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longest way through the Catskills
Thursday, July 4 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
A young woman named Clara (the daughter of our friend Lisa P) arrived this morning to take on house-and-dog-sitting duties while Gretchen and I would be away in Rochester and the Adirondacks for the very long July 4th weekend. Gretchen had mapped out an unusual route to Syracuse that would take us west through the Catskills mostly via Route 28 (which we normally only take as far was as Route 375 on our way to Woodstock) and then north up I-81, an interstate I mostly know for its function as a major north-south highway in the Shenandoah Valley of Virgina. The Catskills are big when you drive through the center of them from east to west, and about half the driving we did all day seemed to take place in them. Along the way, we passed such hamlets and villages as Margaretville, Andes, Delhi, and Walton, each a bit more remote than the one before, with the kind of people waddling along the streets David Lynch would want to cast in one of his films. We'd pass a weird-looking business, like a shirt shop in an agricultural area and start talking about it in Appalachian accents (since we don't really know what hillbillies sound like in the remote Catskills). At some point we passed a lemonade stand operating in someone's front yard by a couple kids, and I said that it probably had urine in it, "...because 'Milk, milk, lemonade; around the corner chocolate's made!'" Then, speaking in the voice of one of the young entrepreneurs, I added, "We also have fudge!" At that we burst into intense laughter, partly at the fact that we're in our 50s and can still innovate in the narrow genre of poo-poo-pee-pee jokes.
Once we got on I-81 near Cortland, the landscape had the regular long ridges associated with the Fingerlakes, which is rather different from the chaotic lumpyness of the Catskills. Our Chevy Bolt was getting great mileage, and when we got to ever-ugly city of Syracuse, we still had 58 miles of range left in the battery. At that point we parked at a ChargePoint Level II charger and walked a couple blocks to our lunch destination: Strong Hearts' Café, a great place to get not-especially-healthy vegan comfort food like mac & cheese, chick'n sandwiches, and reubens. I ordered a chick'n schwarma gyro with fries and an oat milk cappuccino and Gretchen ordered some other kind of fried chick'n sandwich. Then we played Spelling Bee on our phones (these days I only use the version I created). While we were consolidating our respective word lists verbally (since Gretchen refuses to play my version), a cyclist nearby asked if we were discussing Spelling Bee. So then he talked about how he plays and what he thought getting to genius entails. He thought it had something to do with the difficulty of the words, but (since I am an now an expert on how Spelling Bee works) I assured him that all that is required is that one get 70% of the total points of the game (something I figured out years ago).
About 40 miles west of Syracuse, we needed to recharge, so Gretchen navigated us to a shopping center of outlet stores in Waterloo. When we arrived at the ElectrifyAmerica charging area, all the working chargers were occupied, though there was of course one charger that wasn't working. (For some reason all the chargers have two charging cables on them, but only one of them works at a time, something that is never stated anywhere.) One of the cars being charged was a Tesla, a make I'd never seen charging at an Electrify America before. (I'd assumed their DC charging hardware was incompatible.) One woman was sitting in her car as it charged past 85% and another car's battery completely filled while we stood there. Then some granny showed up in her electric car with no idea how to use a fast charger or much of a sense of the etiquette about who gets to charge next when people have been waiting. But then it turned out that she still had over 100 miles of range in her car; she met the profile of an old person with heightened anxiety, in this case range anxiety. When the guy came to get his totally-charged car out of the way and it was clear we would be charging next, she drove off to points unknown.
While waiting for our car to charge, we ducked into a J Crew Outlet mostly for the air conditioning. But then Gretchen saw some shorts she liked and then I remembered that I also needed shorts (which I, like an old man, refer to as "short pants," to Gretchen's great amusement). So we ended up buying not just shorts but also some button-up short-sleeve shirts for me. Usually Electrify America charging stations are located next to businesses we have no interest in, but the Waterloo one is an exception. That said, that outlet plaza (they refer to it as a "mall") has its creepy aspects, as we were soon to discover.
Since J Crew didn't have a bathroom they would allow Gretchen to use, we walked over to the "food court," an indoor area with the depressing ambiance of a Greyhound station or perhaps a third world airport. There were some games one could pay to play and one of the two places to eat was called "Steak and Potato," I kid you not. Considering how far west we were in New York, I was surprised by how many brown people I was seeing. And did they want steak and potato?
I wanted a coffee, so we went into a place called Sam's Coffee Lounge, which was really just a store full of gaudy colorful crap. Somehow it took forever for the guy in front of me to get served, but I waited anyway (since the car was charging). And when it came time to order (all I wanted was an ice coffee), the guy behind the counter (he was from India originally) kept trying to upsell me on things like a bag of coffee beans or one of the ugly coffee mugs Gretchen was showing me in horror. I stuck to my guns and just got the ice coffee, which tasted a little like an old cigar for some reason.
About 45 minutes later we were parking in front of Maryann's house in Rochester. Our friends Jasmin and Moore were also there, and it was time for a vegan barbecue in Maryann's backyard. Moore did most of the work: shucking corn and barbecuing Beyond Beef patties, ears of corn, and some sort of vegan hot dog while Maryann, Gretchen, and I sipped some kind of white wine. There was a robin nesting over the back door that Maryann didn't want to disturb, so we tried to talk quietly (something Gretchen has great trouble doing when she gets excited). It was so hot that the robin wasn't really incubating her eggs. She was just kind of standing over them, watching us nervously.
We ended up dining in Maryann's dining room. A large part of the conversation focused on Gretchen's idea of possibly buying a rental house in Rochester to better diversify our real estate portfolio. She talked about something she'd heard on Fresh Air about how, once climate change kicks in, everyone will want to move to places near the Great Lakes, where weather extremes will be tempered by all that nearby water.
Jasmin and Moore headed off at around 8:00pm because it was nearing Jasmin's bed time. So Gretchen and Maryann sat around the dining room table talking about various things while I cleaned up and then retreated to the room we sleep in upstairs.
Meanwhile the outdoor sounded like a drum circle where only arrhythmic white people were banging away on bongos. That's how the ad hoc fireworks displays sounded in the distance (as Maryann's neighborhood is not the kind where people fascinated by fireworks tend to live).
Some of the things for sale in Sam's Coffee Lounge at the Outlet Mall in Waterloo.
Click to enlarge.
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