New house, same stuff

Life in the new house is similar to life in the previous house. Usually my day has focus on riding my bike somewhere. The first day here I rode to Saranac Lake, which is 10 miles from here, and back. It's not a wonderful ride but it has some very pleasant and some reasonably challenging moments.

Like every other ride around here, you start off going downhill and so therefore have to climb to get back. On that ride, there's about a one and half mile climb back into town.  It's not super steep, but that's still a long way to be pedaling uphill. And of course it's right at the end after you've already done 17 miles. But they're all like that.

Yesterday I went north toward the Whiteface ski area. I took a roundabout route because it took me through my favorite 4 miles of road that I've ever ridden. There's a back road that connects routes 86 and 73, the two state highways that intersect at Lake Placid.  It follows a small branch of the Ausable River and cuts through farmland and woods, keeping the river in view for most of the way. It's relatively flat, the pavement is good, there are very few cars and the air smells amazing. I usually enter it on Route 73 near the ski jump, used continuously since it was build to for the 1980 Winter Olympics.

The Lake Placid Olympics, best known for being the site of the Miracle on Ice US hockey team story, was what they call the last small Olympics. They built a new skating rink (the rink from the 1932 Olympics is still in use as well), ski jumps and (I think) a new bobsled/luge track. And that was about it. All of those things continue to be used for training and for high level competitions. The downhill ski races were at an existing area on existing trails.

There was none of this building up a whole village from scratch thing going on. Completely different from now, where it's a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that ends up mostly being discarded when the games are over and saddling the host with a pile of debt. All the Olympics did here was improve the town as a resort attraction and destination for athletes.

Anyway, once on the main road, you are treated to glorious scenery, along a somewhat larger branch of the same river. See what I mean?

Whiteface is the big mountain in the background. The riding is mostly downhill to the ski area, which seemed counterintuitive until I realized that yes, you start at the bottom of the hill. Once I turned around, it was a long, beautiful uphill slog. I fill my lungs with the good air and hope my legs don't give out. Tomorrow I intend to do a 45 mile ride.

The rest of the day was spent in and around the lake. We walked to town, paddled on both the SUP and a kayak, and I walked my lap around the lake. There's a famous book about meditation called "Wherever You Go, There You Are." This place is all meditation all the time for me; I feel completely here. It's been a long time since I've felt this relaxed and at ease. Can't beat it.