Recovery with Monkey

We leave the luxurious Walsh Hotel at 8 am and head north to Hamden too have breakfast with my grandmother. She's excited to see us, as we are to see here, but Nicole needs to doze off for about 45 minutes.

Last night was a late night, of which it was worth it, and we need to recover physically and make up for lost time as well. Somewhat regrettably , that means relying on Metro-North. As we ride into Union Station, it's start to rain. We pull over and put on our neoprene shoe covers. Just like that, the rain let's up. Much like bringing an umbrella so it won't rain at the picnic, the shoe covers work as intended.

Our plan is to ride into Greenwich, meet up with old friend David "Monkey" Bruno-- alifelong Greenwich resident and college pal. What can I say about Monkey? Put it this way: He responds to Monkey. If you call him David, he'll smile and say, "call me Monkey--everybody does!"

Monkey tells me these bathrooms at  the
Greenwhich train station are NEVER open. 

We arrive in Greenwich around lunch time. We see a restaurant sign across the street that says, "Pizza." Hungry, we walk in and sit down. The waitress hands us each a menu and give us time to look it over. We look at it. No pizza.  The waitress returns.

"How are you doing," she asks?
"Do you have pizza?" says Nicole.

The poor woman appears frightened by the question. Yes we do, she says as she composes herself. We have two sizes, small and large.

No medium. Oh boy. We go for a large pizza and a salad.

Upon serving, it's pretty clear that the salad came right out of a bag, but at least the pizza was made right in the kitchen.  It's Greek pizza. Greeks often claim that
a) Their pizzas predate Italian and
b) Their pizzas taste better than Italian..

Hey, the Italians didn't invent the noodle, but they certainly found ways to serve it better than anybody else. The same probably holds true for pizza. Regardless of who was first, a traditional Italian pizza is more evenly balanced than its Greek counterpart, which is cooked at a higher temperature for crunchier crust but less hot sauce in the middle.

Either is vastly better than Domino's. Off course. and today's pie is a welcome treat for weary traveler's.

After lunch, we had over to see Monkey. He is elated to see us. He is happy to host, and we are all happy to reminisnce and talk about our more recent wheelings and deelings as well. He also has cookies, baked exclusively at the grocery store where he works. Another welcome treat for weary traveler's!

I do marvel at the fact that Monkey Bruno entered the family business after leaving Mitchell College (His grandfather once owned Bruno's Groceries in Greenwich).

We talk, and talk. Soon it's late and we're all to exhuasted to keep talking. We set to sleep.

Today, Greenwich. Tomorrow, New York City!

We ride around Great Pond--all the way around

Nicole and I were lucky enough to get to ride around Great Pond, which is the largest lake in the Belgrade lakes chain.

We started in Rome (seriously, Maine has some odd names for its towns), turned south before we hit Oakland, rode through the center of Belgrade and then circled back in Rome.

Only in Maine can one realistically ride through Rome and Belgrade in the same day.

The ride was fun--for the most part at least. Nicole still needs to work on her hill climbing technique. We hit a series of peaks and drops in the final leg of the trip. Each time, Nicole made the near fatal mistake of actually using the brakes on the downhill, thus starting from zero at the base of the downhill, thus forcing us to climb the hill rather than use the momentum to coast to each hill's midpoint. We'll have to work on that.

And there was some good sightseeing, of course. You can see a lot more when you're riding a bike as opposed to driving a car. Although I have been vacationing up there with my family for the last 21 years, I actually caught a glimpse neighboring Mesalonskee Lake for the first time of my life. We also snapped some great photos of a horse stable outside of Belgrade.

Post ride was a real treat. We took a boat ride out to Otter Island. In two decades, I have never once seen any otters there, but it is a great place to go swimming. It felt good to cool off and indulge myself into thinking I was competing in some sort of triathlon.

In seven weeks, we will return to Maine, instead to mighty Cadillac Mountain. In another seven weeks, we will will be at Key West!