I started Day #4 with my buddy Kelly driving me to the top of three big mountains around Cherry Valley and then I did a few more scary downhill screamer rides on my bicycle back into town. Each ride only took a few short minutes, but it felt like I was riding a wild cheetah. Now, I will admit that repeatedly careening down a mountain on a bicycle is worthy of a Darwin Award nomination, but at the age of sixty-five, I sometimes feel compelled to pretend that I am young and bulletproof again. And, trust me, I have rarely in my life felt so free and ALIVE as I did when flying down a steep mountain in upstate New York on two narrow wheels with the late summer sun on my back and the smell of flowers blowing in the wind.
In between one of the rides Kelly took me to a scenic overlook where he claimed you could see the Green Mountains up in Vermont. There were too many clouds to see much of anything other than The Tepee, a historic roadside attraction that was built in 1954 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It consists of a wood-frame tepee wrapped in galvanized steel. It measures 50 feet tall and 42 feet in diameter. It has four levels. And attached to the tepee is a goofy gift shop and food stand.
You know, I get it that upstate New York still has a vibrant Indian culture worthy of respect, and the Five Nations are the real deal, not casino tribes, but celebrating Indian culture with Chinese junk inside a painted steel tepee really turned me off, so I couldn’t bring myself to even set foot in the place. Having worked for fifteen years in the American Southwest, I had been there and done that — the Jackrabbit Trading Post, The Thing, and the Wigwam Motel — and I can tell you that some locally made crafts and jellies can’t make bullshit taste any sweeter.
The highlight of the morning was hitting a speed of 46.6 miles an hour on the biggest hill yet of the trip, and when I came zipping into town the electric speed sign flashed “SLOW DOWN” because I was going 38 mph in a 25 mph zone. To be speeding on a bike is a unique experience indeed. Luckily there were no police to pull me over because Cherry Valley doesn’t have any law enforcement.
After a few death-defying bicycle burn runs it was time to hit the links with Kelly and his younger brother Bruce, who is retired and lives with his family about two hours away up in Saratoga, New York. I hadn’t seen Bruce since 1972, right after I got out of the Navy, when we all spent a winter painting houses in Annapolis, trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do with our lives. And as always happens with old and dear friends, the forty-seven years apart seemed like a mere instant and we picked right up where we had left off.
I played an amazing round of golf with the Flanagan Brothers at the Ostego Golf Course on a hot sunny day. Built in 1894, Ostego is one of the oldest golf courses in America. It’s an authentic Scottish links course (mostly 350-yard par 4’s) on the edge of a picturesque lake and it rang all the bells. https://www.otsegogolfclub.com/
We pretty much had the whole course to ourselves and when we finished chasing our balls around the course, we headed for the back patio overlooking the lake and partied until dark. I can think of no place on earth I would have rather been. Old friends. Great views. Good beer. Golden oldies on the club’s satellite radio. The smell of summer’s end, distant rain, and freshly-cut grass. It was paradise in a nutshell. And I will treasure those dreamy hours the rest of my life.
Last day in Cherry Valley
We started the day with my usual breakfast burrito @ the Coyote Cafe. Kelly was sporting his now historic Nixon for President campaign button and telling any and all who stopped at our table, “Tricky Dick was a real Republican.”
I bagged four more downhill bike runs — average speed was 42 mph — which brought my five day total to 25 miles of balls-to-the-wall mountain top burn runs. Special thanks goes out to my old friend Kelly who faithfully shuttled me to the top of the best peaks on the north end of the Appalachian Mountains, each one overlooking the enchanting green farmlands of the Mohawk Valley, so I could try gallantly to kill myself.
On the way to the last ride we stopped at a large farm to check out about fifty historic tractors that were lined up in an old field after the annual Tractor Parade that had taken place the previous day. Some of the old beasts were for sale and even though they looked like it would take a miracle to get most of them even running, they all were going for at least $2,000.
My final bicycle zoom run brought me into Cooperstown where we stopped for a bathroom break at the very elegant old public Village Hall Library, followed by one final quick spin around the Baseball Hall of Fame where, as I mentioned before, they have a historic scoreboard out in front with the current team standings. I don’t really follow baseball that much anymore, so I was genuinely shocked to see that the Baltimore Orioles were 45 games out of first place. How is that even possible?
Then we drove along Otsego Lake, searching for what turned out to be a dried up waterfall. Hard to believe given all the rain the valley receives.
So, we cruised some back roads lined with tidy Amish farms consisting of large farm houses with no electricity, well-tended fields and barns, and horse-drawn buggies parked out front like the family cars. And each farm seemed to have it’s own private pond or small lake.
Kelly’s had decided that his mission was to find me a nice waterfall, so we cruised over to the sleepy village of Van Hornesville where a nature trail, starting in the parking lot of the loveliest public school I have ever seen, led us to a series of plunge-pool waterfalls running through a deep wooded canyon. The school was a gift from Owen D. Young, a successful local businessman who founded the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
Kelly & I ended our last day together with yet another stellar round of golf at the old Otsego Golf Course. It was the Monday league day and after we finished our glorious late afternoon walk around the links, we all got hammered with Jeffry Starring, the club manager, affectionately known as “The Sheriff”’, on the back patio, drinking his favorite whiskey — Rogue Dead Guy. The sweetest blend I ever tasted.
As the sun set over the lake we all started singing the Eagles song “Hotel California” and then it all got a bit hazy. But I’m pretty sure that fun was had by one and all.
