicycle maintenance classes at his alternative high school.  Before long, we have learned that he was put out of his previous school, that he loved the teacher who taught him bike mechanics, that he thought it was a great thing for people like himself, who need to learn a skill, but that the whole program was shut down because of budget cuts.  He’s looking for a job now.  He hopes he can find something to do with bikes.  He really likes bikes, what kind are ours?  Have they worked good?  Do we need anything done?  This all goes by lickety-split, with barely a breath between sentences.  Stunned, we tell him our bikes are working fine, and wish him luck finding work with bikes.  Later, he comes into the restaurant, and unleashes another torrent at a fellow sitting at the counter.  The waitress and the cook exchange knowing glances.  The waitress then helps the young man find the door and tells him can come back later.

As we are eating, two 30 year old men enter the café.  They ask the whole diner, “Whose bikes are those?”  When they hear our answer, they sit in the booth next to us, and ask us questions throughout our meal.  While they are interested, they are also just a bit disrespectful, with “Why on earth would anyone want to ride a bicycle that far?”  and “Don’t you have something better to do?”  questions.  However, they wished us well as we left, and told us we still had 25 more miles to go.  We are surprised by this.  We have been pedaling fast.  Why aren’t these miles going down faster!  The young men beep and wave at us as they drive past us a few miles later.

Bit by bit, the landscape begins to take on unmistakable signs of suburbanization.  The two-lane road becomes a four lane and the traffic is becoming more noxious.  We stop in the town of Gorham, which was originally its own town, but has been swept up in the wave of suburbanization.  We are about 10 miles from the sea.  On some material I had picked up, I see a description for a bike route that will take us all the way to the coast.  The ride on the highway is not pleasant, so this seems like a good solution. 

We find the trail right away and are following a river trail, when all of a sudden, it goes into a small park and peters out.  We wander about a bit but can’t find it again.  We wander out to a major junction on the edge of a big industrial area.  We are trying to determine if one of these roads will get us to downtown and to the ocean, when we see a bicycle tourist riding up truck-clogged street towards us.  We flag him over.

When he comes over, we are surprised to see he is a tiny, beautiful youth.  His hair is light brown ringlets curling around his bike helmet.  He has enormous blue eyes ringed with long lashes.  He is just an inch or two taller than me and looks to be about 17 or 18 years old, with soft pink cheeks. Except for his well-used mountain bike shorts and dirty wind-breaker, he looks like an angel.  He is riding a mountain bike with an odd conglomeration of bags and a huge sleeping bag.  We find out that he has cycled all the way from Portland, Oregon, and that he left the day after us, July 4.  He has never heard of Adventure Cycling, but has been making his own way using Google maps. He has been camping a bit, but mostly couch surfing or staying with various relatives and acquaintances.  More surprising, he was now turning south, on his way to Florida.  He hoped to be there by December.  He had found Portland kind of inhospitable and was anxious to leave.  He could offer us no suggestions for a route downtown.  We watched this little spirit boy mount his bike, then ride off along the ridge, heading to southern parts unknown.

We are lucky enough to find good ol’ Highway 25 again, and follow it past suburban malls, across freeways, and through an increasingly dense and packed environment.  As we go along, Wes is telling an outrageous story about how the mayor will be meeting us to give us the keys to the city…for a rather large fee, of course.  Oh, and that marching band playing the victory march at your arrival, that’s an additional $6000.   If you could just leave the fee with the bursar, I have another pressing obligation…

At one point, we are faced with a Y junction, east or west?  We would have preferred south, but that was not an option.  The east route runs us past institutional buildings and ends at Portland’s Back Bay.  Clearly, we had reached some portion of the ocean, the smell alone would have told us that.   However, the tide was out and gulls, sandpipers, and curlews were hunting in the sodden mud. 

The main portion of downtown was to our right.   We cross another freeway and have to go up to go downtown and down to the sea.   Our path takes us by a Salvation Army service center.   There are scores of homeless people hanging around, all ages, all genders, all colors.  There are those in hot conversation with others.  Some look like they are embarrassed to be seen in this crowd, some are there in body, their minds elsewhere.  No one says a words as we pant up the hill, in hot pursuit of a little piece of open ocean.

We find our way to Commercial Street.  Before us are a series of busy piers.  Some are serving the tourist trade (Whale watching, scenic tours); others, for commercial fisherman.  A few look like private mooring for pleasure craft.  Beyond these piers, we can see a glimpse of water.  We want to get there. 

The first one we traverse stops us with a locked gate.  The next one leads to a waterside condominium with private boat slips.  Although there are numerous signs saying, NO TRESPASSING, we will not deterred at this point.  We come to the edge.  There will be no ceremonial dipping our front wheel in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  It is 8 feet below the edge.  It is not open ocean, either.  We can see standing oil tanks across the bay.  None of it matters.  We have made it.  Even when two men exit the condominium and give the fish eye to the two rasty-looking bicyclists on their dock, we will not be deterred from taking pictures and sending a celebratory text.   

We made it!  It is hard to believe that we have reached the end of our bicycle journey.  Our travels are not done, far from it.  We will visit with my brother and his wife in “downeast Maine.”  We still have to get back to our cabin, then  back to Detroit, before this journey is truly complete.  But for today, for right now, we can celebrate.  We can relax.  We can begin to begin to understand all the changes this journey has wrought.  But first, we’ll pause, and relent, and have at least one day where there’s no goal to be met, no task to be done.  Aaaaah.

 

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Posted from Centennial, Wyoming

 

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.