Harris Tweed of course!
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esYx93ibsrk]
Tamika, Money, and moi
•August 15, 2009 • 13 Comments
Vallejo has always been a sprawlsome wasteland, a car-and-condo intensive no man’s land that impeded a quick return to Marin via highway 37. I’ve never spent a minute there, unless it was gassing the car. So now it’s my home for the next 18 hours.
Bryan Reckamp put it best: “this must be the supply depot for all of America’s parking lots“.
We’re so close to the ocean. The bay (and Mt.Tamalpais) are already visible from the hills we came out of…
Half the gang has fled Vallejo: Arianna to see a friend in the hospital, Chris to leap into the ocean, much centrifugal force pulling the 21 of us out of our little electron cloud. God knows how they’ll get back on track, but my tea party at Taj Mahovel may not have any comers….
Tried to find a supermarket w/in lazy woman walking dist. from this Ramada…no luck; just Target, Super Nails, Radio Shack, and a dozen other useless to me stores. Marked contrast to the dead-empty malls of the East and the Midwest…has no one told California we’re in a depression? Or are we so inured to living in a parking lot/mall that we just didn’ t notice?
I spent my last cash the previous night at a great Thai place (bikers LOVE “Thigh food”) in Sacto. But I’ve never been afraid to ask for a barter.
Sauntered into Mountain Mike’s Pizza (sounds so close to ‘mountain bikes!’) and almost immediately a be-dreaded young man came over and said “we’ve been admiring your dreads!”…
“Thank you! I am but a poseuse in the house of dread….say, I have a wild proposal to make…”
“Huh?”
“I will trade you a pint of beer for a story”.
His eyes narrowed.
I grinned at him.
The last time I tried this was in 1979, before I was a racer. I found myself on an impromptu century when I chased down a guy in a red and white jersey, it took me half an hour…and when I caught him, asking where he was riding, he said “Marshall”.
“Can I come with you?”
I was just learning the terrain around San Francisco.
“Uh, OK, if you can keep up“.
We rode a loop that is pretty much the most gorgeous (and arduous) ride in the county. I had no money, no food, no clue. I was wearing running shorts, and riding my too-big 23” Peugeot…he offered me a fig bar at the start of the Marshall “wall”..but I turned it down. Didn’t want to impose!
Thirty miles later, coming back through Fairfax —which would become my future home–I staggered into Gaylord’s old fashioned ice cream parlor and said to the young woman at the counter: “If you give me an ice cream cone, I ‘ll tell you a story”.
“What flavors?” she asked.
Saved my ass, that cone with three flavors..although there were lots of ice-chips in it (sloppy manufacture?) I was in heaven, and the 500 or so calories got me down the road to Sausalito where I lay down on the grass verge by the condomoniums on Bridgeway. Slept for two hours.
When I reached home (Lake Street S.F. where I was a nanny at the Gay’s house), I fell into bed at five p.m. and woke up at about noon the next day…
Ah, fast forward to thirty years later, I’m a wizened, dreadlocked bat without her change purse standing in a Vallejo pizza parlor, scheming.
“Honest. A real story! Once upon a time an old bat rode her bicycle from New York City to California, just to show off her incredible cycling prowess and wake folks up to the idea that bikes are incredibly useful tools, not just toys for kids…”
“Motorcycles, right? You mean motorbikes.”
“Nope. Push-bike. I’ll go get it and show you. But I gotta get to my conclusion…. So she rode and rode, day after day, week after week, and none of the young lions she rode with could quite out-ride her. She stuck on their wheel like a flea on a dog. And now she’s standing before you, wondering if it’s a good enough story to earn…”
He reached under the counter and pulled out a pitcher. Tilted it under the tap! Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, purveyors of fine brew to the bicycle cog-noscenti.
The young man plopped a pint glass down next to the golden pitcher and said, “What size pizza do you want? I ‘ll bring it over.”
“Small, sausage? THANK YOU” little hearts beamed out from my face as I looked for a seat .
A slim young woman followed me.
“How long you had those dreads?”
“Four years, I think. I’m Jacquie, who are you?”
” Tamika. Let’s go in the ladie’s room so we can talk about your hair”.
She showed me her extensions, sewn into the tiny braids on her scalp. I let her examine my Chaos-In-Search-of-A-Coiffeur
“I’m just a poseur whitey”.
“Go on! They look cool, they just look real different…they got kinks in ’em…”
Then we went to a booth (this place was nearly empty: there were five people in the kitchen, all smiling when I came in, and about seven people in a joint built to hold sixty or so) and she told me the story of her life.
“I been in prison. I been on the street. I come from a good family, too. My mama was always too busy at work though, and my daddy too…two jobs, nobody home…I needed my mama but she was never there….so I got into trouble…My other life, you gotta put it in a book, sell it, make us both some money… My brother, he’s at Pelican Bay for life, he’s got a book he gotta write, too….maybe you can do it..That guy that poured you the beer? His name’s “Money”. He could tell you a book, too…”
Money not only had fine, perfect black dreads the size of #4 yarn–he wore a solid metal version of a dollar bill around his neck on a poodle-worthy silver chain. I got a picture of us both.
I also took a shot of Tamika Darnes in case I find an agent for her….
Reader, my heart splits in shards hearing stories of other people who somehow scramble together a version of a life with what’s been available…
Raced back to the hotel (minding the parking lot traffic, I am sure there are numbers backing up my belief that they are more dangerous than the roads..), grabbed my bike, and rode it into the pizza parlor (amazing how a two minute run converts into a twelve second bike ride) to show it off.
Tamika, Money and the rest of the crew touched the little black and white furry thing that used to be the tail of a skunk, and the little red haired one with black hairs at the tip that was all that the scavengers left of a red fox in Nevada on route 722…and the real rose (Double Delight, great fragrance) and the fake morning glory….I held my breath and prayed the health department wasn’t going to pay a visit…no one said anything about dead animal residues in a commercial eatery, so I just dove into the steaming platter (size medium! They just comp’d me a fat pizza, so I could have left overs!).
(Bryan would say :”Pizza me. Beer me.”)
It works, sometimes. The royal Prerogative of Victuals actually works.
California here we are!
•August 15, 2009 • Leave a CommentIncredible cascade of coincidences: a dozen of us riding out of Reno with a local guide, be-dreaded Joey Trujillo –pick up a pair of riders (who’d been riding the opposite direction but liked the way we waved and smiled so they reversed and followed us up Rte. 50 into the Sierras).
When Bryan heard they were from Lake Tahoe he exulted “Cool! Tahoe! Barbecue!”
Suddenly the guy–Reve Ramos–is on the phone with his wife, and directing her to load up at Costco on Bocaburgers, beef, and California sushi platters.
An hour passses by, and someone in our gang tells him about the Jacquie-over there on the left.
“Jacquie PHELAN?”
Yep.
“You took my daughter Amber on a WOMBATS ride when she was ten years old. We thought it was a big deal, and still think you were very kind to include her in your women’s club”.
This, coming from a guy whose daughter had a pro career from age thirteen or so….the fast lane: contract, team support, jerseys, and possibly even that demon Pressure.
I didn’t ask.
I remember back then being impressed with her huge enthusiasm for riding, and her prodigious ability on a fat tire bike.
We rode over Spooner summit (and even visited Max & Patty Jones of Flume Bikes up there at the top of the pass, got to see the great Rick Kearns…aka Cheeseburger…who was racing with us.. I believe he was “old” then, and he hasn’t wizened a bit…) and pretty soon we were mowing through about a hundred bucks worth of lovingly prepared picnic food.
It took a cattle prod to get us up from the velvety green lawn to ride one more summit (Echo)…Jon Scarboro tried to get up but was paralyzed with cramp as soon as he tried.
In normal life, taking off one’s shoes or simply stretching out and lying down is merely mundane.
Once you’ve ridden a couple of months,the Peeling Off Of The Glued-On Shoes is no less than evidence that one lives a charmed life.
Well, the barbecue was a massive success.
The next day we rode a hard 95 miles out of the Sierra on scary route 50, and onto the legndary American River Bike Path…and today a very MELLOW 67 miles from Sacramento’s International Hostel to the windy wasteland of Vallejo… magic facilitated by the considerate, generous and very avid bike advocate John Hess of Davis, CA. He gave us the Davis Bike Route map and pointed out a nearly car-free route.
All hands were on board, too bad none of us seemed to remember to let the boss-man know….
Pleasants Valley road will go down in my scrapbook of epic, quiet, classic gold-grass’d California paysages…
I’m still on a cloud.
Blink and You’ll Miss ME
•August 12, 2009 • 1 Comment[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfKWwL6ghYg]
Hint – follow the chocolate.
Cory is all zooted up, I dressed to kill, but mostly Joaquin was that night’s star.
Born in Cadiz Spain but currently living in Paris, and distinguished by a very London-inflected version oof English this messenger/film festival organizer turned 4o two days ago, on our “Reno day”.
Forty is roughly twice the age of our average twenny-sumpin rider….Both Guillaume and I fabb’d some artwork for him: from me, a cheesy 8-page chapbook, all about what a big heart he has (featuring a Victorian medical illustration of a heart) and from Phillippe a group of us riders holding a giant Mavic wheel festooned with forty candles.
The evening’s 42 below ‘event’ (at Scruples bar, ‘open 24 hours’) featured precisely no people from 42 below, and barely any other people. Fine beer and pretty good nachos filled us up while we yakked with the six-or-so local cyclists from the Reno community. The void from 42 below was palpable..and how we pined to be put to work!
Luckily Mikeywally’s auntie Guna came…she’s an age-group ski champ…and Greg Lemond’s nephew was there. Reno is “Lemond-land”…and I was thinking of both him and Inga Thompson (another Reno native who must have ridden Six Mile Canyon a few hundred times in her four-fold Olympic cycling career) as I cruised, then wobbled, and then almost walked the final half mile into Virginia City from low-lying Fallon NV.
The canyon had been intimidating. I think the rumor was that it was a ten mile climb. I was going to bum a ride either from Maa-aaa-aat (our shepherd) or a Stranger in A Pick-Up Truck. Neither proved neccessary, and the climb was interesting from the first mile, when two black dogs trotted ahead of me for a mile, like Cerberus in Hades, until they veered off, leaving massive muddy footprints on the fresh black tarmac. Along side the road, wild rose bushes in profusion, with shiny ripe rose-hips which I picked and ate on principle. When nature offers vitamins and bioflavinoids, I leap to accept.
The descent was barely a fifteen minute uphill amble from Virginia City, and the twenty mile plunge was so speedy I rode the brakes a lot.
Still scared to trust that front wheel with the little metal bit that counts wheel rpms for my computer. Might have to just give up on that; it throws off the fine-tuned balance of thye Shimano Dura-Ace wheel.
The culmination of our evening was the world’s fastest rendition of Happybirthdaytoyouhappybirthdaytoyou and a chocolate cake that he ate without his hands….
Summit Time Summit Time Summit Time Summit Time
•August 7, 2009 • 7 CommentsAh, Nevada, the most mountainous state! 
I read that somewhere.
Giant strings of mountains separated by wide, windy valleys that come in three colors: yellow, green, or ochre, with sweater-pill scatterings of juniper trees on the slopes of the ranges. Highway 50–fiercely proud of its “loneliest highway” status, according to the AAA–is a dream to ride, ‘cept when it’s a day mare. They produce a neeto passport you get stamped in each lonely town…and they’ll redeem yr stamped up book for a cool pin, and love letter from the current Nevada governor. Does this remind you of Tor hopping?
Yesterday we rode for half an hour in the dark, calling out stuff like “Possibility of a cattle grate”, and “maybe gravel”. A Chien Andalou moon was slashed by a swift moving cloud up ahead of us. It was a hundred mile day, I got to ride with the eaglets for about twenty swiftpainful miles. BR flatted, and when we restarted, I realized I had a ‘body flat’. No oomph.
Then had a great ride/blab with Caroline, the silent but brainy Mary Pickford stunt double. Then, after a lunch break, when the eaglets flew off, I hopped on my bike and reader I CAUGHT THEM. It took ten minutes, but it might be the fastest I’ve ridden this whole six week period. Heh.
Then today I was up first, and out first by an hour. No one wanted to ride in the dark. I got a second look at that gravid orange moon sinking resolutely into the jagged hills, as the sun thought about coming up… I had the road to myself for an hour, then a camper went by. Then another hour…and my comrades flew by, first solo Andy on another First To Arrive effort, followed by Phillippe (“I am zlow”) and then the trio. I got to hang with them for precisely twenty minutes, slogging against a strong sidewind that had us side-by-side across the road…
The poplars bordering our windy KOA campsite in Ely is bordered by poplars which HOWL in the wind! The gusts are pretty intense, and the twenty tents are shivering and trying to take wing. My site is a tarp held down with a pillow and two cans of beans, and two very very used 1992 vintage Shimano SPD shoes. I don’t hang out there much.
I hid in the 27 foot truck for a two hour kip– blissfully quiet, warm–then emerged to type this in the wind-shelter of Mikey Wally‘s tent. On his fine computer. Mikey, you are so kind to let me hog yr silver Mac. This blog’s for you.
Dare I try to describe the manic cackle of Mikey Wally? He was the first person I found on the web writing about this ride.
OK, it’s what you get when a hyena mates with a jungle bird.
And his look? Brown mop of hair that dreads naturally (but DON’T TOUCH IT). Fiendish schemy sort, don’t turn your back on him, he might just grab your hand and pet it, looking meaningfully into your eyes–if you’re a dude !
I tried to ‘steer some of this attention’ my way, and he insisted that he was only embracing Andy to knee him in the groin! I am sure this makes perfect sense to the sub-30 set.
Me, I pine for a hug. It’s 6 weeks since my skin has felt… oh wait.. there was that two hour massage in Park City…oh, well. I’ll survive.
But the day after tomorrow’s CC & my 8888versary. If nobody at least pats me on the head, then I will KILL THEM ALL. It is written.
Ten of us hit town by limo (provided by the Nevada Hotel) for a pretty good cheap meal…Mikey did a quick video called Limo Talk, watch for it nowhere…Then after our return, we went back in the Maa-aa-aaat Mobile for food at the local market. Got lots of stuff before it was dumpstered–just asked the produce guy for what was under the cart! I met a bevvy of kids from bike and build..they ride across the usa and build low-cost housing. We will meld groups (well, the non-competitive ones of us anyhow) tomorrow and face 45mp\h winds TOGETHER over 4 summits to Eureka!
Glee.
Must mention the AMAZING “Lectrolux cafe in Baker NV, last night’s stop. Under a rising moon, I got to watch Claude Larouche’s A Man And A Woman. There are maybe 50 residents of Baker, one being Terry Marasco , proprietor of a cafe/hotel/cultural center .He’s a Bay Area defector. His photographs line the walls, along with great movie posters. His refrigerators have at least forty different kinds of beer. There is a big soft sofa, and packed bookshelf. There is everything you need, and once I walked in at fourish with BR and JB for grub, I never left til about eleven, when the mushy French classic was over.
The street (sorry, highway) that gives onto Great Basing National Park’s Lehman Cave was quiet and warm. Crickets sang and the elms at our campsite actually did whisper. I can’t tell you what they said, I only barely speak Tree.
Spot ME
•August 4, 2009 • 1 Comment[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQmSo2kihjE]
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctbQ0sx6Ji0]
[YouTube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=U0Pzpu77Nxs]
There are more here but sometimes they seem to hide!
But Enough About Moi
•August 4, 2009 • 2 CommentsWhat about this amazing ‘tribe’ I mentioned earlier (in that interview in NYC)–the ‘people with two months to KILL!”
They/we are there for each other. You need something, you ask and it usually materializes.
K: “Spare 26 inch tube?”
A: “Sure, let me get my spare, dude.”
M: “Can I have one of these beers?”
CW: “You don’ t even need to ask.”
CC: “Um, Jacquie? Do you have that Pedro’s seatbag you mentioned?”
Me: (sheepishly) “Uh, it’s in my JP l’austin found…let me look…have you got a few minutes?”
Kennedy, that hamburger you made me the first week, it was sublime. It will go down in history. Thank you.
When I fell ill, at my most whiningly self-pitying, people fetched me stuff so I didn’t need to leave my uneven patch of rocky shade under the juniper tree at Starvation State Park.
Chris gave me half of his (highly prized) vegan sandwich. Bryan took me my banjo and some thrilling, green glowing pills. Even Jen wondered if I ‘was OK’.
Matt Hallermann might have been the most concerned, being Super Dad and all. Since he’s the only support person capable of actually learning and adapting to the needs of these sheepy, wooly riders, we burden him like mad. And he just takes it on (and adds a few more ciggies each day, Dude : GIVE THAT SHIT UP! RUINS YOUR BREATH!)
Did I mention the gang has developed a frightening habit of bleating his name, , until nearly everyone is saying it….it’s a bit unnerving, twenty humans crying “Maaa-aaaa-aat!” not in unison.
Most of the flock are lambs. There are a couple of thirty yr olds, and one rogue ram, the fifty yr old Frenchman, one of the toughest of us. He refuses to take a day in the van, and seldom admits any sort of mechanical defeat….he is hard on equipment, or perhaps it is hard on him. He’s the king of the crevaison. *french for flat tire
Then there’s this bossy old bee-otch sheep– oops, I was supposed to keep her, uh, me… that is–the ewe–out of this.
So here’s a cool video of Jon Scarboro (designated mechanic, bless his soul) talking about truing Phillippe’s wheel. Mind, this is on a day where Jon has ridding just as hard but then gets to fix bikes!
Let’s see, what else is really fascinating?
Our “daily sermons”? Nah, don’ t go there….there are film makers on board, and you can see their films at welikebike.com. Have they covered food? flatulence? fashion? We will see…
Our food habits…mostly supermarket crap, never any health food store dumpsters to raid. But I don’ t have to leave camp, thanks to the giant white cooler. It’s a smelly mini-dumpster. Stuff seems to go in there, and then just get agitated to the bottom. When I was just getting fucked up by my cold, I remember carefully assembling three sandwiches to be eaten the next day. I never found them. I know they are pressed into soggy diapers of white bread underneath everything else… One problem is kids put stuff in, then forget about it. I can relate (see ANY of my food blogs on Salivation Army, it’s over there on the right margin..).
So I just forage in there, feeling like it’s more or less fair game.
Most riders won’t go near it– a messy scene is repugnant.
Pity, really, since the problem would disappear if one or two people undertook the chore of cleaning it out every other day…or if people would fetch OUT (and fling) their two day old, mouldering food.
More fun getting chauffeured to the grocery.
Since ‘left d’oeuvres” fall my way, I enjoy time in a relatively calm camp. A blabby brook, or a train fugue, or the screaming semis cruising past. Oh, and of course the irritating engine of the WELIKEBIKE truck ten feet away from me (to charge a battery? Power the laptop up in the cab? Ugh…)
My currency is time, I took my hints from Frost and from Kay Ryan, and from Pink Floyd wayyyy back in high school.
When I do go, it’s a bonding opportunity. A joy simply sitting back and listening to scintillating twentysomething repartee. And noting age-specific behaviors. Without fail, either when pulling out of camp or leaving the store, a rider or two will urge Matt to “Go! NOW! GO! Let him/her run after us!” I suppose it’s a way to master the fear of abandonment. Dish it out!
Whether it’s Steve “checking his laundry” or Kyla not getting out of the store fast enough it’s wanton, impersonal, hilarious. Very scary. Reminds me of the story of Ping. Or my kidhood road trips when one or another of us six Phelans would be left behind– our presence not missed. Was this a version of giving a kid the “Freudian slip”? No wonder I’m batty.
But back to camp, where twelve to fifteen people tumble out to throw together some sort of food.
Never, ever cleaning up (that’s for raccoons, rats, and yours truly). possibly making a fire and sitting around drinking beer and making fun of one another…but mostly crawing into the tent with a final VVVVVVV of the big zipper and a few tosses of the nylon sleeping bag.
Or not. I have nothing to do with tents.
The first half of my life I WAS tense. It’s great to be free at last, to just lie solidly on the ground and look straight up to where I came from.
P.C. aka Pork City, Utah
•August 3, 2009 • 1 CommentGot agreeably abducted by long-ago WOMBAT Sandra Nugent–her boys Jacob and Sam were coming back from racing in Idaho all weekend, and I was happy to get scooped up and return UP the fabulous Provo canyon road that I missed (I’ve been too weak to ride the last three days).
The fun bunch rode it yestiddy morn in punny fashion. Since it was our first short ride, they rode in their briefs. Those milky thighs! Those uber brown legs! Those clingy silly underpants! Not a soul even saw ‘m: in Provo (other end from Heber City) everyone, and I do mean everyone, was in church!
As “Maa-aaa-aaat” my driver and I noted, all the homes were tidy, new and vacant. Ditto for malls, stores, schools, etc. The neutron bomb coulda done a number, we’d not know the diffie.
Yah, so I missed some fun. Get over it.
The digs up here in Park City are tip top, Sandra and Robert and the three boys, two Great Pyrenees barking machines/floor mops, and the hamster, rabbit and guinea pig ALL share a lovely home in the grassy gorgeous hills right ON the bike path into town. PC is threaded with bike paths, and Sandra sez she’s part of Utah Moms For Clean Air, a much-needed enviro group…
Might just have to go sample some after I get up from my 2 hr massage, my nap, and my vegan health shake.
Then again, I might just dissolve into a puddle of petty pleasures, while fending off those pesky pneu-moanya germs.
Why did everyone else get a cough that went away? HUH?
Well, I know how to heal. That is to do nothing.
Jacob? Peel me a grape, OK?
Jacob?
Ahem.
A N Other Interview
•August 2, 2009 • Leave a Comment[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpOH_NbGurM]
“Do a Favor For Two People”
•August 2, 2009 • 1 CommentSleepless and dog-sick in Heber City, Utah, at the base of the great Wasatch Range. The entire town is decked out in parade regalia. I’m huddling under covers at six thousand feet in a freezing hotel room.
Dropped off by Matt Hallermann at nine a.m. because Chris C. was getting vanned into SLC for a birthday party. Me and Kyla–both sick– and tired Adrianna had the whole day to kill in Heber City.
First stop: breakfast at the Hub. We were escorted into the kiddie alcove (was it my pajamas, pillow and banjo? Or Adrianna’s nose-barbell? Or…?)
Split up afterward, and I walked two miles to a massage studio, but they were booked solid.
Hit the St. Joseph’s Thrift shop, left my dirty shirt in the park for some lower-level packrat than myself…and then got a manicure at Beatrice Dribble’s School of Cosmetology. For an hour, a sixteen year old kid named Maddy bent over my chewed cuticles and filthy, serrated nails while I drilled her about her interests.
Good luck in your two thousand buck cosmetology studies, girl, don’t forget to hit the regular school books, too, OK?
Ms. clean nails (no polish: toluene is carcinogenic) then caught a nap, or tried to. Air conditioning turns all that gunk in my nose into quickcrete–hey, I could make a little sculpture.
Lie awake a half hour between two and three, and bolt up because a month has gone by, and I forgot to do a favor for two people.
Note: this is a flashback to the very start of the 42below ride. A day when a hotel manager saved my bacon by chauffeuring me out of freeway hell near Princeton, N.J.
OK, so what can I do to thank “Sir John-a-lot” of Lawrenceville, N.J. ? Hotel employee by night (I think), closet humor-writer by day (think: John Kennedy O’Toole). I know: I can write a blog.
Day two, riding out of Somerset N.J. was epic in oh-so-many ways.
For an hour I left with a motley gang of would-be speedsters, so uneven in ability and polish that I spent most of the time zipping up and down the accordioning ‘peloton’ (I use this word though it doesn’t describe the raggedy-ass band of young men jamming down the road) yelling, “you’re not supposed to accelerate when it’s your turn at the front! HEY. LIGHTEN UP. Keep riding like this and you’ll break everyone’s legs!”.
Like some diligent but very unappreciated Aussie shepherd.
Now, I KNOW it wasn’t personal, but I got dropped. Ased directions from local commuter types for ‘Phlemingham road” or whatever, and of course was misdirected. Ended up going south–the correct direction, wrong route–on a freeway . This would be the first of many lessons on the uselessness of our untested cue sheets. Heart racing, I scooted through broken glass and freeway debris off the nearest exit . I was going south, but really didn’t feel like being on the freeway to Philly. There’s something just so wrong about a bicycle on that thoroughfare. As if the predatory motorists mostly pity but sometimes condemn you.
A faceless motel, don’t even remember the chain (6? 8?Red Roof?) was the sole feature of the cloverleaf I was spat out of . Pulled up, asked for help, and the Russian maid directed me to the manager.
He took a look at me, the cue sheet, and the bike and said ” Didn’t they give you a MAP?”
“No”
“Wait here a few minutes”.
This gave me time to paw through my messynger bag, and realize I didn’t even have the laminated card with everyone’s cell # on it (this would later prove to be a lifesaver, so now it’s duct-taped to my left cankle). That bag usually has everything (plus a little) I might need: food. Arm warmers. Extra gloves. Spare tube. Journal. “Active wipes” (strange pre-moistened towelette, our noble sponsor). But no info about whom to contact.
It was a Darwinian moment, to be sure.
A few minutes of self-loathing and hope passed. “It’ll work out” I told myself. “Your natural charm an’ all….who wouldn’t help a middleaged woman on a bike who never carries a phone or money?”.
John (that was all he divulged) pulled out a map, pointed to where I needed to be.
I told him that I was happy to HITCH to the next destination, assuming that New Jersey has a “mass murderer/normal” likelihood ratio of less than one per thousand.
“We’re at about two per ten thousand, but don’t go near the Pine Barrens, that’s where they bury all the bodies. The mob, an’ all….”
I realized a kindred spirit. Silly. Quick on the draw. It’s rare, especially on the fly like this, and so I wasn’t THAT surprised when he told his staff he was quitting for the day (I hope he was night manager, otherwise he just did a two hour shift to save a lost wombat).
Need I say I slipped him my “mud life crisis ” card (thinking: “please don’t take this wrong”)?
Need I say he drove me through a sketchy part of some town where–yea, verily– the denizens lurked about in (to me, wabi-sabi beautiful) tumble-down buildings, waiting for…what? A lost cyclist to sell drugs to?). All the while narrating about “No man’s land” etc.
Reader, he hauled me and bike at least a quarter of an hour, across some huge river, glancing at the cue sheet.
“How ever to thank you?” I bellowed above the noise of three hundred thousand morning cicadas on a misty green back road.
“Do a favor for two people, and you’ll have repaid me”.
I thought about that for the next mile. Of course he was referring to his size. Yes, he was a plus-size guy with heart to spare, and a wicked hilarious, active (underutilized, unless he IS a writer by night) mind….
So now I have a couple of favors to do…
Thanks John, if you’ve ever clicked onto my blog. This mud’s for you.
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