Milford, PA 10/4/2011

Up and down the hall for coffee and whatever which today consisted of coffee, tiny donuts, bagels, cream cheese. We chatted with fellow guests, including Lucias and his brother in law from Louisville, KY.  Both are retired, Tom, the brother in law, an MD and Lucias a teacher in a Catholic school .  He noted that years ago he and his spouse were both teaching in Catholic Schools and realized they had no retirement so he bought a Sylvan Learning Center which did so well he bought 4 more  and then sold them when he stopped teaching and retired.  They walked across the foot bridge we rode across the Hudson yesterday and they also visited  FDR's home in Hyde Park.  They raved about the guides at Hyde Park as well as the Vanderbilt home.  Today they were going to visit West Point (about 90 minutes by car from here).  Lucias's wife rides bikes in Louisville, Ky with a regular group called the Buttermilks, but we won't go into that here (his comment) and the Buttermilks try to include at least one male on their rides in case some one has a flat.. We had a cup of coffee and took a bagel and cream cheese for later and headed into New Paltz for some breakfast.  We stopped at the organic bakery ran by Seth who moved his family up from Long Island a few years ago to get away from big city life under the flight paths of a couple of major airports. He very generously split one order of oatmeal into two which appeared to be the size of two orders.  Organic oatmeal, with strawberries, bananas, raisins, with organic milk and a cup of coffee, organic freetrade etc.  Seth, a musician and has a friend in Sebastopol whom he has visited so he is familiar with Santa Rosa, Healdsburg etc.

On the road in the light rain  which cleared up after about an hour or so. We had a few good hills as we left the Walkill River valley and entered the Neversink River valley. There has been lots of rain in this area during the whole month of September and all of the little streams are running a lot of water.  We saw evidence of major flooding in the Neversink River channel and yet another bridge was closed to traffic, but we were able to go over it.

We stopped for an early lunch and had a chicken Parmesan panini and substituted french onion soup for the offered fries.  Sandwich was huge and we ate half and took the rest with us for later.  The soup was just the thing to warm us up after the cool rain riding.

We rolled into New Jersey, (no welcoming sign to take our photo by) and then over the bridge into Pennsylvania to the Meyer Motel in Milford.  A nice, busy little town.  The Motel is very nice and consists of 19 units, some single cabins, some, like ours, containing two units.  We showered and ate our left over sandwiches and then walked up the street to a fish place and had some crab strips and a gin and tonic and conversation with John, a local gentleman who was trained as an attorney.  He used to do a lot of ice climbing until he was hit by a car in a cross walk and spent a month or so in the hospital.  We discussed our ride, our route, maps (John loves maps, Rudy said, sounds familiar and pointed at me).  Conversation ran to topography, local beers, and several minutes about the civil war.  John found the Gettysburg battlefield quite moving and "haunted".

Back to the motel,  I tried to write the blog from the room but signal was to weak so I am in the office.  Other guests include deer hunters who have been here for a few days.  They are bow hunters and were successful hunting  in New Jersey (across the Delaware River from Milford).  The local deer are white tail deer, much bigger than the coastal deer we have in Sonoma County.  The hunters made a point of telling Sharon, our inn keeper that it was not they who had  dressed the deer behind the motel and it was another guest of the motel.

I had a nice chat with Sharon our inn keeper and gave her our blog name.  She had friends who are planing a long bike ride.  It is late and I am sure Rudy is asleep by now.

61 miles today.  And the forecast is for mild sunny days the rest of our trip!