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A half year ago Georgena Terry invited me to speak at her annual fundraiser, Wild Goose Chase. There is a wildfowl refuge called Blackwater out in eastern Maryland where there are some fine country roads and lots of waterways and of course habitat destruction. Terry put bikers and birds together, and I would get to entertain the couple hundred riders who attend…

Which would give me a chance to visit…..

A kiwi gal living in Maryland (Carol Bell) whose idea of a nice ride is the Paris-Brest-Paris, or any great 1200 km brevet. A decade ago she flew out to Taj Mahovel to unlock the mysteries of mud and offroad decorum. Her husband Eric had prodded her into it even though she’s an accomplished roadie.

Reader, we made the wombat bond. You know women have who wish they had a soul sister? Yah, that kind of loving bond, regardless of distance, time, and other trivial impediments. We kept in touch, I’d remember her wedding anniversary (which she’d missed, to come to my one-woman class) and she’d ship fancy tea from the remote corners of the planet. This would be a perfect time to finally meet Eric, and visit the 160 year old house they rescued from melting into the swamp, and see their family (a pair of impressively mellow dogs and five cats who think they are dogs).

Then Tom from The Bicycle Escape in Frederick offered significant assistance by letting me have a ~~platform to wig out on,~~ er, a chance to give a presentation at his store the weekend before….so I sewed all week, lace on cashmere, weaving sample on canvas, and of course extremely hole-y, cut-up, deconstructed sweaters of all sorts…to offer for sale.

Hopped on a plane at ten am, the first of two.

Alas, waiting three hours in Denver, I slept through the announcement that the Baltimore flight was boarding. This happens. Luckily there was a second one (two and a half hours later still). I should pin a note to my sweater…like automobiles, airport lounges put me straight into a sort of daze…

I had my magic day (doing absolutely nothing but take a walk, eat and talk) in Balmer.

Then we drove the extremely long hour to Frederick, and almost didn’t find The Bicycle Escape (at least one person got as far as the shopping mall at 1700 Kingfisher Drive, but turned around at the Starbucks, and damn, I guess we should have clarified how to find this nice little modern bike shop).
The talk was fun, furious, and all over the map. There might have been 20 people there, all expecting something different from the queen of Talking Dirty & Tedium Escape as a lifestyle/art form .

Maybe I should devote time to what I said?

Nah…you know it all, already…

Geopolitics, America’s wars around the world, the OBCD epidemic..the importance of free education and health care and a shrunken militia) as they relate to bicycles…

The next day it was Mary Costello’s turn to babysit me, and we rode a pleasant loop (Paul’s trail, plus a couple of ponds) up in the watershed around Frederick.

A few months earlier some stone mason artists had done some wonderful stuff….