August 1, 2005

We arrived in Albany after a long drive the evening before and a four-hour sleep at a roadside parking area at the height of land going over Swede mountain about two hours north of the city. I was a little nervous about finding the Corning Reserve, a riverfront park in Albany, which is also the home of the Albany Rowing Center. By the number of shells seen stored there this must be a very active place earlier in the morning. An Irish Carrach club was also using the same facilities and had three Carrachs stored there. OK, for those that are not familiar, a Carrach is a unique Irish rowing vessel rowed by crews of various numbers.  Heather recently brought back pictures of them from her visit to Ireland last May.

After getting acquainted with the site of our launch and seeing two hours on my watch before we expected anyone to be there, I decided to get another hour of sleep in the car.

We had set a date with two TV reporters to cover our launching for the fourth leg of our trip along the route from Key West to Quebec.  A contingent from Albany’s Habitat Affiliate also attended.  After half an hour or more of talking to the cameras and reporters I managed to get our boat all ready for the first leg of our row and tied up to the crew dock.  We said our final goodbyes and pulled away heading upstream toward Troy and the Champlain Canal system.

I rowed slowly and straight away from the TV camera until I saw it get taken down before stopping to fix my feet which were in my two old Birkenstocks bolted to the foot plates in place of the original equipment.  I should have tried this arrangement out before leaving because the Birks were definitely not going to work.  About a mile upstream there was a loud snap as my port strut broke off. So it was determined that we needed to return to the dock for repairs and replacements.  This took about half an hour and we pushed off again more comfortable but we had added two miles to our first leg.

The seven or eight miles along the Hudson I would call the most industrial piece of our trip so far as evidenced by the visual quality of the water.  After leaving the tides behind in passing through the Federal Lock we came ashore at the park on the point where the Erie Canal heads west and the Champlain Canal heads north.

Here I need to share a little story about a new friend, Steve Haggerty, Executive Director of the HFH Affiliate in Albany. Steve was the first on the scene at the launch in the Corning Reserve with an armful of different size shirts to fit us with. He not only offered to come and pick us up at where we would be taking out but also offered to give us a room and to feed us a homemade meal. Both were accepted, as we were exhausted, hot and hungry.  But “giving us a room” didn’t mean a spare guest room. It meant his own room; the only air-conditioned one in his apartment! That was far beyond generous. It was a very hot night! We slept well. I don’t know if Steve did. But he was there with pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs before we headed back north to launch again in Stillwater, NY.