I opened this thread in 10/17 with these observations and thoughts:
I have mixed feelings about the fall season. Outdoor music festivals (my cocaine) have come to a close, and I start to go into withdrawal. Things are starting to turn brown, and the prospect of putting the bikes into storage is beginning to loom. Perhaps I still harbor gloomy emotional memories of returning to school after a fun summer; I hated most of high school.
However, a long afternoon ride in the country reminded me, today, that the fall is my favorite season to ride. It was a balmy, breezy day, and the leaves were skittering across the road in front of the bike.
In the town of Pompey, I stopped at a homestead on a quiet side road, where the landowner was out in his yard, tinkering with his mower. I asked if I could take a picture of my bike in front of his old silo and superb sumac. At first I thought his response was one of disbelief, but then he smiled, and mentioned that he had an old bike behind the house. Steve, he offered with with a handshake, noted that when his father bought the land in 1949, and it had a large barn attached, but it burned down the day they moved in. They never did discover the source of the fire.
He went on to say, proudly, that only a couple months ago, he found out that the small rooms in the basement of his early 1800's farmhouse were used in the Underground Railroad.
....and I found a field of corn that I'll never forget.
Fall continues to be my favorite riding season,
both in Central New York and in the Catskill Mountains.
Started most of my Cats treks this fall with "Jimi" my '80 XS650 in Mine Kill State Park, just a few miles north of Grand Gorge, I found that I had the place all to myself.
The colors off the side of Bull Hill rd just north of Conesville made me stop to soak it all in.
As always, I stop for lunch on rt 10 in the Hunter Mountain Range.
Just south of Livingstonville on Rt. 145 there is a curious historical marker just off the road:
Here is a close-up:
The whipping post has a centuries-old history. Many, many centuries, all of it painful.
As I rode away, two guitars began to play in my head...