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The Amazing Race

We visited the White Mountains of New Hampshire where son Leo, along with 600 other cyclists, bicycled the seven or eight miles up Mt. Washington. It took him about an hour and fifteen minutes (maybe sixteen minutes). He did very well and blew away his previous best time. This was his seventh time up the mountain and our first. One person went up on a unicycle. It took him about two hours of peddling, I think. Are you reading this grandson Stephen? No, we didn't bicycle, we drove Leo's Fourunner up. You can't bicycle down so you have to have a way down before they let you go up. We found another rider to bring down so that there was no fee for our drive up.The way it worked was that if you didn't have a ticket for any rider, you didn't drive up. If you had a ticket for one cyclist, you could drive up, but had to pay the full fee. If you had two or more tickets, you got to drive for free. That's all because of the very limited parking at the top.

The first picture shows Leo near the summit. The fellow with Leo in the second picture is Dr. Kevin from Vermont, the fellow to whom we gave a ride down.

The weather on Mt. Washington, which is known to have some of the worst on earth and boasts the strongest wind gust ever recorded on earth at 231 miles an hour, was really quite pleasant while we were there. Note the chains over the roof of the building at the finish line. The announcer even commented on the remarkable lack of wind. There were some clouds that rolled in once in a while totally obscuring the buildings and just about everything else. The famous cog railway comes up there too, but we didn't ride it. After the race everyone had a great big turkey dinner in a large tent set up at the base of the mountain.

I'm a little out of chronological order here as, on our way to New Hampshire, we stayed over night at nephew Steve's vacation home on North Hero Island in Vermont. We had a good time there.

The White Mountains are really quite rugged and if you are the adventurous type, a great place to hike or rock climb. We hiked, played in some water falls and streams (the water was cold), but we didn't rock climb like the dude in the middle of the next picture on the rock wall. We were standing there looking at the people climbing the rock wall (Cathedral Ledge) and Anne said that it looked like part of the wall was overhanging. A couple next to us said, "No, it doesn't overhang on that side. We just climbed it this morning. We climbed the other side the other day."

While in North Conway we visited a toy train museum.

We left New Hampshire on Monday morning and headed to the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake.

 Old Forge was our next stop and on Tuesday morning we helped to deliver the mail. Actually, we just rode in the mail boat as two friendly fellows delivered mail from Old Forge Pond through First, Second, Third and Fourth Lakes in the Fulton Chain. I immediately fell in love and wanted to buy a house there, or some land, but then I found out the property costs about $3,000 to $4,000 a foot along the lakes. Oh well. The red roofed garage type building was President Benjamin Harrison's boat house. New people own it now, him being dead and all. I guess a modern president would have a more imposing boat house. The bird on the water is a loon.

It took three hours to deliver the mail and the trip was very enjoyable. After that we drove the little less than three and a half hours to get home. It seemed like a long ride from New Hampshire, but there is no straight road east to west. You have to go around all those mountains which means going north then south to get west, sort of like tacking a boat. We enjoyed our trip. We got to spend a little time with nephew Steve and his kids, niece Linda, her son, Matt, also Anne's brother Art and wife Marian. We got to spend more time with Leo, Kristen and Tyler and participate, as road crew, in the Mount Washington Auto Road Bike Climb which was truly awesome. I don't know how these people do it. I salute them all. It really was an amazing race. I promised I would try to get in shape for the race next year. I didn't say I would do the race, just try to get in shape for it. We don't have mountains quite like New Hampshire where we live, but we do have plenty of hiking trails, lakes, waterfalls and streams, so we can enjoy these things without the long ride. Now I have to go and somehow get in shape. I am inspired.