Leaving Baltimore and John Millen, our couchsurfing host, behind, we headed for Frederick’s leafy civil-war era streets, then on to Front Royal and the Skyline Drive. No words can describe the majesty of the views across forest slopes and plains, from the mountains, and no photos either, without a panoramic wide-screen lens.

Frederick seemed like a town where a person could find sweet anonymity, and a decent meal when required. On the grounds that a holiday is a time for weird drinks, I ordered a blackberry mocha latte in a nice little cafe with sidewalk tables. The latte was gross, wonderful, and unrepeatable.

Checking email an inesecapable part of the day, while hot news is pending: no word from Sam and Maeve, their baby now 5 days overdue; good news of my friend Robert’s heart treatment today; heart-stopping praise for my new novel from an old friend, a noted writer, performer, and reader; and finally the relief of a painting of Claire’s, missing after being sent to the UK earlier this year, returned safely home. For all of which speedily delivered news I must say I’m grateful to the internet.

On arrival at the Big Meadows campsite (named, as Bill Bryson in his book on hiking the Appalachian Trail notes with amused satisfaction, not for its large meadows but for a man called Meadows), we put up our tents, Joe directing the proceedings and then sitting down to brew up tea in his portable device, while I retreated to the Lodge to write this post. Temperature quite cool; how will we fare overnight? I’ll report. But what a gorgeous day of biking, yet again. Bodies and bikes completely happy; and the sheer physical pleasure of motorbiking, hour after hour, a very special joy.

Sunday May 18 2014. That was us (photo, left) as we emerged from home, yesterday – Saturday May 17 – onto Easton Lane, photographed by Claire. Today we rose to a huge breakfast cooked by Anne and Dave, followed by the time I spent with their friend Randy (see 3rd photo, below, next to Joe) who lent me internet access to post yesterday’s update. It was hard to tear ourselves away from Anne and Dave’s little corner of Philadelphia country paradise – I woke to see their stallion and their mare, nose to nose, nuzzling gently in the paddock, until interrupted by their daughter who pushed them apart. None of that, please! Pay attention to me.

We were realizing that on our trip each overnight spent with strangers or longlost friends is so intense, with so much news and information being packed into a few hours, that it feels as though you’ve spent several days with them. Time expands to accommodate the force of emotion. Especially so with someone like Anne, whose tiny person – she had seemed an amply full-sized adult, to my 6-year-old eyes, though now revealed as diminutive – hides a dynamo, and with whom the memories to be shared seem at once to belong to a different life and to be the very roots of one’s being.

We set out reluctantly, but grateful for gorgeous weather: not too hot yet, and I was glad to be wearing the super-light Merino wool under clothes, top & bottom, that Joe brought me from Australia. Didn’t wear them yesterday and felt a little chilly in the later afternoon, as we sped along. Today we covered 150 uneventful miles to Baltimore, one of the most beautiful cities – and least celebrated for it – in the world. Uneventful miles, until to Joe’s huge amusement (and mine, when I discovered it) the wind tore the Union Jack off the back of my bike after a mere 350 miles, in total, of travel, and dispatched it in a northerly direction, as we traveled down 83 at 70 mph. (I had visions of it landing on someone’s windscreen, perfectly filling the driver’s vision, and causing mayhem. British Flag Causes Multiple Highway Pile-Up. Luckily not.)

Baltimore brought us a remarkable and delightful stranger (except by email), our first couchsurfing host, John Millen. John is my age, widely traveled, a follower of shamanic ways of truth, a drum-builder, and a boat-builder who taught himself to sail on his home-built trimaran in the treacherous Caribbean. And a house-builder extraordinaire. In a forest park in Baltimore, his Fuller-style dome sits on a steep slope amid towering trees, and his windows sit in the canopy of leaves. He taught himself to craft every part of the house, to shape and fashion circular stairs and curving banisters – a continuing labor of 30 years’ worth of love. He hosts many couchsurfers, a good many of whom return for further visits. We could see why. Here is John gazing at his work in progress, a boat in his sitting room, so light he could and did lift it himself, to show us; a boat built Inuit-style, with the slenderest of cypress wood ribs. Tomorrow we venture out into the forests and the mountains ourselves, along the famous Skyline Drive through the Appalachians.

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.