Weston to Bridgewater - Day 3

"I love Vermont" too, Mr. President (and Vermont cheese).

Today’s ride began at the Benedictine Priory in Weston after enjoying a picnic brunch of breakfast leftovers-half a sausage McMuffin and half of a Dunkin donuts coffee cake muffin, washed down with bottled water. There is nothing like clear cool water to quench your thirst and I was very thankful to have a bottle in my backpack. The pure water ride exists to get safe drinking water for people that don’t have it. At the time this was written the pure water ride had raised over $300 dollars-that’s enough to provide three families with a BioSand filter that will purify enough water for their needs, and will last for years. Thank you!

The Benedictine brothers have kindly invited visitors to use the picnic tables they have set out in a grassy area near the parking lot. This is a very pleasant spot with a good view of a small pond and the chapel. Today it was even more pleasant because of the terrific weather. Sunny, bright blue skies and comfortable temperature, and air dry for summer. I was feasting on the silence while polishing off brunch, and at the same time, hoping to hear the large priory bell ring. It didn’t, so maybe I’ll catch it on next year’s pure water ride.

Emerging from the woods on Yale Road, I stopped by the Crowley Cheese factory-the oldest cheese-making facility in Vermont.
Out-of-the-way enough to discourage casual tourists, it is quiet, unhurried, and real. The staff are friendly and glad to see you. I was the only visitor at the time and two of the three employees stopped what they were doing to chat with me (there are times during the cheese-making day that they would not be able to stop).

Ken, the head cheese-maker, volunteered to let me take his picture while stirring the cheese to be. Crowley Cheese is still made only by hand using the original recipe. We chatted about the factory, making cheese, and the business. The business had been sold after a period of negotiation and they were just resuming cheese-making, so I picked a good time to see the operation. But they were very low on inventory and had only extra-sharp for sale. Cheese has to be aged before it is sold, so it will be later this fall before their shelves are full again. A great place to visit and the cheese is terrific. Can’t wait to make the trip? Visit online at http://www.crowleycheese.com/.

Steward road was blocked by a fairly large blow down, but I managed by driving the front wheel over then pushing and dragging the back wheel across. My legs were sore the rest of the day. After some nice back roads in Shrewsbury, the route turned towards Plymouth. I was discouraged by the ‘Dead End’ and ‘No Exit’ signs, but determined to go as far as possible. The road did go on for a couple of miles looking every bit like it was going to go on through after all, but ended abruptly in a clearing in the middle of nowhere. Straight ahead was only a trail, where again, I determined to go as far as possible. By now it had been a long time since anything but woods, so imagine my surprise in coming upon a mom with her early teen son and daughter on mountain bikes. They told me the trail would connect up ahead to Round Top road and so it did.

Another mile or two down the road was Plymouth Notch-the birthplace of President Calvin Coolidge. This beautiful little settlement is well taken care of and has many of the original buildings and tons of Coolidge memorabilia. It is little changed from Calvin’s boyhood and a delightful place for a leisurely stroll through history. I wish that I had had more time to explore there and learn about our 30th president, remarkably a man of few words. It is said that a woman once bet him that he could not say more than two words, to which he replied, "You lose".

During my short visit, I did learn that Coolidge was actually a Massachusetts politician. Coolidge left Vermont as a young man to attend Amherst College, and after graduating with a law degree, was elected to the Massachusetts House for at least a couple of terms, before being elected Governor of Massachusetts. Coolidge’s handling of a Boston Police strike brought him to the attention of the nation, and his subsequent election to Vice President of the United States and the untimely death of the President, thrust Coolidge into the highest office in the land. By all accounts, his presidency was one of the most successful. Perhaps it was the uncluttered simplicity of this quiet and industrious little community that had given young Calvin a solid appreciation of what is most important in life, and how to attain and protect it, much like the early log cabin life of Lincoln seems inseparable from character of Lincoln himself.

But I suspect that ‘Silent Cal’s success was at least equally due to being ever-mindful of the timeless truth that what you do is more important than what you say. Unlike today’s media centered pols, who spend more time and energy in talking about what they are going to do, and listening for what others might think about it, than in actually doing anything, taciturn Cal simply did what he was elected to do – to earnestly and uprightly govern the nation’s affairs to the best of his ability – and left the commentating and spin doctoring to those with nothing better to do.

Moxie was a favorite beverage of Calvin’s, and the still open general store below his summer white house has a cool supply on hand. It had been some years since I’d tasted it. And yes, it still tastes like medicine, probably just the same as when he ‘enjoyed’ it.

A Stars and stripes flag marks the Coolidge pew in the Notch’s church, where Coolidge’s famous Bennington address was posted in the foyer:
"Vermont is a state I love. I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield, and Equinox, without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me. It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride, here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our everlasting hills. I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and her invigorating climate. But most of all because of her people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves in the service of others. If the spirit of Liberty should vanish from other parts of our Union and the support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of the brave little state of Vermont."

Mr. President, I love Vermont, too.



After leaving Plymouth Notch, I took a detour from the pure water ride, and spent a couple of hours touring some of the back roads of the area, through exquisite scenery and catching a glimpse every now and then of a life-style that I’ll never experience, and probably wouldn’t like anyway.

The area around Woodstock is the embodiment of scenic in the classic Vermont sense and draws visitors to this area in all seasons-and people who have lots of money, who buy up big parcels of land and build country homes that people like me might see only in the pages of Architechtural Digest and Country Living, and post ‘No Trespassing" signs by the SUVful.

Eventually hunger drove me back to the Bridgewater Mill Mall where the truck was parked and where Ramunto’s Pizza was waiting. A cheese and a pepperoni slice were delicious and washed down by ice tea and, yup, more bottled water. I ate outside at a picnic table in the shade by the sparkling Ottauquechee River and felt sorry for the millionaires.

Wardsboro to Weston - Day 2

July 14, 2009

In Wardsboro I saw these vehicles for sale, presenting the dilemma that every Vermont guy constantly wrestles with - should I buy a shiny new green tractor or a shiny new red sports car?

In South Londonderry, I made a wrong turn and dead-ended in an unofficial junkyard - what my backyard would be if I wasn’t married-where someone had collected cars for a lifetime. The woods were full of them. At least up until recently. Today a crew was flatening them in a portable car crusher parked by the side of the road. There were only a few to be seen from the road and those were from the fifties. But judging by the size of the crew and the sounds coming from the nearby woods, there were plenty more being dragged out. I only hope those doing the clean up were as interested in preserving old cars as they were in cleaning up the land, but there was no way of knowing. It was really sad to think of all those old beauties being sold for scrap, even if the land was being cleaned up.

Rowley Lane, with great views of Magic Mountain, turned into a nice woods road, but was blocked by a large blow down too big and long to get over, under, or around.

As I was coming back down this road, a lady walking two dogs was gesturing wildly, which I eventually understood as wanting me to stop, which I did. While she rounded them up she explained that her dogs would chase me. She herded them back in her house, and thanked me. I was thankful not to have to pull dog hair out of my chain, and anyway, it gave me a few moments more to admire the view of Magic Mountain.

The blocked lane meant a long paved road detour to get back on route, which took me to Londonderry where I pulled in to gas up. The attendant was about my age and curious about my bike, because he hung around while I pumped my own gas, and looked it over like he hadn't seen one like it close up before. We were on route 100, a popular touring route and I had seen a large group of bikes headed this way a short time before. But these were shiny, large, comfortable road bikes like the majority of those who rode by this highway station. "I like your GPS" he joked about the Delormes Atlas I always have taped on the tank. "This kind doesn’t need batteries", I replied, not feeling any need to apologize. I would probably lose more time trying to figure out a GPS than it could save me by telling me where I was. Noticing the Massachusetts plate, he asked if I had ridden all the way up. This is a fairly common reaction, usually with an air of disbelief- partly because the bike looks too beat up to make it that far, and partly because it doesn’t seem like anyone short of no other choice would attempt such a trip. Their gut feeling is right on-while the bike could make the trip, it is much more comfortable on dirt roads with its soft, long- travel suspension and knobby tires, than supermotoing on the smooth blacktop where the tires hum louder than the engine and cause enough vibration so that if I actually had ridden from Massachusetts only the seat and handlebars would be left-the handlebars because I was holding onto them and the seat because it was percussively welded to my butt.

Next up were some non-descript dirt roads until Jaquinth Road in Weston which became steadily worse and worse and therefore better and better until it intersected with Trout Camp road-another horrible, great road.

Here I met some game and fisheries men who were on their way back from a remote stream-having gone there to evaluate the brook trout population. These were great guys - friendly, down-to-earth, and a real credit to their employer, the state of Vermont. They helped me find my place on the map and reassured me that I would eventually come out on a good road. Later, a few miles down that road, I went by Vermont’s oldest trout fishing club, a very expensive looking place, with a very scenic view across historic Wantastiquet private lake to the Green Mountains beyond.

The weather had turned worse than predicted. Completely cloudy and easily the coolest day of the summer.

Arriving at Weston Priory at the same time as a gentle rain, I was very nearly the only visitor-two other cars in the large parking lot.

I made a beeline for the visitor center, empty except for someone just leaving. Next I tried the gift shop-but I was much more interested in finding something to eat than to look at or listen to. Actually the silence around the priory was the best part of my visit – unnatural to my urban ears, otherworldly, promoting meditation and prayer-it was enjoyable, spiritual and heartening.

I found lunch a mile or two down the road in Weston center, at the Weston Village Store and sandwich shop which also sold cheese and fudge and was absolutely packed with trinkets-room full after room full-hanging from the ceiling, covering the walls from floor to ceiling and packed in so tight there were only narrow aisles left. It was the quintessential tourist trap.
The turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and a slice of good Vt cheese on local multigrain bread was good-in my half-starved state-very good and the coffee warming-and almost worth what I paid for it. Heading back in for a treat of a dollars worth of maple walnut fudge, I was told that the smallest she could cut was a quarter pound, which would be about $2.75. Unkindly thinking that she certainly looked like she had never sampled any less than a quarter pound herself, but saying that I would look for something smaller, I checked out the rest of the store, at least as much of it as I could stomach, and not seeing any candybars, although they did have some gum, left with out being satisfied, and determined not to do any further business there and to warn anyone reading this too.

Weston is a pretty town and has capitalized on its charm by catering to tourists-check out the town’s website, www.westonvt.com, to see more.

Happily, Justice (or mercy) prevailed. Going back through South Londonderry I stopped at the Village Pantry du Logis where the kind counter lady sold me their last chocolate croissant for a dollar, (the same one I had not spent on fudge at the Weston Village Store) saying that it was their last and it was late in the day (3pm, normal cost 2 dollars). I thanked her and God, and doubly enjoyed this delicious dessert, while strolling across the road to admire the river brightly bubbling along its merry way.

I had eaten here before a few years back and remembered a delicious chicken curry sandwich on real bread. If you are in this area, this is a definite must stop here place. The store and location are modest, quaint and comfortable, and thankfully have none of the glitzy tourist veneer of the shoppes in Weston. However, once inside, you’ll see what they do have-lots of good, even gourmet, food to eat there or take with you - www.villagepantry.com. And a good neighbor behind the counter.

All day I had been looking forward to supper at the Townshend Dam Diner in Townshend, but was never able to find it. If anyone knows where it is, please drop me a line.

Tennis, anyone? How's this for a courtside view?