Flight of Five

So there I was... at the docks in Waterford NY waiting for Kim to arrive so she could go through the first set of five locks with me.  A guy named Rick on a 40' trawler started talking to me who had just come the length of the Erie Canal from west to east.  I would be going from east to west.  He was from California and boated the Pacific Northwest for years but always wanted to do the Erie Canal.  So he went online, found the boat he wanted, negotiated the price he wanted (which was a great price), flew out to a port on Lake Erie, fixed the boat to his liking and off he went.  When I left him he was heading south down the Hudson River with a finishing point in Florida or the Bahamas.  When he gets there he will sell the boat, at a profit I'm sure,  and fly home to California.  How cool is that?  He gave me some great tips for doing the Erie Canal single-handed since Kim would only be helping for one day.  Speaking of Kim...
She showed up right on time and the next day she drove the car to lock 7 leaving it there and rode her bicycle 16 miles back on a bike trail along side the canal to where the boat was at Waterford.  We spent her 50th birthday the following day doing what is known as the "Flight of Five" or the "Waterford Flight"on the Erie Canal.  These five locks, in close proximity to each other, would lift our boat 169 ft and constitutes the greatest verticle lift in the shortest distance of any locks in the world.  This is twice as high as the total lift of the Panama Canal.   It seemed aprapoe that Kim was celebrating her own "Flight of Five" and so after each lock she would tell me what major events happened in her life during that decade.  A few tears were shed as we went through the locks and the decades.   Not by me of course.  
I went on alone after this and I am tied to a wall at the entrance of Oneida Lake after going through locks 21 and 22 earlier today.  Lock 17 was the toughest with it's 40 ft elevation, the highest on the Erie Canal.  Imagine coming up to a four story building with a long rope hanging from the roof to the ground.  You hang onto this verticle rope trying to keep your 17,000 lb boat from moving all over the lock chamber while water floods in to fill the lock.  My arms were so tired that night.  I have a four hour trip across the lake tomorrow so I'll say goodnight.