Cycling Across America #6
Part 6 of the series following an Irishman’s attempt at a solo cycle across America exactly ten years ago. (You can read from the start in Boston)
Today’s excerpt is another from the audio taped sections of the journal. Ten years ago today, hours after leaving Philadelphia, I was shaving and talking to a microphone:
Wednesday 5.15. August the - whatever, I’m losing track - oh 7th of course. Ridgely, Maryland.
Seventy five miles today, from Philadelphia. Up at six, despite all the beers last night in McCluskeys in Ardmore. Bumped into a fella from Clonsilla back in Dublin who used to work with two of my uncles. My clothes are stuck to me. That’s because I was pouring water all over myself today.
Got my Irish host up this morning He wasn’t well. He’d been throwing up. I was on the bike before eight. My friend escorted me on his bike up to Lancaster Avenue, and then some of the way - down Lancaster back to 61st Street to pick up the line again.
My friend was going to work in the Moss garden. Out in the country, in Lancaster County. He said where he’s going is in the Book of Records for having the biggest moss garden in the world. They’re crazy for it in Philadelphia. This fellow has tons of it. He said he goes up the mountains with him, and collects moss and they make gardens out of it.
Speaking of the line I’ve just broken it again because I got picked up from below Millington - about twenty miles from here. Because we’re going out for dinner. I wanted to cycle all the way. Would’ve been here by six anyway myself - by 6.30 at the latest. I made good time ’cause I went on the 13 which is a huge expressway, for a spell. On the shoulder just kinda getting whisked along.
Got a good look at those grasshoppers, if that’s what they are, when stopped in the shade of an overpass. They’re like wind-up toys. When they jump, they open out wings in an almost mechanical manner and then it sounds like they’re motorized, like the wings are an add-on, as they click-click-click more than flap or glide, and the grasshoppers propel themselves forwards fifteen feet or so. Yellow wings with black I think.
Highlight of the day was Southbridge. A place in Wilmington. A very run-down neighbourhood. I was thirty to thirty five miles without eating, and in danger of getting “the knock”. I’d had nothing since a scone at a coffee shop back off Lancaster somewhere. So I stopped in this deli in Southbridge.
Left my bike outside with my credit cards, my travellers cheques, my camera, my passport - pretty much everything. Left it outside this quite big deli. Dark cavernous place with a Polish name, though your man looked Asian. Everybody who came in was black. This was an entirely black neighbourhood. Felt more like home than the White neighbourhoods I’d been through. People coming in talking about Jesus. Arguing. Bringing dogs, and good-natured basically. And there was me.
-Are you the guy doing the riding?
Everybody was stopping looking at my bike outside. And the guys were talking to me. I was talking to a young fifteen year old,
-This is a baaad place. People getting killed every night. Fighting.
Everyone was saying hello to me and chatting away. Another fella who said he was married - well he was single again - his wife’s name was O’Neill and she was Irish. They couldn’t quite understand why I was cycling. The fifteen-year-old was wearing skates - though not in-line ones as he did his ankles in on them.I stopped there for sandwiches, cheese and ham, and a drink, and chatted while I ate them. It took ages for them to be made, very meticulously by the chap who made them. Was stopped there for about an hour in total.
Technically I’m in the South now, since I crossed the Mason-Dixie Line today. But as I was told today,
–If you want to live in the North you can call this the North, and you can wait until you cross the Potomac River.
Certainly if I’m not in the South now I will be in a day or twoMy tentative plans for Salisbury tomorrow fell through so I’ve decided to just take my time. I needed a rest anyway. I really needed a rest in Philadelphia. I’ll stay here an extra day, go back tomorrow to where I was picked up today and ink in the gap to here so I can keep the line continuous.
Maryland in this section is pretty much Soya Beans, and corn, and trees. Flat. Having said that, I’m in, because they’ve had the wettest July like ever, they’re up to ten or twelve inches and they normally only have one or half an inch, it’s beautifully luscious and green, whereas normally it’s just completely sun dried and burnt. So I’m getting the best of both worlds really. I’m getting the sun now after the rain, which is kind of nice, and the beauty of what’s around.
The house I’m staying in is fantastic. It’s actually a compound - it’s two houses and more besides. The other house which I was in a few minutes ago is a Geodesic Dome which were popular in the North and Canada in the seventies, maybe through the eighties, I was told. This house I’m in here, like that one, is on stilts. Underneath is a workshop, a huge big high one where my bike is.
When we left, there was a house by Frank Lloyd Wright two blocks away which I forgot to have a look at it. The more you cycle the more you miss. And the more you detour to take things in, the more you realize what you’re not taking in.
We’re due out for dinner here pretty shortly. That’s why they came to get me. Although I thought I was doing good time we’re they want to be eating by six o’clock which is going to be a problem for me because I’ve just eaten a big sub. And because it was only seventy-five miles, instead of ninety-five or so, I’m not as elated or tired as I might be.
It’s good to be out in the country.
Read the next stage of the cycle across America
Read from the beginning of the Cycle Across America
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
