I've hardly been out on the bike - eek, time's flying by - but took a great spin along my beloved Old Champlain Canal Trail at the end of September.

Just barely a hint of Autumn in the leaves, still warm on a sunny Saturday afternoon. You can see how dry it had been; whenever I'd been here previously, this area was all water and swamp.

One heron, one rabbit, no Canadian geese to torment me, but one wooly caterpillar, which may be the scariest thing of all! Sadly, I forgot to evaluate the stripe as a predictor of the upcoming winter weather. Just seeing it was enough to give me the pre-Winter shivers.

But as I was riding over Lock 2, I saw these sailboats. It was great! not because they are so fabulous, but because earlier that day I had been paddling on the Mohawk and they passed us. It took them about 3 hours to lock through E7 and the Flight of Locks (E6-E2).

That's pretty cool.