As I mentioned in the post from Thursday, 7-20, I spent that night at an old inn, Waybury, one of the oldest in the state. The next morning, I discovered something there that was quite a surprise. If you were to try to guess what would be the least likely thing to come across in the lobby of an inn that has been in operation for over 200 years, what would you say that might be?

Well, if your guess was a broadcast booth for a live radio talk show, you would be right! Yes, this is where Bruce Newbury, sometimes known as the “Food Dude,” regularly broadcasts a talk show known as Talk of the Town. He is known as the Food Dude because a lot of his programming deals with food, wine, and dining out. Here is the Food Dude at his microphone, right in the lobby of the Waybury Inn.

Bruce was very interested in my trip, and I enjoyed talking with him about the radio business. He indicated that his talk show call-in activity had picked up quite a bit following the death that day of Tony Bennett at age 96.

As host of the Food Dude and having served as the setting for the exterior scenes of the Newhart television series, the Waybury Inn has an influence that extends beyond its home in East Middlebury, but its roots in that community run deep, and have for a long time. Here is a photo of an award the inn received for having hosted a ham supper fundraiser for the Middlebury Fire Department every year for 62 years.

The sign below was posted on the bathroom door of my room at the inn. Thankfully, there was no one in the bathroom, and I didn’t need to test my dancing skills.

I had a short ride yesterday (Friday, 7-21) to Middlebury, VT and spent the afternoon walking around the Middlebury College campus in a thunderstorm and doing laundry. I saw this large sign next to the road in front of a dairy farm on the outskirts of Middlebury which I thought was interesting. Note evidence of all the rainfall we’ve had in this area–and this was before the storms that day.

On the Middlebury campus, I stopped to see the place where our son Andy completed an intensive Chinese study program. Middlebury is known for its language programs, which require that students make a “formal commitment to speak, listen, read, and write the language of study as the only means of communication for the entire summer session.” Here is Forest Hall, site of the Chinese program.

According to this marker commemorating the work of pioneer educator Emma Willard, the first college training for women in the United States took place at Middlebury, from 1814 to 1819, under her leadership.

Today, 7-22 (Happy Birthday, Billy!), I rode a somewhat meandering 15-mile route from Middlebury to Shoreham, VT. Shoreham is only five miles from the ferry across Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga, NY that I plan to take on Monday morning. We were unable to secure any lodging in Ticonderoga over the weekend, so I have intentionally slowed down my progress west and stayed in towns east of there the past couple days.

This morning, I decided to take a MapQuest route for cyclists out of Middlebury that looked scenic and that was shown to be partly on a bike trail. This turned out to be a big mistake. This “trail” was perhaps suitable for a mountain bike in good weather but was not at all appropriate for a road bike like I am riding, and certainly not in bad weather. Yesterday’s rain had caused Otter Creek to flood the trail, and I needed to dismount and walk the bike through a lot of mud and smelly water. The mosquitoes were quite ferocious there. I could have turned around, but I would have needed to walk back through mud I had already traversed, so I kept hoping the trail would get better. It did, but it took longer than I wanted. Here is a photo I took from the trail showing how close the fast-moving waters of the creek were.

A lot of the MapQuest route was on dirt roads, not ideal, but there was a lot of pretty Green Mountain country all around me.

Tonight, I am staying at the Shoreham Inn, which is even older than the Waybury Inn–it was founded in 1799, 11 years before Waybury. Andrew and Elizabeth Done are the owners/operators, and Andrew was kind enough to find an old towel for me to use in cleaning the mud off my bike and shoes.