On the Road to Tiny East Town
Yesterday's bicycle ride to Tiny East Town went quite well. The weather was chill and windy when I began -- which worried me, but it was just as cold inside the house, so what's to lose? -- but I had on fleece and flannel and soon warmed up. After a few "blocks" (for lack of a better measure of distance) I began to get into the routine of riding and looking for things to photograph. My camera was slung in front of me and kept from swinging by an additional strap, but had enough play that I could whip it out as I rode and take pictures in motion. As you might expect, a number of these images were poorly aimed, but a few had engagingly odd angles that I kept them. I did, however, soon start dismounting periodically to take more accurately framed photographs. They were, after all, a large part of why I was making the trip.
Riding a bicycle along this road was quite different than driving it; for one thing, I knew where I was going this time. The other differences are more obvious, but worth spelling out. I think the simplest way to summarize it is to say that the second experience was more concrete.* Every lump and dip in the pavement translated into jouncing under my behind, or the need to rise up on my legs and "post" like I was riding a horse. When cars came by, I became exquisitely aware of the edge of the pavement and how far it dropped to level ground (I needn't have worried; every driver was terribly polite, even the hot-rodders in rattly old pickups, and gave me a wide berth). I could feel the sun on my arms, and the push of the wind against me. When I paused at a railroad bridge to watch a train rattle past underneath me, I heard not only the roar and clatter of its passage, I felt it down into my bones. I waved at the engineer when he tooted his horn at me, and whooped in startlement when I saw that six of the cars were open and filled with spent munitions casings, looking, as D. said afterward when he saw the pictures, like large ears of corn.
The air was cool and fresh, and carried a broad range of scents. Although I do notice smells when I'm in the car, I usually have trouble pinpointing their origins (which produces some anxious moments when they are car-related). This was not the case here. When I rode past one farmhouse, they were cooking soup; I thought it was lentil on the first pass, but on the return journey concluded that it was split pea with ham, and my stomach growled. I smelled a small herd of cattle in Tiny East Town a mile before I reached them, and horses as I rode by them. I was immensely grateful that the roadkill skunk I passed at one point had been clipped in the head instead of the rear, and thus, while pungent, was not eye-wateringly so. I could also smell the petroleum stink of old cars when they passed, and the weaker fumes of the newer ones.
The corn rustled as I rode by, a lovely papery rattling, and I passed near cobs and husks lying along the roadside where the harvester had spat them out, unwanted. A few yellow kernels clung to a few of the reddish husks, and I could see them easily riding slow and near to the ground. I could see wooly bear caterpillars crossing the road (though, in all honesty, they are big enough to see from an automobile's front seat), crickets and grasshoppers hunkered along the white line, and rocks and cracks in the road jumped out in high relief. (A jostled and tired bottom will help enhance your vision of things like that.) Because I am not in shape, I rode slowly enough that butterflies paced me, flying alongside at hip height. Some were small yellow creatures that hunkered down in packs on wet mud and danced above grassy fields. Others were large, orange and black, monarch perhaps or not, who sunned their wings on the yellow dividing line.
On the ride home, I felt the stiffness of newly inflated tires (I paused at a gas station in Tiny East Town, standing in line behind a broad-grinned man in hat filling the tires of an old blue Chevy) in my tired rear end, and my arms ached with the strain of holding my torso up. (I realized, later, that I'd set the handlebars too low. Ouch.) I could feel gravity with especial clarity as I ground my way up hills and down, thighs straining, then relaxing, up and over, and around the curves, tuned alertly for the sound of on-coming and overtaking cars. Then home, over the rattle of gravel and squish of grass, replete.
*This month's issue of Orion includes some similar arguments; they are well worth the read.
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