I woke up this morning at Dave and Rene's house to the smell of bacon, A lovely young woman named Hannah filled me in on what to watch out for with Gramp (Dave). Hannah is in 4th grade and her favorite subject is science. For better or worse, she has inherited her dad', grand-dad's and great grand-dads sense of humor. It should serve her well (especially the interrupting cow joke..).

After breakfast we loaded the bikes, said our farewells and turned left from the driveway.Dave knew all the backroads to get us past Greenfield traffic and we were soon in the Bershires. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a few wandering clouds and a stiff, cool breeze out of the north. The Bershires are nice, a lot like Vermont (but not as nice of course). We crossed into New York on every tiny road we could find and ended up in Hudson on the river. We got directions from a well intentioned woman that was something like " go up here a ways and kind of turn left, then go straight and then straight again and then staraight again until you see the hospital, then 4th street until you see a chinese restaurant, no back until before the hospital and the right, then straight and the straight again, ...". We thanked her and never saw the kindof left, hospital or chinese restaurant. The nice lady in Dave's GPS got us to the the bridge to Catskill (the town) and my iWant app found the greek diner Dave and his fishing buddy had gone to 10 years earlier. I noticed the Kiwanis meets there every Wednesday on a sign so I knew it would be good, it was.

From Catskill (the town) we rode into the Catskills (the mountains) using dinky back roads. The view coming into the Catskills was fantastic.Dave noted the tops of the mountains were not green like the bottoms, maybe due to it being early and the growth not developed there. The Catskills reminded me of the Adirondak Park, in that it is a set-aside state park that people still live in. The 50's and 60's were definitelt the high times here. Many of the hotels and attractions are still there in various states of repair.Maybe the hey-day will be back when people start vacationing closer to home again.

It was cool in the Catskils but the temperature rose 15 or 20 degrees as we decended into Port Jarvis on the Penn border.The zoot suit is amazing because it handles all this weather without me even noticing.

Just below Port Jarvis the Delaware Water Gap starts. It is a set-aside with nobody living in it so it is a ride through beautiful lush greenery. The speed limit is either 45, or 35 which is really hard to manage on these bikes. Fortunately there seem to be Water Gap police all over taking pictures and handing out autographs to keep everybody within the speed limit. We presume that when budgets get tight, they lower the speed limit. It is rally a gorgeous ride, even at 35.

We pulled into Stroudsboro pleasantly tired, found a cheap hotel (with no wi-fi) and grabbed dinner at a nearby diner.

So we end the day watching Larry Cheski and the Keilbasi Posse polka on the TV and plug in all the electronic gadgets in to charge. Tomorrow I have to find some wi-fi and move this to the blog.

Found some..