BIKE ODYSSEY 2014 – Underway!

Starship Enterprise, datelog… May 17 2014. Whether you’re 7 or 70 the hours before departure on a long trip grip your soul. I woke at 3 am (before mercifully getting back to sleep), and remembered one day when I was 7 and we were returning from an entire barefoot summer in Italy and my clothes were laid out on a chair and I put them on at 4 am, too excited to wait, and the feel of the shoes is still with me, the exact sensation after all summer running everywhere barefoot, and my heavy black footgear now a wonderful, powerful shod feeling, like a young horse ready for the road. And the journey.

For Joe and myself it was a great first day, down 209 and through the Poconos, after a delicious tuna salad sandwich at a very small diner in Huguenot, NY. Nice omen: my father’s grandmother, Mary Jane Picard, was a Huguenot – with his long Lancastrian face my father had, his 4th wife Rachel liked to say, a Huguenot look – perhaps Jewish, she would say to tease him (Brits of his generation were suspicious of Jews, although my father married one – my mother). We proceeded across Blue Ridge Mountains down into fine Pennsylvania Dutch farming country, horse country, where Anne and Dave live. Anne is a tiny 101-year-old Swiss woman who was once my nanny (I attended her 100th birthday party last year, in Bethlehem – PA), more than 60 years ago, when both my parents were busy at night on Broadway; Dave, her partner, scholar and poet, I’ve also known since I was 8. Anne insisted, as I feared she would, on serving us food, despite the alternatives we’d offered. How many people could ever imagine being served dinner by a 101-year-old person? It was humbling, to say the least.

Ann and Dave have no internet service, and only the kindness of their neighbor, Randy, bigtime bee-keeper and former furniture maker, has allowed me this access. I wonder how often I’ll be able to upload to this blog. Photos of Anne and Dave in due course. No news from Sam and Maeve – now 3 days overdue with their firstborn. I check my email hourly, when we stop to stretch our legs. So far so wonderful, regarding the ride: a modest 211 miles yesterday but not a sign of an ache or a pain. Joe is the most wonderful, relaxed and delightful of traveling companions, and gave Dave full opportunity to discuss many topics – I woke to find Dave waiting to speak of Proust. Superb weather. So far so wonderful. On to Baltimore today.