Beacon

Last weekend I drove up the Hudson Valley to visit my sister. Last time I was in the States, she lived in Ithaca, which is a five hour drive up into the Finger Lakes region. However, this spring her employment relocated to Peekskill in the Hudson Valley, so she relocated as well to a quaint town up the river from Peekskill called Beacon. I hadn't yet been to her new digs, and since I'd heard so many nice things about it and she had been begging me to come up, I drove up last Friday after work. One of the nicest things about her new town is that it is an easy drive (save that short bit in Connecticut that confuses you) from where I am on the Island. Setting off into the sunset, the magnificent skies foretold an awesome weekend.

Awesome.

The drive was smooth (save for the Connecticut bit) , and I arrived to her place around nine. It was a cute little two-bedroom cottage tucked back into the woods off a rural road, a real homey, quiet place. I found the tiny house quite cute and comforting; we lit the fireplace and cooked the shark meat I had brought for dinner and drank craft brews and caught up late into the night, giggling and reminiscing.

Awesome yard sale find.

Here I must go on a brief tangent about Margaret's life. Although she might not like to admit it, she is a full time nanny for three young children, for which I give her much credit. She does this for about 9 or 10 hours a day 5 days a week, something I don't even want to imagine doing. On top of this, her car is old, and because she doesn't want to put anymore money into it, she uses it as infrequently as possible, taking it out only to go grocery shopping or to work on rainy days. Hence, she usually takes the train to work. This seems normal, until you consider the fact that she lives about three miles from the train station in Beacon. She get to the station by riding her bike, a rickety old ladies' Schwinn she picked up at a yard sale for a couple bucks (the damn thing could be an antique). She told me this was her daily routine in her usual nonchalance, noting the difficulties of riding up and downhill on a three-gear bicycle. To say the least, I was amazed. Six miles, everyday, and 9 hours of kids on top of it. Sitting and listening to my sister tell me about her life, I looked around her little bungalow, her personality. How fucking cool she is!, I thought.  She moved to this town alone, not knowing anyone, and set up a little cottage with her cat Milo; she rides her rickety old Schwinn to the train station every day, her pretty wavy blonde hair blowing in the breeze; she goes to yard sales and sews her own curtains and goes hiking and bakes cookies, answering to nobody and not giving a shit about what anyone thinks. What a cool fucking sister I have, I thought,  and I immediately felt intense pride for her: that's my sister, a more awesome person than I could ever be.

La casa di Margaret

Home Sweet Home!!

The next day we were up early, stimulated by poached eggs and bagels. We had planned on hiking Mt. Beacon, so we were up early and out the door.
"Mt. Beacon is an asskicker of a trail," Margaret warned. I recalled my hike up Campaccio in July, all 1500 meters of it. "Bring it on," I said. Truthfully, I was correct in my gloating; Mt. Beacon was only a mile hike up, and while it wasn't as difficult as my summer alpine hike up to the lake, the steep switchbacks left me panting and Margaret lagging. Nonetheless, the views at the top were rewarding, and a climb up the mountaintop firetower provided enhanced vistas of the valley below.

Margaret, catching up.

Come on, let's go!!

Basking in the sun.

Beacon, from Mt. Beacon.

Remnants of an old funicular system.

We made it!

Looks like the fear of heights is genetic.

After lunch on the peak and coming down from Mt. Beacon, Margaret wanted to show me the town of Cold Spring, where the family she worked for lived. Just a short drive down the road from Mt. Beacon, it was cute, your stereotypical Main St. USA town with one grocery and one pharmacy and about 20 antique stores. I was excited about this; I love antiquing, hadn't done it in a while, and Cold Spring Main St. was the perfect place to reacquaint myself with this hobby. More specifically, I was looking for old typewriters. However, I only manged to find one, a broken old Royal for $80---overpriced, like most of the antique stores in shee-shee Cold Spring. I didn't find anything worth springing for on Main St., but a few blocks away we found a place called "Pop's Barn Sale". Pop, a cheery fellow, was parked out front and invited us to have a friendly look around. I found a few kitchen bowls I liked, and Margaret found a table for her new TV.
"Hey Pop, how much for this table?"
"Hmm....ten bucks?"
"Cool, what about these bowls?"
"Mmmmm.....twelve."
"I'll give you ten."
"How about eleven?"
"No, ten." I said.
"No."
"OK," I settled. "Eleven." I handed him $21, and we said thank you and began on our way. Suddenly, Pop ran out of the barn. "Wait, wait!" he called, "You forgot your change!"
"No, I gave you 21: ten for the table and eleven for the bowls." Pop laughed and shook his head. "No, no! It was ten for the table and a dollar for the bowls."
"Oh come on man, you're too honest for your own good!" I suddenly felt guilty about trying to bargain with him.
"Well, I only have eight singles to give you as change," he said.
"Oh yes, that's fine no worries! I'm sorry about that! Thanks so much! It's so nice to see there are still honest people out there." And it's true. Pop bid us farewell and we went on our merry way, happy with our purchase.
This bargain hunting went on all weekend with me and Margaret. We're both fans of yard sales, and since the weather was particularly nice last weekend, there was a plethora of yards sales. Needless to say, it took us a long time to get wherever we were going this weekend. "Yard sale!" I'd exclaim while riding down the road. Margaret slammed on the brakes---"Where!?!"---and we'd turn around to poke around in peoples unwanted stuff. This made the weekend even more awesome, as we found tons of cool stuff. It's a bit like treasure-hunting in a way....except you never know what you're going to find!!

I see a few treasures here I wish I had bought.

Later that afternoon, we went back to Beacon and showered up and took the train to Peekskill. Margaret's boss moved to Peekskill to become the brewmaster of Peekskill Brewery, and he and a bunch of Margaret's friends would be working the beer tent at a festival, the Hudson Hop and Harvest festival. Of course, this meant free beer, so we were looking forward to it.

It's a good thing Margaret was our in in the beer tent, because the festival was a mob scene. The food/drink ticket line was a mile long, and the wait for beer was even longer, because there was only one tent. "I waited an hour for beer!" I heard one woman complain. "Sucker," I thought. Whenever we needed a refill Margaret would just slip round the back and Chief would hook her up. In actuality, and in sympathy with the poor folks who stood in line, the folks who organized the festival were clearly unprepared for the mob of people that descended on Peekskill. Not enough ticket tents, not enough beer tents, and not enough food tents. Trying to get any kind of meal/refreshment guaranteed a wait of at least half an hour. Moreover, while there was supposed to be live music, it just seemed that one band played a short set and the next one had a three-hour tune-up. We met Margaret's friend Jesse there, and after waiting a collective 45 minutes for food, we agreed that the festival was lame. "Let's go to D.P. Quinn's," said Jesse. He was from Peekskill, so he knew all the places. "It's just up the road." We saw Chief on our way out. "Quinn's?" he said. "What are you going there for?"
"Is it bad?" asked Margaret.
"You'll know when you get there," Chief said.
He was right. Quinn's was a downright dive of a bar. Next to a busy road, there was only one bald, mean looking fellow in the whole place, frowning over his beer. He and the bartender leered at us as we came in. "What the fuck do you want?" the bartender asked. It turns out Jesse's brother was the bartender in this dive, and was actually a nice fellow, bought us a round and helped us get the dusty jukebox in the corner working. Jesse ordered a pizza and we hung around for an hour playing pool and darts, the bar to ourselves save the grumpy skinhead at the bar.

I lost, of course.

Tip for the bartender.

After a while, we decided it would be best if we headed back to Beacon, so we headed back into town. I wanted to stop and use the bathroom before getting on the train, so we stopped in the brewery, which was very busy. I was waiting a long time for the men's room, so I asked a guy standing there if someone was in there. "Yeah, someone's in there." After a minute, the door opened, a girl came out, and grabbed her friend and went back in, locking the door. Now I was pissed. I only had to pee and I had been waiting for like 10 minutes. A line was forming. It was clear that the guy standing there was friends with the two girls. "Is she getting sick in there? If she is she shouldn't be in the men's room, she needs to go to the ladies room or go outside. This is the men's room, and now there's a line because of her!"
"Just go wait in line for the other men's room," he said.
"No, I've been waiting here pretty long, I don't want to go there, I want to go here. This is a men's room, why is she even in there?" At this point the door unlocked and the drunken culprit emerged in a huff.
"Who said that?" she asked.
"I did," I said.
"You know what? FUCK YOU. Fuck you asshole!" she yelled. People dining turned around to stare. She then proceeded to grab my drink to try and upend it in my face. I grabbed her wrist, and before she could get her other hand on it, her friends rushed in and pulled her away. Margaret was livid. "What the fuck, bitch!?!" she yelled. The drunken idiot was escorted away by her friends, and I finally got to use the bathroom. Margaret was flustered about the incident for the rest of the night, but I just shook my head and thought, "Some people...."

This is where you get the train back to the city, crazy bitch.

The next morning after an omelet we headed into Beacon because there was a bunch of stuff going on. We went to the Sunday flea market, walked down Main St. and looked at the classic car show, and bought some produce and cider at the farmer's market ('tis the season--I love cider; and not that cider amore--it's cloudy and non-alcoholic here in the States!) before heading down to the riverside park. There was a pumpkin festival going on, so we were excited to check it out.
It was by far a better festival than the Hp and Harvest festival the night before---plenty of food, good music, stuff for the kids, a beautiful view of the river, and while there was no beer, there was pumpkin pie, and plenty of it!! Margaret and I stocked up on food and sat down to listen to the band play and admire the cool fall weather and the view of the Hudson.

Yes, this is why everyone in the world stereotypes Americans as fat.

'Tis the season!

Nothing more American than bluegrass and pumpkin pie in the park.

 On a final note, I just have to say that Beacon is awesome---the whole Hudson Valley is, and I look forward to many more trips up to visit Margaret, especially now that she's only a couple hours away. Thanks for a great time Margaret!