Rest day in Lake Placid, NY

Posted on August 15, 2004 by Kevin

I woke up around 7:30am and rode my bike into town. I saw a few other people heading into town to do their laundry, including Renée, Mark, and Richard. I met Colleen, Molly, and Marisa for breakfast at Soulshine Bagels. We talked about going for a hike or some other active endeavor, but we ended up taking a boat tour of Lake Placid, which turned out to be very interesting. The boat’s driver told about the history of the lake, both from a geological and human settlement perspective. She pointed out the estates of some well-known and some not-so-well-known people along the lake shore.

After the boat ride, we walked around town and browsed the shops. We went back to the Placid Planet bike shop; I bought a couple pairs of socks. We had lunch at the brewery; I had a cheeseburger, another smoked porter, and a dessert called Chocolate Perversion. It was chocolate cake, with layers of chocolate icing, covered with chocolate ice cream, chocolate mousse, whipped cream, chocolate chips, and chocolate cookie sprinkles. We looked at the two other bike shops in town, Maui North and High Mountain Cyclery. I bought a Gramicci t-shirt at a store called Island Mountain.

It was getting close to dinner time, and it started raining lightly. I rode my bike back to camp. Dinner was under the shelter at the Showgrounds. During Tour Talk afterwards, I got a photo of the final appearance of Panty Man. I haven’t explained this one yet–Panty Man is Brian Hall from Tulsa. He belongs to a club called Team Crude, and they own a bus that they use to go as a group to different bike tours, usually RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa). One of their traditions is wearing women’s panties over their bike shorts. Every Sunday during the tour, when the staff has been introducing themselves to the new riders for the week, he would jump into the center of the group, wearing one of his (disturbingly many) pairs of panties. Sometimes he would be accompanied by a “guest” Panty-Man; this week his guest was Bruce.

After dinner, I cleaned my bike; many other people did the same, as they were pretty grimy after the couple rainy riding days we had last week. We also got our gear organized to prepare for our final week of riding.