The public is invited to our Annual Meeting on December 13 at 7 PM in the community room of the historic Grooms Tavern.  The meeting will be brief and to the point.  Desert will follow with a great raffle of prizes including a weekend get-away at the new Marriott Courtyard at Mohawk Harbor, a Rotary Red gift basket, a tote of local apples, and other prizes.

Don’t miss you chance to win. Renew your membership and increase your chances; bring a friend who joins and you both increase your chances to win!

Come mingle and jingle on the Mohawk Towpath Byway.

I had the privilege of representing the Mohawk Towpath Byway today as we received a grant from the Albany County Convention and Visitors Bureau of The Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region to implement and improve connection to the Byway’s cell phone based self guided tour. Congratulations to all of us who are helping to make this project a success!

We will be seeing more of these signs starting on the eastern end of the Byway.  With more signs we are sure to get more use of the self guided tour.  With more use we may finally see some meaningful visitor data at least for the demographic that uses personal electronic devises as they tour the Byway.

Curious to hear what is all the fuss?  Call 518-649-9990 to hear what this is all about …and you don’t need a cell phone to try it.  Stop 10, 11 or stop 12 are the cool ones in Albany County!

As we wrap up the details of this year’s duathlon I can’t help but be grateful to all our volunteers for what they do to make the event a success.  It all starts with a term that we don’t use enough, “stewardship,” continues with a mantra of “safety,” under laid by a sense of “fun,”  with a lot of “teamwork” thrown in, and wrapped up with “satisfaction”.  In many ways the event, meant to be a fund raising event, just reflects what goes on every day on the Byway.

Stewardship is what we all do, day to day, to make our communities in the best shape for our visitors whether from next door or from the other side of the earth.  It may be keeping ourselves and our homes in the best of shape, working with friends to improve our communities recreational assets, or a roadside cleanup to make it easier for highway maintenance and safety.

Safety means we had done our homework and field work to make sure we had clean roadways (other than the plethora of “political speak” and one porcupine carrion in an unused travel lane).  We had sufficient volunteers to keep normal highway traffic civil, participants on course, and EMTs on standby in case of an incident.

For fun there were exciting moments, jubilant finishers, smiles, awards and rewards, constructive feedback, sated appetites among fall foliage at it’s absolute peak.

Teamwork was amazing from roadside cleanups, to packet stuffing, communication efforts, policing and marshaling, results posting, post race feed crews, and cleanup crews.

The more analytical of us insist on numbers to help define our success.  We had 121 participants registered, 53 of them were “serious athletes”, 18 of them in teams, and an amazing 47.6 % female.  A total of 105 people started, one biker was successfully returned to the start after a tire blew, and 104 victorious.  We had a record 11 paid event sponsors.  One of these sponsors has employees scooping 200 generous victory scoops of ice cream for competitors and volunteers over the next few weeks. When the books are finally closed we will have raised over $5,700 for the Byway Coalition and Friends of the Byway.

No matter how you look at it we all had a good time, can share and celebrate the success, and rest peacefully on our satisfaction.

Photos on this page by Base Twelve Photography.

Sara Foss in her Tuesday, October 4 column in the Gazette is so correct, “spot-on” with her conclusion that we all have to work together to make this Capital Region a world class destination. Right now the international traveller may venture out of the New York Metropolitan area to visit the New York State Museum or “the track”. But then they’re to the airport and gone. If it’s a nice day they might notice the expansive grey rock outcrops or an unnaturally straight ribbon of reflected sky as they look out the plane’s porthole and wonder what else they missed. But they are gone.

The expansive grey rock outcrop, of course, mark the northern edge of the Helderbergs.  The unnaturally straight ribbon of reflected sky is the old Erie Canal through the Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve.  No matter where you go on this earth you can find a person who has a perception of the Erie Canal as well as the Pyramids or the Great Wall.  She or he might not speak your language, but the words are international.

By working together we, no matter which county we call home, can share our varied heritage, show off our changing seasons, draw them to our unique recreational resources, and share our “sense of place”. Who knows, the international traveller might even come back for another discovery. We in turn might learn more of the story of our guests and where they call home.

Those who leave the Mohawk Towpath Byway to find a Pokemon will be shot!

Seriously, there are some interesting stories evolving about these new wave encounters on the Byway.  My closest encounter was to see Maryanne Mackey drawing a Pokemon character while answering questions by visitors to a recent Byway booth set up at the Schenectady County Historical Society’s Canal Fest.

As you visit the Byway what is the strangest story you have heard?

These individual stories are what brings the Mohawk Towpath Byway to life.  Share them with me, with friends, and with your neighbors.  There’s something new on the Byway every day.

Have a voice in how our community is presented to visitors on the Byway.  You are invited to a meeting of the Friends of the Mohawk Towpath Byway on Tuesday, June 14 at 7 PM at the Clifton Park Halfmoon Library at 475 Moe Road in Clifton Park.  The agenda includes:

• Creating a birding trail in the Vischer Ferry Preserve
• Improving a riverwalk trail from Clutes
• Brainstorming a worthy project to apply for grant money
• Organizing the 14th Annual Duathlon
• Planning an Erie Canal Bicentennial Celebration

Come join the fun.  The public is invited!

Several members including a majority of the Board of Directors met on a recent Saturday morning to review and update our organization’s Action Plan.  Facilitated by Ray Patterson, one of our charter members, we had a productive session that reviewed our mission statement and vision, our progress toward achieving that vision, and mapped out initiatives that would get us closer to that vision.  This review will be most helpful as we put together a budget.  If you are a member and would like to see what we are proposing for our Action Plan please contact Paul Olund, President or Eric Hamilton, Membership Director.