August 4

I was proud to remember to say Happy 32^nd Anniversary to Heather on waking up. We were getting better at packing up and it was easy to load our gear into the boat tied between two cleats at the dock instead of unloading at a boat ramp. I realized the value of renting a slip at a marina!  None of the lifting and turning the boat over and carrying the seats and riggers etc. We simply stepped in, untied and rowed away.

Lock 5 came up within a mile and opened for us soon after Heather called its lockmaster. I hardly needed to stop rowing before I was inside the lock.  We were getting to be old hands at this now and behaved as if we knew what we were doing.  I was rowing inside the lock as the gates opened and we squirted out to continue the march upstream. The canal at this point is a flat-water river with negligible current. Long sweeps of fairly consistent growth along the banks were interrupted occasionally by the edge of cornfields with tall cow corn. This was a great place to stay with my pace by the hour and feel the miles tick by.

Lock 6 was, like the others, a welcome chance to rest my oars and get off my seat while holding us off the wall with the boat hook. Heather held the slimy hanging rope as we inspected the growth of Zebra mussels on the wall while the water floated us upward. One of the benefits of going into a lock we found was that it provided cool shade.  We chose the wall toward the sun for this reason. But as the water rose the shade went away and the hot blazing sun returned.

We landed on a public dock just above Lock 7 where we were able to pull the boat up on the dock and tie it down.  The challenge was before me to get a ride back to pick up the car.  After holding out my thumb and holding a $20.00 bill for half an hour I realized that the days of hitchhiking which I had been used to in the fifties was gone by.  I walked into the maintenance base for the New York State Canal Authority across the highway to see if there might be some one there who was driving south when they finished work. After a number of grunts in the negative a really nice fellow, Tim Macinerny, volunteered to give me a ride at 3:30 when he finished.  So I rested for half an hour and soon he appeared to pick me up. After hearing about our trip while riding in his pick-up he asked how we were getting back to lock 7 the next day. He then volunteered to drive the car north in the morning and leave it in Port Anne.  This was to be a tremendous help to us. I must say that all of the Lockmasters and the whole canal system seemed to be very friendly and helpful. It did help that most of them had seen the news coverage on one of the two channels in Albany that had covered our launch there.  Practically everyone we ran into commented that we were “famous”!