Chapter Twenty-One
Plans within Plans
Staying well north and west of the Catskills, Jeri led them through an afternoon of more rural landscapes, more cookie-cutter suburbs and into the outskirts of a middling city. Bypassing the nearby capital of Albany, delayed by the diversions of earlier, they entered Schenectady at around three-thirty.
Smog hung over a sprawling, cindery stretch of train-yards. Empty, decaying industrial buildings and other infrastructure testified that they were still well inside the rust belt, though scenic Vermont lay just to the other side of the border. With the Green Mountains rising there, the Catskills below them and the Adirondacks above, they were surrounded by great places to bike and camp only hours away. Unfortunately they were stuck by their itinerary
