June 21, 2005
FLAT TIRE BLUES
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Place: Saugerties, N.Y.
Alan: I'm in Saugerties now, a little village in north Ulster County. We got here at about 3 p.m. We're at Mile 106.
Chris O'Connell suffered two flat tires. He actually got a flat and tried to fix it and then the tube that he replaced it with also got punctured somehow, so he's working on his third tube now. That're really the only mechanical breakdown we've had.Things are going well. Katherine Van Acker, a photographer, has popped on to the scene and has been taking some action shots. She's going to send those later tonight. Her stuff it top-notch stuff. She's a former Times-Union photo chief from Albany, so she's having some fun taking some photos.
She'll take some shots of us in Saugerties and some more when we get into Catskill on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge so we get a little bridge action.
And if she has time, she's going to follow us on the other side of the river heading toward Albany and toward some of the more environmentally natural kinds of settings. So we have that to look forward to.
The weather is swtill warm and the breeze is out of the south.
Editor's Note: Saugerties is the garlic capital of New York. As the Garlic Festival Web site recounts:
In 1989, Pat Reppert of Shale Hill Farm and Herb Gardens organized the first Garlic Festival held in the Hudson Valley. It was started as a promotional event for Reppert's fledgling herb business and for New York State grown garlic.
The festival reached its attendance peak in 1995, when the turnout was estimated at 40-45,000 garlic enthusiasts. Some logistics problems resulted, including a Thruway traffic jam and Route 9W being blocked for 11 miles or so.
To control the crowds and in order to grow in a more controlled fashion, a decision was made to expand the festival to two days and to begin charging an entrance fee. As a result the first two-day event was held in 1996.
In the tradition in which it was born, the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival continues to be a fun celebration of the harvest of what garlic aficionados lovingly refer to as the ''stinking rose.''
Posted by Jeff at June 21, 2005 03:30 PM | TrackBack