Beds, showers and bug screens, oh my!

Waking late in the state forest, Mariah and I began our day's journey. We biked through rolling hills, small towns and eventually suburbs, before the highway we were taking turned, without warning, into an interstate. With white knuckle grip we biked (illegally?) on the interstate for a good five miles before our route diverged from the interstate. Of course, as Murphey would have predicted, our route forked to the left, which meant that we had to cross three lanes of fast moving traffic in order to grab our route.

After crossing the southern border of Mass into Connecticut, we were picked up in a mini-van by a couple of burners (people who attend Burning Man) from Hartford, CN - who demanded our company and compliance with a plan to put us up. At this point, I was so tuckered out and sweaty and itchy from the black diamond ski moguls the mosquitos had chowed on my legs, that I lacked the gusto to decline their offer of a shower and a bed. Paul and Jeff were their names, and they drove us to a podunk motel where they bought us a room with BEDS and a SHOWER and then they took us out for a hot meal (Like whoa! I was pretty sure by this point that these things were nothing more than a figment of my imagination).

Heck yes, I slept like a rock and we woke up early like. Now, this is where the story turns a little sour. (sorry) My ankles had been bothering me now for about 200 miles and that morning was no exception, so we biked about ten miles into a little town called Bakerville where I scored some cardboard at the "Package" store (what the liquor vending establishments in New England are called) and made a sign to hitch into New York. We stood (well, Mariah stood, I sprawled - with ice on my elevated ankles) on the side of the road for about 45 minutes until we scored a ride in a van with an older musician who had hitchhiked across the country in the 70's. He drove us past two waterfalls, over several rivers and into New York state where he dropped us off in Lagrange at a gas station about 20 miles from our destination.

Here we made a new sign and scored a ride (without even using the sign) with a kid headed to the skate park in Poughkeepsie, just east of New Paltz (where we were headed), who ended up giving us a ride all the way into New Paltz.

The house where we've been staying in New Paltz, welcomed us with bikes, a skee pole, and a pink mailbox littering the front yard and heap tons of rad people inside.

Last night we had a fried dough party and took a few tours through town by foot and today a lot of us went swimming at a gorgeous lake that was surrounded by ice caves. Even when it's 100 degrees outside, the caves feel icy when you walk past them. By the time we got to the water, the rain broke and we took turns launching ourselves off a cliff (or a tree on the cliff) into the water in the rain, before swimming to an "island."