What Fast and Fab Did On Our Summer Vacation

By Bob Nelson

I don't normally do reportage on events that have already gone by, but this past 2000 July 4 weekend merits some tale-telling.

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April Tam and Cliff Frasier celebrate the end of a great day doing offroad on the mountain behind them.

The mountain bikers in our group were more than happy that our campsite was less than a mile from Whiteface Mountain, a ski resort in winter and mountain biking haven in summer.

Most of us arrived in the Lake Placid area Saturday during the day. It's maybe 150 mi. north of Albany, and you're not far from the Canadian border. The campers stayed at Wilmington Notch, a state campground that I found a bit cramped in terms of the space between campsites, but that was more than compensated for by the incredible waterfalls located down a path behind the campsite. Just splendiferous. Mike G. suggested we do the campsite group shot there, but my thought was there were more of us than could fit on the narrow ledge looking out over the falls, and we might find ourselves with fewer to carpool home than we'd started with.

Saturday afternoon, the more adventurous among us (Paulette Meggoe, April Tam, Bob Wu, Cliff Frasier) went on a pretty technical mountain bike ride for about an hour. (Paulette couldn't remember the name of the place, but she came back out of breath and distinctly in need of a shower.) The less adventurous among us (Gerry Valentine, Ronn Seely, yours truly) went for a swim in Mirror Lake, the lake you see from the town of Lake Placid. It wasn't that cold, though we did wear wetsuits. My wetsuit seems to have shrunk somehow. That's where the Ironman USA course swim takes place, which a couple of us (Gerry Valentine, Christian Rountry) are doing July 30. Part of the raison d'etre of this trip was to check out the course. It's a 2.4 mi. swim, 112 mi. bike and 26.2 mi. run. Just makes you tired thinking about it.

Bob Nelson, Tom Wilhelm, April Tam, Mike G. and Cliff Frasier pause for a moment on their escapade up Whiteface Mountain.

Saturday night we just wanted some quick food, so we (Ronn, Paulette, Cliff, April, and me) went to the Black Bear for quick and dirty, and watched a silly television program of a California dance contest -- held on a beach with minimum clothing, of course. The rapper Sisqo, complete with blond hair and plenty of attitude, was the host, and provided us with conversational fodder for most of the rest of the weekend.

Sunday, April and Cliff and Paulette convinced me and Tom Wilhelm and Mike G. (there's a name you can't spell in five letters!) to go to Whiteface Mountain, which was maybe a half-mile from our campsite at Wilmington Notch, for mountain biking. Mike, Tom and I rented Cannondales with front suspension -- I prefer the mountain biker lingo, "hardtails" -- and off we went. This was the very first mountain bike outing for at least one of us (Bob). Paulette probably took this shot since she's not in it. The very first obstacle we encountered was a wide uphill bedded down with hay, leading to the mountain bike trails. It proved impossible to ride, so we hiked the bikes, and that wasn't the first time. April did find us a beautiful singletrack that wound down along a stream, then headed up into the hills. It reminded me of the hikes my dad and brother used to take in the Catskills; even the mosquitoes made a reacquaintance. No spectacular views, just the satisfaction of negotiating the trails, which had a wide variety of surfaces (rocks, roots, mud, sand, grass) and lots of changes in elevation. I found that feathering the brakes helped me to control the bike, which otherwise seemed to want to steer me into the brambles. I have the scratched legs to prove it. Darn! It was so much fun that now I have to save for another bike!!

After an hour and a half, Paulette and Tom and I left for the campsite. Mike did the gondola ride up the mountain, just for the view, and Cliff and April, the hardcore hardtails, rode up on the gondola with bikes and came down on their bikes, a scary prospect. Though I've heard a possibly apocryphal quote from Missy Giove: "What do you need brakes for? They only slow you down!"

Sunday afternoon, Rick Taft, a friend of Bob Wu (I can spell that name in five letters!), had invited us to his parents' summer cabin on Upper Saranac Lake, about an hour's drive from the campsite. We decided that this would be a perfect occasion for a meatfest, and brought chicken, shrimp and two kinds of sausage, as well as fruit, salad, Gatorade and potato salad. The house was right on the lake and absolutely wonderful. I led some of the crowd in yoga for a half-hour, and all of us went swimming. This was a bit colder than Mirror Lake, but far more spectacular. Pierre Leveille of Front Runners, whose boyfriend Mark was a friend of the host, Rick, had prepared a succulent roast pork, and April had brought fresh corn, so we had quite the feast. The mosquitoes, unfortunately, had to suffer the slings and arrows of an unfortunate bug repellent. Ice cream and a partial viewing of the film "American Beauty" on the VCR finished the evening.

Tom Wilhelm and Mike G. take a breather in the woods.

Monday dawned cloudy and drizzly, and our plans to bike the Ironman course in Lake Placid seemed just as cloudy. (A video would have shown just how inexpert most of us were. Which is why there is no video.) Gerry had wanted to do the double loop course, which would be the full 112 mi., but we decided to do the single loop instead, which, with a wrong turn or two, courtesy of yours truly, ended up being 65 mi. The I-man course has great views, but there's not a whole lot of flat; everything is either up or down. There's a five-mile downhill where Paulette claimed she could have gotten up to 60 mph were it not for the film of water on the pavement. Out of Lake Placid, it's a reasonably gentle climb for about 10 mi., then the 5-mi. downhill, then a few miles of flat turf, then the back end of the course, with plenty of hills, then the final stretch into town, which has five hills, named Little Cherry, Big Cherry, Mama Bear, Baby Bear and Poppa Bear, in that order. Ronn and I had given Paulette a head start on the last leg, but we caught her at Poppa Bear. I started to bonk on that last leg, and will in the future bring more than just my staple Clif Bars.

Monday night we finally corralled Gerry and Daniel into dinner, at a friendly American spot with plenty of locals. Again, a meatfest; there was a platter called the Pitmaster, which Gerry dubbed the Piggly Wiggly, that included brisket, ribs and barbecued chicken. I ordered it, after agonizing over whether to have the rice, mashed or French fries; as it turned out, the rice occupied a tiny corner of the platter, which was mostly given over to big chunks of meat. Vegetarians may be excused for feeling weak in the stomach just now. Others had seafood, but Ronn had the meat as well, his second of the day, as he was staying at a German bed and breakfast where the frau prided herself on serving sausages for breakfast every day. As Ronn put it, a day without sausage is like a day without sunshine.

Light rain Monday night, and we broke camp Tuesday morning. Gerry had suggested a 6 a.m. swim in Mirror Lake, which I knew I was not going to make, but Cliff and Ronn took the bait and had a pleasant early morning swim. Gerry and Daniel had gone canoeing on Lake Placid Monday, and Cliff and April made the most of the final day of their weekend and rented kayaks to ply Lake Placid's calm waters.

When I want to remember this trip, I will think of the peace and serenity of the waterfall, the wonderful friendships we made or strengthened and the extremely satisfying platters of roasted meats this weekend brought me.