DAY 10 - THE HAUNTED MANSION

Today we manage to wake up in time for hotel breakfast. After all, it’s included. Becca still has yesterday’s unused meal voucher and is able to gift it to another hotel guest.  She is a benevolent Platinum Elite® goddess after all.  A family speaks French at the table next to us.  Our initial plan was to make it 60+ miles to Newark, NY today but we’re quickly learning that most of the hotels in that town are either already full or out of our price range. We spot what looks like a decent B&B in the tiny town of Clyde, only 45 miles away.  Why hadn’t we noticed this place before?  Probably because you can’t book online and as millennials we are inherently averse to talking on the phone.  We risk it, and when the mysterious man on the other end says his cheapest suite is available tonight, we pounce.  Guess we’ll be staying at the “historically haunted” Erie Mansion.  Get it?  Eerie?

We suit up in our awesome new Mello Velo attire and head out. Becca has new sunglasses and a new style of bike gloves with less padding and more “grippy” that she hopes will help alleviate the blisters between her thumbs and pointers. On our way out of Syracuse, we hug the perimeter of Onondaga Lake and pass through the New York State Fairgrounds.  There’s an entire network of smaller trails in this area, so we are constantly checking signage and maps to make sure we’re headed the right direction.

It’s a lot of off-road riding this morning until we reach the sleepy town of Weedsport.  We stop at a drug store for restrooms and more snacks just as it begins to rain again.  Fortunately, we are able to wait out the heaviest of the deluge under an awning.  We enjoy a lunch of leftover vegan poutine, caramel cold crew M&Ms, and blue Powerade. Sidenote: we have concluded that blue is the best flavor, across all sports drink brands, whatever flavor “blue” is, don’t @ us. After an hour the skies and radar are looking more forgiving, so we decide it’s time to continue.  After all, we told the strange man we’d arrive at his haunted mansion between 5:30 and 6:30, and we’d hate to keep him waiting.

In the afternoon, we are mostly riding on local back roads.  We go faster on the pavement but have to share the road with some cars that do not give a wide enough berth.  But we survive.

Despite the rain delay we emerge from a woody stretch of trail and arrive in Clyde earlier than anticipated.  A woman sticks her head out from what looks like a beautiful solarium and asks if we are tonight’s guests? We say we are, and she instructs us to come around the side of the house. What a relief that we won’t have to lug our steeds past the front lawn full of random statues and up the ornate front stairs!

Our host, Mark (the mysterious man from the phone earlier), welcomes us and directs us to store our very muddy bikes next to two pristine Rolls-Royces in his garage.  He has a whimsical look in his eyes, and a mustache that puts Marty’s to shame. He beckons us up the side stairs to the “Red Suite” where we’re staying.  Everything in the room that can be red is red. And not just red, but “Red Light District,” if you know what we mean. By this time it’s a little past 5:00, and Mark has a group coming for a tour of the rest of the mansion in twenty minutes. For $20 per person, we are welcome to tag along. Becca gets herself cleaned up in record time and when Mark knocks again at 5:30, she follows him out…

The Erie Mansion is as bizarre a place as Mark Wright is a person.  It’s easy to see why folks would think it’s haunted, even before hearing the ghost stories (or having the ghost of the Red Room drop the shower wand on your head as it did to Becca). It is 12,000 square feet and has 43 rooms. It was built by the prominent Ely family sometime in the 1800s, but fell into disarray after the children abandoned it. Every inch is now full of some of the oddest memorabilia Becca has ever seen, all of it collected and curated by Mark. He has everything: snake skins that stretch over 10 feet long, multiple Harley Davidsons parked in the living room, bearskin rugs in most rooms, and in the Honeymoon suite is the largest bed Becca has ever seen. The house has multiple doors and staircases that lead to nowhere, plus secret doors that DO lead to places hidden behind bookcases and inside of closets.  The basement is a veritable dungeon, complete with a graveyard of fake headstones, shackles from the pre-civil war era (arguably problematic), and a wine cellar.  Mark grew up a few towns south of here and bought the empty mansion for a song decades ago.  Between stints buying and selling houses, he made his career owning and operating a limousine company that caters to celebrities, hence the classic cars all over the property, and the “wall of fame” on the 2nd floor landing covered in signed 8x10s. If you ever find yourself in Clyde, NY, the 90 minutes of entertainment one gets from talking to this man and looking around his creepy place are well worth the price of admission.

Once Becca returns upstairs, we realize our dinner options are few.  It’s Sunday evening and this town has gone to bed.  Our leftovers and snacks having been consumed, we turn to our friend Google Maps and are thrilled when PaPa’s Pizzeria is both open and willing to deliver from down the street.  It would crush our sprits to have to go out in the rain again.

We cuddle up on the red couch for more Rugrats and some slices.  Bedtime in the red four-poster bed (which boasts a mirrored ceiling, gay erotica in the headboard bookcase, and erotic figurines on all the shelves) is soon to follow. Becca makes a note to send Mark her red makeup mirror to add to the bathroom decor.