MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-17-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     We were going to stay home this Labor Day weekend, but the more we stayed home, the more work we found that needed to be done around the house, and doing it would have been in direct defiance of the spirit of Labor Day. So instead we pulled together a last minute overnight trip to historic Poughkeepsie, New York, where we could ride our bicycles across the beautiful Walkway Over the Hudson on a glorious holiday Sunday.

     Gidget, the cutest dog in the land, was SO excited that she was going on the trip that she was beside herself and I had to make twice as much room in the car. She launched herself into the back seat at a g-force of about two and almost vaulted out the window on the other side. Once I turned the ignition key, she went immediately into REM sleep and I never heard from her again until we arrived at the hotel. A dog's life is an emotional roller coaster. But once there Gidget attracts children like butterflies, and luckily she has the perfect disposition for it. I've been to dog-friendly hotels that didn't have hotel-friendly dogs.

     The Walkway over the Hudson is about a mile and a third from Poughkeepsie to the town of Highland, 212 feet over the river. It began life as a railroad trestle, put into service in 1889 for trains hauling goods from Hartford to New York markets across the Hudson River. Although at its peak and during World War II the bridge was a major industrial passage, the need for goods to go from Hartford to Maybrook waned, or maybe the goods weren't good enough, and the bridge was decommissioned after a fire in 1974. The Walkway reopened as a state park in 2009, the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson's trip up the river. I don't know how goods get across the Hudson these days, but nobody asked me to bring anything either direction.

     We stopped for a selfie, which I always take because I have the longest arms, and my right hand hasn't been seen in a photograph since 2006. We passed a guy on a recumbent bike, that goofy-looking contraption you pedal from a prone position, enjoying all the sights you can see while looking straight up. It seems better suited to changing the oil in your car than for going on a leisurely ride, but who am I to say, other than myself. Imagine the lovely views he had of the majestic Hudson River, or at least of the bottoms of the chins of people who had lovely views of it.

     On the Ulster County side you can bicycle all the way to New Paltz and beyond, and we went a few more miles before turning around. There's a fitness course on the side of the trail, and you can stop at each station for a workout if exercising by bicycle isn't working out. You can do some sit-ups, crunches and chin-ups. I did a few half-knee bends and gave the other half of my knee the day off. Overhead I saw a bridge with more bicyclists pedaling their wares. Is there a walkway over the Walkway Over the Hudson? I'm sure the guy on the recumbent bike saw it right off. Maybe there's a walkway under the Hudson too.

     On the way back we detoured onto Route 44 where all the businesses are. We passed a place called the "Beer Cave," and I wanted to stop and do some spelunking but it was time for lunch so we stopped at the diner instead. Everything is contact-less in the age of the coronavirus, so you just point your phone at this barcode matrix that looks like a computer threw up, and it takes you to the menu, where you can order and pay for your food without ever eating it. Nothing much happened so I went inside and pointed the phone at somebody who was sitting near the counter, and ordered a BLT by contacting his ears. I'm not sure he actually worked there, but we eventually got our food.

     You need to wear a mask while on the Walkway, but compliance was surprisingly low, maybe 50%, and that includes people wearing their mask over their chin, which has been proven to prevent people from transmitting the virus if they breathe through their chin. For those dim bulbs out there who confuse a global health issue with a freedom issue, please feel free to stay home. There's only one way out of this mess and that's to have the smallest iota of common sense.

     On the way home we stopped at DQ for a well-earned Blizzard so we could replenish some of the precious calories we lost on the bike ride. You can ask for just about anything in a Blizzard, except for uninterrupted internet service.