I'm beginning to feel like we live on the Erie Canal. For the second time in twenty days, in our tiny house on the water, our 26 foot long, 9.5 feet wide tugboat named Green Eyes, we are trapped between two locks on the Erie Canal.
Upstate New York has seen massive amounts of rain this summer. Then water levels rise, and logs begin to float down the Mohawk River, the waterway that makes up the Erie Canal. Trees and debris clog locks, drag buoys off their marks, and bend boat propellers. The New York Canal Corporation, the body that oversees management of all the canals in New York including the Erie, halts all river traffic and closes the locks until barges with huge cranes can clear the canal and make it safe to navigate again. Locks can be closed for a day, a few days, a week, or longer. It has happened a lot this season. We heard that in 2018, several boats were stuck inside a lock for six weeks.
The first time it happened to us was while we were inside Lock 11 near Amsterdam, New York. It was our first lock of the day and we had only come a few miles up river before entering the lock. The current was strong and as we approached the lock, we could see that water was raging over the dam. Green Eyes bounced and shuddered over standing waves. From the helm, Scott cursed and dodged logs that appeared out of nowhere and came perilously close to the boat or propeller. The current pushed us forward and back and sideways. Scott propelled Green Eyes into the lock at full speed. Once inside the lock chamber, he slammed the throttle into reverse to prevent us from crashing into the chamber wall. We pulled up along the wall and grabbed on to ropes that hang from the top of the lock. The doors shut behind us, and the water began to fill the lock. Just before the doors were about to open, the lock keeper came to the boat and said, "Sorry folks. Due to high water and dangerous currents, the canal is closed. Exit the lock and pull up to the wall above the lock. You can stay there until the canal re-opens."
There were bollards and rings to tie to, and there were three electrical pedestals along the wall. "At least we have power," Scott said as we secured the boat with dock lines.
I looked around me. There were worse places to be stuck. The river fronted a small city park. There was a half acre of recently mowed grass. A picnic table sat under a large tree. Beyond the park were railroad tracks, and a commercial section of Main Street. The lock itself, and the Lock 11 office, sat about a seven minute walk behind the boat. "We also have a lot of geese," I said. "I count at least sixty."
The lock keeper was kind enough to let us use his shower and toilet during business hours, 7:00 to 5:00. Given our small capacity holding tank, which has a maximum of twenty-two flushes before things hit the fan, I made certain dietary adjustments. Good bye granola for breakfast, hello cheese quesadillas. Nonetheless, we were still at the door to the office when Mark arrived each morning at 6:30 a.m.
There were two really great Italian Restaurants within walking distance, and our favorite ice cream, Stewarts, was but an eight minute bike ride away. (Scott was a prince and rode back from Stewarts one day with two bags of ice in his backpack.) All in all, not a bad place to be stuck. Except for the geese. The average adult Canadian Goose consumes about four pounds of grass in a day and they poop around every twelve minutes resulting in up to two pounds of poop per day per goose. When we commented on the number of geese in the flock, Mark cheerily said, "Yep. They stay here the entire season." The grass and path to the lock office were covered in poo ranging in size from Tootsie Roll to small cigar.
We were stuck at Lock 11 for eight days. One day of dodging goose poo several times a day is fine, but eight days is too much poo. It smelled like a horse stable, but not in the the way when you're invited to go for a horseback ride and you walk in to the stable, inhale deeply and exclaim, "Oh boy! I'm going for a horsey ride!" It was more like when you walk into a stable that no one has mucked in a year. It was cloying. No matter how careful we were, it got on the deck of the boat. It got in the boat. Even Pika was offended.
The lock keeper ended up letting three more boats through the lock that first day, so we had the company of other boaters, which was nice. If only one of us had a broom. There was no water where we were tied up so we couldn't hose it down either.
We never knew when the canal would re-open. But every morning we were up and ready to go by 5:30, only to be told, "Maybe tomorrow."
On the eighth day, the locks finally re-opened. "Let's get as far as we can today," Scott suggested as he cast off and I drove us away from the wall. We went through six locks that day, some three miles apart, some ten miles apart. And "locking through" each lock takes time, especially with four to five boats in each lock. Boats enter one at a time and nothing happens until the last boat is secure. It's not stressful, usually, but it can be tiring doing multiple locks in one day.
At Lock 17, the tallest lift on the Erie Canal, because of the way the lock filled with water, boats could only use the port-side ropes. So that we could all fit, we had to raft to Lee and Katie's boat, a Nimble Nomad.
After the doors were shut, the water rose 40', which took around 45 minutes. We exited the lock, not in a mood to cruise any more that day. Just around the first bend, we spied Little Falls Harbor. We didn't even have to discuss it. We were tired. Little Falls beckoned. It had a short floating dock and a long-ish fixed concrete wall. Inside a tidy, well-lit building was a laundry room, clean restrooms, and an air-conditioned lounge. There was power and water right next to the boat. We were glad we stopped. But later, over sundowners on the aft deck, while we watched storm clouds build, Scott said, "Maybe we should have gone further like the other boaters did. What if they close the locks again?" I looked from the sky to some smooshed goose poo on the gunwale and said, "What ever happens, I'm not moving from this dock until I scrub this boat from bow to stern." And in the morning, scrub I did. Wash, rinse, repeat. Then I scrubbed the bedroom carpet and I washed the wood floors. I did laundry. I washed Pika's bed. I washed everything in site until I could no longer detect a whiff of goose poo. And then, they closed the locks again. So far, we've spent five days at Little Falls Harbor waiting for the canal to re-open.
We made good use of our time during both lock-downs. While at Lock 11, we rented a panel van in Schenectady. It was the only vehicle available in a forty mile radius.
We took a long drive along the Erie Canal and stopped at towns and museums we wouldn't get to visit from the water, and we stopped at some of the original 1800's hand-dug Erie Canal locks.
We drove to Burlington, Vermont to pick up mail that had been delivered after we had left Lake Champlain, and we visited Fort Ticonderoga where oxen, and kids in costumes looked like they would keel over from the heat at any moment.
It was great to have a vehicle to drive over the mounds of goose turds, instead of walking on them.We drove to Target and did laundry at a laundromat with other boaters. One day, I even got a pedicure at a place in a shopping center next to Walmart. "Do you want to get a pedicure too Scott?"
"No. I do not want any of that nastame stuff."
"Nastame? Do you mean Namaste? What an instructor says after yoga?"
"Yeah. I don't want any of that."
"But you loved it when we did yoga together at the Y. And remember in Colombo, Sri Lanka? We got those leg massages on that super hot day? You loved it."
"Yeah, but the yoga at the Y smelled of sweat and basketballs, not pretentious or lavender-scented. And as far as a pedicure goes, it would feel weird to have a strange woman rubbing my legs. That foot massage in Sri Lanka, well it wasn't weird. They were guys and they sat on the stools like a shoe salesmen would. And I remember it was a Dr. Scholl's place. It felt... scientific, not indulgent." So, while Scott, with all his testosterone, shopped for supplies for the boat, I walked in to see if they had time for a quick pedi.
All the mani-pedi salons I've seen the world over are usually staffed by capable women, mostly from Vietnam. But this one had no female mani-pedicurists. They were all men. They were from China and they spoke no English, except to say, "Pick color." All I can say is that it was very weird. I felt the way I imagined Scott would have felt if a strange woman were massaging his legs. It was discombobulating. Not scientific-y at all. Certainly not relaxing. I didn't know where to look and I couldn't engage in conversation except to say, "No color." So it was a silent, uncomfortable experience.
In Little Falls, we take walks into town for breakfast or groceries or to look at one of the seven or eight churches they have within a five block radius.
There are three other boats stuck in Little Falls too so we get together for sundowners or delivery pizza. It's pretty here. It's a gazillion times better than the wall above Lock 11 and there are no geese. We can watch the water rise and fall through the day and wonder if the locks will open tomorrow. At night, Scott and I massage each others feet. It's not weird.
The other day we walked by a yoga studio in Little Falls. "Hah! Now THIS is my kind of yoga," Scott exclaimed. "Look at the poster, 'Inhale the good shit. Exhale the bullshit.'"
Wishing you a goose-free life and Nastame from the crew of Green Eyes, living on the Erie Canal.
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