COOPERSTOWN ON THE FLY

DAY THREE started as usual with breakfast at the Coyote Cafe and then we proceeded to the top of some nearby mountain where Kelly dropped me off so I could zoom downhill on my road bike for a couple miles. Ten minutes later, I met Kelly at the bottom, still flush with the adrenaline rush of going crazy fast on a bicycle, with tight turns, shear drop-offs, uneven pavement, eye-popping views and cars zipping by, knowing that one small mistake and I would be a slick red stain on the road.

Kelly was happy to shuttle me to the mountaintops and I did two more burn runs that morning, the last one ending in baseball city, Cooperstown. Cooperstown reminded me of Gettysburg, but with a baseball theme. Huge crowds of people, mostly families with sugar-pumped kids, swarmed around the quaint streets where every shop and restaurant is named after some baseball legend like Joe DiMaggio or Carl Yastrzemski. And I have never seem so many people sporting baseball caps, each one with the logo of their favorite major league team.

We didn’t go into the Baseball Hall of Fame because there was a long line but we walked around its manicured grounds and checked out the “home of baseball“, historic Doubleday Field (1920), where special commemorative baseball games like the Hall of Fame Classic and the Cooperstown Classic are still played each summer. I especially liked the scoreboard in front of the museum which posts the latest league standings and scores from the previous day.

Cooperstown is a fun town to explore by foot with its attractive collection of stately buildings, grand houses, and spiffy churches, including the tiny church where Susan B. Anthony started the women’s rights movement.

Cooperstown has always been a summer refuge for New York City’s rich and famous. And their seasonal homes have that polished style that whispers seductively, “Old Money.”

After an hour of walking the leafy Cooperstown streets, lined with tall oak and maple trees, Kelly and I wandered over to the historic Otesaga Hotel on Lake Otsega — How’s that for a tongue twister? — at the headwaters of the mighty Susquehanna River.

According to the website “Historic Hotels of America”: “It is not hard to imagine the finger lake region of frontier days when you stay at The Otesaga Resort Hotel. Otesaga, named for the Iroquois word for “ A Place of Meetings,” is located on the southern shore of Lake Otsego in Cooperstown, New York, and ranks as one of America’s original grand lakeside hotels. Architect Percy Griffin created the classic Neo-Georgian design for the hotel, which includes the noted wood-columned portico and cone-capped cupola. Overlooking the famed “Glimmerglass” lake of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, The Otesaga welcomes its guests and opens its doors each year in mid-April and closes for the winter after Thanksgiving. Since 1909, avid golfers, vacationers and others have been drawn to the resort for its beautiful scenic surroundings, elegant accommodations, and enjoyable resort atmosphere.”

To be honest, all those creaky old seasonal hotels with their musty 1935 smell, hearken back to the bygone glory days of Robber Baron America and they give off a sort of creep “The Shining” vibe.

After checking out the Cooperstown Farmers Market, an Americana classic housed inside an old brick warehouse in the city center, we drove up the west side of the lake, past the expansive Farmer’s Museum and its assortment of old farmhouses; then past the world-renowned Fenimore Art Museum and its world famous collection of Indian and folk art; and finally, we cruised by the grey, barn-like, Alice Busch Opera Theater (as in Budweiser Beer money) where fancy pants patrons of the annual summer Glimmerglass Opera Festival paraded inside for their midday culture fix. The opera festival gives off a distinctly pretentious odor and if you dine at one of their hangouts, like the Rose & Kettle in Cherry Valley, be prepared for an unwanted lecture or performance. I was mightily tempted to give them the Blutarsky “BULLSHIT!” cough one night when one particularly obnoxious asshole started singing endlessly while the young opera acolytes around him swooned.

Kelly and I took a completely different cultural approach and ended another stellar day with a round of golf at the Meadow Links Executive Golf Course before the usual afternoon rain deluge rolled in with a rainbow finish.

We ate dinner that night at the local sports bar called the Tryon Inn because Kelly wanted to watch the Yankees game and it was the only bar or restaurant in Cherry Valley that had a TV with fairly reliable reception. Which brings me to the most surprising thing about my trip to upstate New York, and that’s the incredibly spotty communication. And I mean EVERY type of communication that people in urban areas take for granted. Internet was non-existent. WiFi the same. E-mail? Forget it. Everyone has satellite TV, but if it’s stormy, or even cloudy, the satellite signal annoyingly vanishes. In a place where it rains or snows about 300 days out of the year this can be a real problem. And one cloudy morning I discovered that it even shut down my Sirius radio signal in my car.

This lack of modern day communication options just might explain why people in rural areas like Cherry Valley voted for a con man like Donald Trump. They don’t get much news and simply didn’t know any better.