Happy Birthday, Sarah!

I have your gift with me, so you’ll just have to wait till I get home. Until then, think of something expensive. Fantasize. Use your imagination. But don’t turn the house upside down looking for gift wrapping. It’s safely in my left saddlebag.

Birthday wishes today also go to: Frankie Jonas (12), youngest of the Jonas Brothers; Se Ri Pak (35), South Korean golfer with 25 LPGA tour wins; Naomi Watts (44), blonde star of the 2005 “King Kong” remake; Steve Largent (58), Hall of Fame NFL player with the Seattle Seahawks; Brigitte Bardot (78), French model and actress who’s now an animal rights activist; and Al Capp, creator of hillbilly comic strip “Li’l Abner,” who would turn 103 today if he were still living.

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It’s cold and raining when we get up this morning. So, we put on our rain gear before saddling up in the parking lot of the Utica Red Roof Inn. Good thing we dressed for inclement weather; it rains for the first and last hour of today’s ride.

Today, we ride north through the Adirondack Mountains, en route to Lake Placid, New York. We’re on NY-28, passing through Trenton and Forestport. For two guys looking for changing leaves, our timing seems to be perfect. We hit the fall foliage at its peak. The colors are spectacular — though having said that, you may wonder what kind of drugs I’m on when you see today’s photos. The camera simply does not do justice to the Adirondack colors.

NY-28 winds along the beautiful Fulton Chain Lakes. The lakes are named after Robert Fulton, inventor of the first commercially successful steamboat. The Fulton Chain Lakes have ultra-descriptive names: First Lake, Second Lake, Third Lake, Fourth Lake, etc. … through Eighth Lake. The lakes begin near Old Forge and end near Raquette Lake, which somehow escaped numbering.

After riding for a little more than an hour, we stop for breakfast in Old Forge at the Mufifn Patch restaurant. This place serves a muffin (duh) or sweet roll with its breakfast choices — sort of in lieu of taters. My sweet roll is delicious and I’m embarrassed to say I was unable to finish it.

The Fulton Chain Lakes sport decent populations of game fish, including northern pike, lake trout, rainbow trout, brook trout, landlocked (Atlantic) salmon, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, yellow perch, brown bullhead, tiger muskie and various panfish. To learn more about the Fulton ChainLakes, click here.

We ride through Long Lake, home of the historic Adirondack Hotel and Helms Aero Service, a floatplane company that serves many of the lakes in this region. Long Lake is the most northerly town in Hamilton County, and it’s the starting point of the Roosevelt-Marcy Trail. Mount Marcy, at 5,344 feet, is the highest point in the Adirondacks.

The Roosevelt-Marcy Trail is named for the historic route Vice President Theodore Roosevelt traveled on a dangerous midnight stagecoach in September 1901 to take the Presidential oath. Roosevelt was climbing Mount Marcy when he got word that President William McKinley — who had been shot two weeks earlier, but was expected to improve — had taken a serious turn for the worse. Roosevelt never made it to Mount Marcy’s summit, but he did become our 26th President.

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The Adirondacks are full of lakes, as we rediscover when we ride along Tupper Lake, nicknamed the “Crossroads of the Adirondacks,” because of its geographic location in pretty much the exact middle of the six million-acre Adirondack Park.

Next lake on our way to Lake Placid: Saranac Lake, ranked number 11 in the “100 Best Small Towns in America” list. Saranac is both a lake and a town. It’s a beautiful location for a mountain getaway. Saranac apparently decided not to number its lakes, but to describe them by location. It includes Upper Saranac Lake, Lower Saranac Lake, and, of course, Middle Saranac Lake.

Here are some of the people who have frequented the Saranac Lakes over the years:

• Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, had a summer home here. Think E = MC squared.
• Mark Twain (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens), known for “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and its sequel, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” vacationed here. Twain is known for his witticisms, such as: I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Did he have this blog in mind?
• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo brings his family here for vacations
• Author Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island” and “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) had a cottage in Saranac Lake
• The Hungarian pianist Bela Bartok spent summers here. Along with Franz Liszt, he’s regarded as Hungary’s greatest composer.

And, as of today, Ray and Gary spent a beautiful fall day here, or at least a few minutes of one fall day.

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Finally, we roll into Lake Placid, which is best known to those of us not from the east coast as a host of two Winter Olympics — 1932 and 1980. At the 1932 games, Sonja Henie of Norway won the gold medal in ladies figure skating, and the United States won the silver medal in ice hockey. But the USA got much better on ice over the years. Remember 1980?

1980 was a magical Olympic games in Lake Placid. Eric Heiden won a boatload of gold medals; he was the Michael Phelps of his day. And of course, there was the Miracle on Ice (“Do You Believe in Miracles!”), as the underdog USA hockey team held off the highly favored Soviet squad. To watch the historic game’s final minute, including Al Michaels’ enduring call, click here. To learn more about the Lake Placid Olympics, click here.

We stop at the Winter Olympic museum and check out the memorabilia from both the 1932 and 1980 games. Check out the photos elsewhere in today’s blog post.

From Lake Placid, we ride east through Elizabethtown, which, in a surprising development, was not named for Queen Elizabeth. It was named after two women by the name of Elizabeth Gilliland — the wife and a daughter of landholder William Gilliland, who came to the area before the Revolutionary War.

We cross I-87, and head for Lake Champlain. We turn south, toward Port Henry, and ride across the lake over a newly constructed bridge, entering Vermont. The original Crown Point Bridge opened to traffic in 1929, but was closed due to safety concerns in October 2009, and taken down by explosive demolition on December 28, 2009. The new bridge opened in November 2011. It’s one of only two bridges connecting New York and Vermont across Lake Champlain. Somewhere in the middle of Lake Champlain is the border between New York and Vermont. For you civil engineering buffs eager to learn about the new bridge’s construction, click here.

Lake Champlain briefly became the nation’s sixth Great Lake on March 6, 1998, when President Clinton signed Senate Bill 927. This bill, which reauthorized the National Sea Grant Program, contained a line declaring Lake Champlain to be a Great Lake. Following a small uproar, the Great Lake status was rescinded on March 24 (although Vermont universities continue to receive funds to monitor and study the lake).

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We continue North on VT-7, heading for Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. We ride through Vergennes, Ferrisburgh, Charlotte and Shelburne, as we near Burlington. Noticeable by its absence is the Burlington Coat Factory, acquired in 2006 for $2.1 billion by Bain Capital, whose actions have become the subject of political and media scrutiny as a result of co-founder Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. As we later find out, the Coat Factory is headquartered in a different Burlington – Burlington Township, New Jersey.

Colchester, Vermont, is a bedroom community for Burlington, as if Burlington couldn’t contain its own population? Notables from the Burlington/Colchester area include:

• US Senator Bernie Sanders, the first person elected to the Senate to identify as a socialist
• Members of the rock group Phish, who got together at the University of Vermont in 1983
• Olympic skier Billy Kidd, who was 20 years old in 1964 when he became the first American man to win an Olympic alpine skiing medal (teammate Jimmie Heuga took bronze in the same slalom race)
• Serial killer Ted Bundy, who, shortly before his 1989 execution in Florida, confessed to more than 30 murders in the 1970s
• Adult film star Christian XXX, originally known as Maxx Diesel at the beginning of his career when he performed in gay porn. Christian has performed in more than 800 films, and says on his blog: “I complain about my life where I get laid every day and make good money and only work about four hours.”

My research department worked overtime to come up with this stuff. I could not possibly make it up.

Inventing the truth is simply the wrong thing to do. It’s bad for one’s blog cred. And, it would be a breach of etiquette, which is quite awkward here in the Burlington/Colchester area. That’s because the Emily Post Institute, created by etiquette author and expert Emily Post, is based in Burlington. Founded in 1946, the Emily Post Institute promotes etiquette, civility and good manners – all of which seem to be in perilously short supply these days. Emily Post named consideration, respect and honesty as the tenets of etiquette. To brush up on your etiquette, click here to visit the Emily Post website.

At dinner tonight, in Ms. Post’s honor, we are particularly careful to avoid any obvious etiquette breaches. Junior’s is the place for Italian in Colchester. I have lasagne and Ray has shepherd pie. We remember to remove the napkin from our place setting, unfold it and put it our lap – as soon as we’re seated.

Once our meal is served, we avoid talking with food in our mouth, said to be rude and distasteful to watch. We resist the temptation to apply makeup at the table; that’s a no-no, too — though Emily Post says it’s okay to quickly apply lipstick if you’re with close friends or relatives in a non-business situation, and at a non-deluxe restaurant. Ray is a relative, this is a non-business dinner, and Junior’s is definitely non-deluxe, though the food is scrumptious.

One more mannerly item: if a woman were to leave our table, Ray and I would for sure stand up. That’s just good etiquette. Chivalry lives! And it turns out a woman is at our table. We are joined by Kerry and Dan, a delightful couple who rode their motorcycles from Conway, New Hampshire — where they live.

Having a woman at our table tests our etiquette, and we pass with flying colors. Ray and I remain seated for the duration of our meal; its the right thing to do in Kerry’s presence. By the way – when Sarah called to say hi during dinner, I unintentionally dissed her by not answering the phone. It is impolite to answer a cell phone during dinner – even if it is your wife’s 57^th birthday.

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In Colchester, we overnight at the Motel 6 ($91.99 tax). WTF? Ninety-one ninety-nine is not a typo: with tax, that’s more than $100 at a Motel 6! In all honesty, and with all due respect and consideration — $100 a night at a Motel 6, regardless of the thread count on the sheets — is bordering on price gouging. How’s that for in-your-face etiquette, Emily?

Day Eight Summary: Cruising the Adirondacks, an Olympian effort, Burlington’s non-coat factory, minding our manners. Happy Birthday, Sarah! Total miles ridden today: about 250.

To view today’s entire route from Utica, New York, to Colchester, Vermont, click here.

What will tomorrow bring?