My derriere recovered from writing that last post, and I wanted to tell you one more thing before we go back to the boat. Two more things, actually.

We’ve encountered so much kindness and generosity on this trip I had to create a category for it. I already told you about Bill’s tomatoes, the guy at Lock 17 in Little Falls who was going to give us a lift into town, and the lady at the Y. Well, today, we struck up a conversation with a very nice man from Rochester, NY about the folding bicycles we had in common. (Phill and I have only one folding bike between us. We ran out of time to buy a second, and we don’t really have the room at the moment to store it; doubling isn’t just for kids, so we’re getting by with one). Anyhow, the guy from Rochester gave us all kinds of advice on how to travel by plane, train or automobile with a folding bike as baggage. The ins and outs of carry-on vs stowed, how to transport the bike for free, etc. Very interesting.

Then another avid cyclist from Cohoes (pronounced Cuh-HOES), stops by and we talk a bit about what we’re up to and he tells us about some of his travels (Mt. Everest and Kathmandu!). He gave us his card, and said if we needed anything while we were in town, to give him a call. Very nice, but there’s more! After our chat we parted ways. We were just walking into the Visitor’s Centre to ask about the free WiFi (this happened before I did the Waiting in Waterford post), when we see the cyclist from Cohoes approaching us and he says “Hey Guys. Seeing as you only have one bike, do you want mine? I have, like, thirty of ’em in my garage at home.”

Isn’t that awesome? Bowled over by kindness, that’s what we were. We recovered and thanked him profusely for the unbelievably generous offer. We couldn’t possibly accept (how would he get back to Cohoes?) and besides we have no room. The deck of the boat is already starting to look like a bit of a yard sale. Still can’t believe it – had to tell you about it.

The second thing is that we just met a fellow Canadian headed south. He invited us over tonight for supper…he’s tied up at a dock with a few other people headed south, so we’ll probably make a few friends and learn something.

One more thing I’ll squeeze in here…on our way out of Lock 6, there were two guys fishing and the older one says “Havin’ Fun?” but it was more like an observation than a question. It must’ve started showing on our faces.

Anyways, back to boat…thanks for reading.