An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure! Day One!
Date: June 23, 2014
Departure Location: 34 Magazine Street, Cambridge MA
Arrival Location: 391 Washington Street, Buffalo NY
Total Miles: 469
Total travel time: 10:28
Total miles/total travel time: 44.6 mph
Number of States: 2 (Massachusetts, New York)
Number of Watersheds: 7 (Charles River, Merrimack River, Blackstone River, Connecticut River, Housatonic River, Hudson River, St. Lawrence River)
Stops: 4 (Stockbridge MA (gas), Canastota NY (gas), Scottsville NY (gas), Clarence NY)
Weather: Sunny AM, Cloudy PM, No Rain
Temperature: 7:00 AM (Cambridge MA) 60 deg F, 12:00 Noon (Herkimer NY) 75 deg F,
7:00 PM (Buffalo NY) 85 deg F
Lodging: Lafayette Hotel, Buffalo New York
Cambridge to Stockbridge
…the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston… ten miles behind me and ten thousand miles to go… deep greens and blues are the colors I choose, won’t you let me go down in my dreams…
James Taylor, Sweet Baby James
We are late. The sun is already well up when we pass the tollbooth at Brighton heading west on our grand motorcycle adventure. The goal today is merely miles. No sightseeing, no insights, no nothing. We have miles to go before we sleep, 400 miles to be exact. We have to make 450 miles today to be in St Louis MO by June 25. How has this supposedly existential, spontaneous trip turned into a schedule?
I know how, but I will not share it, it is too depressing.
The ride out I-90 in Massachusetts, well… we have done this many times… even on the motorcycle. There is nothing to do except grind it out. As always, I am fascinated and haunted by water, so I concentrate on the rivers and the watersheds. We start in the Charles River watershed, which takes us out through Lincoln MA. By the time we have crossed into Concord, MA… we have entered the Merrimack River watershed, well represented by the Sudbury River, draining Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Several miles later, we cross through Winchendon and enter the Blackstone River Watershed. For those of you not familiar, Winchendon is the “rocking chair capital of the world”… which I am sure is hyperbole… but is seems to fit into the general Fitchburg, Westminster, Gardner environment.
It is a beautiful crisp, cool summer morning. the sky is deep blue and the recent rains have made the foliage especially green. At Auburn, MA we cross into the Connecticut River valley; we start to enter the world of the big rivers. We cross the highest elevation in Becket, MA at 1734 feet above mean sea level. This is the boundary of the Housatonic watershed and soon we are approaching Stockbridge, our designated breakfast destination. Sadly, Alice’s Restaurant has long been closed, but just for nostalgia sake, we go look at it any way. AHA! It is now Theresa’s Cafe (formerly Alice’s, on Alice Avenue), still “just around the back… just a half a mile from the railroad track”, but sadly, no breakfast… so we settle on at the Main Street Cafe for some eggs, hash and toast.
The former Alice’s Restaurant, now Theresa’s restaurant on Alice Avenue. It is still “around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track.”
Stockbridge to Rome NY
Stockbridge leads to West Stockbridge which is the border of New York.. We gas up the bike and head into the Hudson River valley, crossing into the Hudson River Valley at Canaan NY. There is a spectacular trestle bridge that carries I-90 over the Hudson River… just to the south there is a similar railroad bridge. I would like to stare, with my jaw dropped and my countenance agape…. but I have to drive the motorcycle.
We continue along I-90 and it is boring, boring, BORING. But, hey, we have miles to log, no time to waste. I would like to go to Saratoga Springs, to Cooperstown for the hall of fame, take any Erie Canal Cruise, stop and have a cocktail… but no, we have to keep going.
After Schenectady, I-90 parallels the Mohawk River which is part of the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal rises 420 in elevation above sea level (in Troy NY) to the highest elevation in Rome NY. We follow the river for 92 miles to Rome (in a prior incarnation, I used to do a fair amount of work for the USAF in Rome: The Rome Air Development Center)
The river is interesting to look at, with dams and locks every few miles. There is not much traffic, so I can sneak some peeks. Each dam seems to drop about four feet and there are complicated trestles above the dams where they can raise and lower the dams to control the flow. The locks look to be about 15 or 20 feet wide and about 100 feet long. No so big, but I guess the barge size was limited by what the horse could drag using the tow paths. Each lock, at least on this section of the river, are numbered and we can count them out loud (there’s number 13!, there’s number 14!) to each other to help pass the time.
Rome to Buffalo
After Rome, things get a little more boring, but what do you expect when you are trying to MAKE SOME MILES TODAY. We play hide and seek with the canals and with some rivers, our elevation gets lower and lower and then starts to rise again as we cross from the St Lawrence watershed, Lake Ontario division, to the St Lawrence watershed Lake Eire division. Lake Erie is 328 feet higher than Lake Ontario, thank you Niagara Falls!
We finally arrive at Buffalo and it has been a long day. Buffalo looks like a city that has been subjected to a series of disconnected, random, urban renewal projects. The streets are a tangled jungle and difficult to navigate on our fully loaded motorcycle. An inmate shouts to us, repeatedly, from his cell at the county jail while we are waiting at a traffic light. It was amusing and disturbing at the same time.
After a false start or two we settle on the Lafayette Hotel, which bills itself as as being designed by the first professional woman architect in America, Louise Bethune. The huge building has been redeveloped and is now mixed use (shopping, apartments, offices). There are only 57 hotel rooms (so now it is a boutique hotel, I guess). It was originally built in 1901 for the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, which seems to have been kind of a worlds fair). Apparently Theodore Roosevelt was there, as there are photos of him everywhere. Everything has a Pan American Exposition theme, the bars, the restaurant, the rooms.
We briefly consider a side trip to Niagara falls, but it is 50 miles round trip. Cocktails await us.
The Lafayette Hotel, postcard circa 1904 (public domain)
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