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This one shall go down as the weirdest bike ride in our career as cycletourists |
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To begin with, I must say that Route One is definitely NOT a bicycle friendly stretch of road except for some very limited areas which for some reason are low flow roads, and even better, they are scenic! In fact on that trip we really did not relax all that much until we were well into our return loop.
Our experience began in the quiet beachside area of Stratford, Connecticut, known as Lordship. Our destination was, as usual, somewhat fuzzy and the only sure thing was that we would return to Lordship on day when the tide was high in mid-afternoon. Not only was our itinerary a tad flakey, we had no set route with which to follow our pre-set flakey periple. We travel like that.....
To be a bit more to the point, we envisaged Cape Cod, Hyannisport and possibly P'town. As usual it did not materialize!
| Rocky Pt. Ct. | Onset, Mass. | The Cape |
| Hurricane Bob | Orient, Long Island | To P.J. |
| High Tide |
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"Hey..Wait for me!" |  |
This is a avant-goût of our trip. As we were going up a thing called Fort Point Hill around Noank, this Volks Beetle pulled off at the top of the hill and waited for us. There was also another couple biking just ahead of us. The driver invited us to spend the night at her place as she had biked across the States and had a soft spot for cycletourers......So we camped out in her yard!
As all Connecticut State Parks that we have visited, this one was just as nice as the others. It also had the same funky rules and regulations as the others, probably dreamt up by some government worker who thought that the weirder the idea, the better the chances of convincing the boss of the importance of his or her presence on the pay roll!.
We set up and had our "dinner"
and then I went to wash the dishes and the conversation went like this:
"Sir, you are not allowed to wash your dishes directly in the sink, you
need a dishpan"
"Ok, but my problem is that I am on a bicycle and the nearest thing I have
to a dishpan is a 6" pot in a Boy Scout mess kit.".
"I'm really sorry sir, but you cannot use the sink without a dishpan"
Went there after dark and did the dishes!
Then we set up a clothes line from a tree to the picnic table:
"Sir", said the same police
academy washout, "You are not allowed to put up clotheslines here."
"Why?"
"Because people put nails if the trees and they damage them."
"Are Connecticut people ignorant of tying knots?"
A glacial stare....and he was gone. I tied a bike to the tree, ran a cord from
the bike to the picnic table.....and we went to sleep.
Well you can bet what you are sitting on
that the next morning we were the first ones out of there!
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| Back Home to The Trip |
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As we traveled along Rhode Island, we wanted to get to Newport. Now there is this big monstrous hill which goes down to a toll bridge, Jamestown mebbe. We pulled up and the attendant told us that bikes were not allowed on the bridge. That would have been a very nice gesture of the Tourist Office to have put up a sign on top of the hill at the fork indicating that we were not allowed. However, no big deal, I flagged down a pickup, offered to pay his toll and he left us at Middletown. |
As we came through Rhode Island and got nearer to the Cape, we ran into traffic at Onset. In fact we were both hauling 40 - 50 lbs. of baggage on our bikes, and we stayed on the side of the road and passed hundreds of cars heading to the Cape. This flashed in my mind. If HERE it is like that, what must it be around the bridge and Route 6? We stopped for lunch and a swim at Onset. Felt good. Even got bit by a crab.
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| Back Home to The Trip |
Ah yes, I remember the adventure very well. The ride along the canal was beautiful and relaxing. Then we got onto the bridge and I hadn't noticed the sidewalk on the opposite side and that bridge is not wide, and we were sort of holding up traffic until a good Samaritan indicated the sidewolk to us, stopped and blocked traffic so that we could cross over safely.
We finally found a campground as soon as we came onto the Cape. It was a nice site, we built a fire and life was being good to us.
The next day we undertook Route 6, it was a Sunday....it was miserable! Visited Hyannisport, bummed around, found a beach and returned to the campground, where over the evening fire decided to leave the Cape to the tourists and their vehicules ........we had had enough!
On the road again, across the other bridge and heading out for Rhode Island.
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| Back Home to the Trip |
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Rhode Island is cool! There is so much there, it is like ten pounds of enjoyment in a five pound bag....A small place with a big load. Their chowdah, the clear kind is one of a kind. Why is it clear? Probably because the broth is made of salted tears of happiness, it is a BAM! Napatree Point is for lovers; Burlingame is for family; Charleston is for those who search out a tad of the unusual and Rt. 1 is for tourists. |
After leaving the Cape we angled down to Rhode Island, and going through Providence, picking up Rt. 1 to finally wind up in Pt. Jude.
Now down there is the Fisherman's Memorial Campground, in which you need to reserve ten years in advance, accompanied by letter from your mom and your senator.....it is a beautiful campground. Somehow we managed to into there as someone had just cancelled....wow!
So we set up and after the meal chores and all I noticed that there was a large amount of dew on the bikes and the tent. We had been on the road for some time now and had heard no weather report, and I should have known better, as I was raised in southern New England. Tossing it off lightly we went to sleep.
The next morning we went down to the ferry landing to go over to Block Island. The skies were a menacing steely grey, the winds were picking up and I was a bit antsy. We started out on the Island, the winds were increasing and we kept on going, completely ignorant of what was left of Hurricane Bob. Somewhere out in the boonies, I turned around after a pretty fair gust of wind to see that I had lost Huguette..she was nowhere to be seen. And I thought that, after all these years of threatening to leave me, she sure picked a heck of a time to do it. And she was the one with the credit card too. A sound, akin to draging your nails across a blackboard came to my ears, and I searched out the source, which turned out to be Huguette upside down under her bike in a drainage ditch! That last gust had caught her broadside and capsized her. It was about now that we decided to head back to the ferry landing, and a good thing it was too, as the last ferry was just preparing to leave, as the weather was just too heavy to cross over anymore that day.
Remember Murphy's Law? Halfway into Fisher's Island Sound the boat which had been turned every which way but keel up, stopped. Stopped!. Now if you want to hear a deathly silence, try the silence of a ship that is shutting down. A silent ship had better be tied to a pier or in drydock otherwise, you got problems. Then another noise..aha, they dropped the hook. Well, at least we know we won't be piling up on those breakers outside anytime soon. That triangle out there has waters that can get pretty darned snotty at times, believe me. I knew the area from past years of fishing there when my father mated aboard the Mijoy out of Waterford, Ct. The captain told us that they were dealing with mechanical problems and shortly a tug would come and tow us. I could not let a great chance like this slip by, so I took a walk and came back to my wife's side and told her a bit louder than normal that the tug would be bringing us to Providence instead of New London as I heard the skipper calling ashore to the tug office. Naturally the people around me gobbled up this tidbit and mulled over it as best they could as about 50% were greener than seaweed by then and their destination was certainly not Providence!
The story does not end there. We made New London and the last boat out for Orient Long Island was waiting for us, much to my relief and my wife's despair, for I had no intention of putting up a tent on a ferry landing in the midst of a storm.
Green and grumpy and still smarting from getting blown overboard into a ditch on Block Island, my wife boarded the third ferry of the day. She let me know that my life might just end on this boat if I so much as made a peep.
Finally we disembarked at Orient Point and biked, in the dark to a place I knew about a quarter mile down the road, where we put up the tent under a tree. It was an apple tree. You never put up a tent under an apple tree as on the floor of the said tent will be placed sleeping bags which will be resting upon at least three zig trillion windfalls.
We had a very quiet breakfast.
We were also in a State Park, and the local park constable hastened to inform us that we were not allowed to camp here, to which I very politely told him that we were law abiding and would pack up and leave shortly.
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| Back Home to the Trip |
Now my maternal ancestors settled Oysterponds, or as we know it today, Orient, Long Island. Sadly all my direct family have departed, however I did get to my aunt's home only to find her absent. We biked around, found my family's homestead, The Village House and several other landmarks that the forefathers left for me to see. Orient reminds me still yet today of Lordship. A place where as a kid, when you punched another kid in the nose at school, by the time you got home, your mom knew about it.
Orient is special to me.
| Mary Isabel Thompson | 
My Great-Grandparents |
Charles Sumner Vail |
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| Back Home to the Trip |
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Samuel Gilson Vail acquired the Village House back around 1844 I believe. His son, Charles Sumner took it over after Samuel's death. My grandfather, Everett Vail was born there and wound up in Stratford, Ct. around the turn of the XXth century. The family owned a schooner, the Black Eagle and earned their living as fishermen. |
Biking on Long Island from Port Jeffereson out to the eastern tips of the two forks is one of the best kept secrets around. About anything you could want from lottery tickets to peach orchards, to swimming in the ocean or Long Island Sound to hanging out in the Hamptons to spending a lazy day in Sag Harbor....it is the neatest of the neatest.
Several places come to mind. A small roadside restaurant near Amagansett where we ate blackfish cakes; a Greek restaurant in East Marion where we lunched outside; Greenport, Sag Harbor, East Hampton....bumming around and hanging out. An empty beach near a golf course and very limited parking....we have been there a few times and spent hours alone out there. The two Points, Montauk and Orient. So much and so well hid. We like that.
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Here is an example of the old saying about a picture is worth a thousand words. As you can see her bike is under repair while she dozes off in the sun on the warm wall of the Causeway between Orient and East Marion. |
We finally did make P.J. Yes, I know we did not do it in a straight line. You want straight lines, you go on Interstates. We visited all over. We slept in a potato field, we jumped into the Sound, we ate peaches the size of beach balls, we purchased a muskmellon of a dimension that we had never ever thought possible......and hauled that thing to the ferry landing. Hargraves Vineyards was tested for its goodwines. And finally that long hill down into Port Jefferson which brought us directly to the ferry to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Once aboard, we settled on the sun deck and operated on that muskmellon. This is our fourth ferry and the first dry one too.
Funny how things work out...this weird trip and all and what was the cherry on the trip cake? We hit the Beach at 2:00 p.m., as the tide was just about high.
Thank you all for reading me.
| He-y-y-y-y.....Huguette! |
.........Bye-Bye
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