Day 21: Walk a Mile in Lyle’s Shoes
Distance: 29 mi
Song of the Day: Mission of Burma — Revolver
Thursday’s Greensboro to Winston-Salem thirty-miler offered agreeable conditions, pavement out of Kirby drive silk smooth and a morning chill to offset two days of hilly, sunny afternoon riding.
We don’t stop for our typical stretch and blue gatorade routine until ten miles out, in Kerrysville gas station. Local immigrant family drives in, swap cars and childcare implements under gasoline alley canopy, quick glimpse into tireless existence within Appalachian paraindustrial sprawl.
Drift westward beyond Kerrysville swayed by lingering warmth of Lynn’s coffee & morning company, as well as pancake and granola-yoghurt-berry breakfast (Nate — Lynn has joined our club of granola artisans.) Mark’s been inundated with client work at his image production company, he runs a studio advancing from photography stills into the realm of CGI and backend computer systems; he broke for beer and yak with me about our route through Sophia, enlightening me to old High Point and Jamestown gold mines, once thought the most lucrative in North America until supplanted by the western gold rush. Even Lynn finds unexpected gem in Mark’s portrayal of his spelunking expedition into the mines, three decades ago — who knew?
We’re lucky to have the Wagoner’s in our orbit.
Stop for crossing train packed to gills with manufactory goods; cars of plastic water containers akin to bubble wrap in aggregate (get this train to Detroit!) Up the same street an electrical station hums besides brick-and-tin steel-era businessplaces, capacitor banks appear naked and exposed in their thin plate encasements. I try to fathom the inner workings of electricity field storage; get nowhere.
Next ten miles spent smirking into the rear mirror velcroed to my handlebars. Lizzie’s found herself a bike companion back there! Later reports she’d been spontaneously incanted by a voice behind her left ear, “How far are y’all going?“, it was a petite, jocular 80 year old man on a 72 mile ‘easy ride’. Nameless to us, he was once a many-time North Carolina road racing champion; recounts to Lizzie the time he raced among four generations of his family; or when he biked a 220 mile race team race on the outer banks, twelve miles tacked onto the expected route due to a collapsed bridge. Seems like there’s always something collapsing or flooding in the wooded and ravined foothills of North Carolina. For a mile or so the two of them boxed out all the traffic, diesel trucks splayed impatiently to their rear, but not impolite enough to honk. Conversation trickles out, so he bounds forward to me, easily overtakes my saddlebag-addled coasting speed, hovers by my left ear to chat me up. Once the road convenes upon Old Greensboro again he spins around, sets for home. We cross the Winston-Salem city limit and near the next chapter in our adventure.
Visiting Sam and Meghan wasn’t strictly en route yet I felt it was an entirely necessary detour, having not seen them in two years, enough time for Lyle to spring into existence, their lives soon overturned along with Lyle’s spill proof cups and furniture the teensy, flubbed muscle man knocks about as he waddles and toddles.
Meghan returned to North Carolina, her home state, for an assistant professorship at Wake Forest Law School; Sam wrapped his work at KIPP Academy DC, now raises Lyle and cares for Margot while keeping an eye on his garden, and the pig in the neighbor’s yard.
Feeding is big business in the Boone/Zivin household. First comes Lyle, who in first course ingurgitates black beans; scoops up chopped beets but flings ‘em around in maligned rollicks; Meghan drops precious morsels of soft cheese, those are highly favored and never miss Lyle’s gobber; rice is desirable but fun to squish and mostly ends up on the floor.
Next up are the big humans, it’s a fiesta-Mexicana on patio! How many avocados should we mash, three, maybe four? How many do we have now, we’ve lost count, let’s smash up one more…
I rifle through five of Meghan’s photobooks — Sam doesn’t organize his photos, I am told — brighten at the familiar faces around Trinity College campus, the bandanas and oversized athletic sweatshirts, photos teeming with tangled groupings of bright students, now bygone constellations never to assemble again.
Content under cool oval kitchen light bzzz, I finish sipping my grapegruit radler beer fzzz, then trudge off to rest and soak in sound of rain splunking onto vinyl awnings ‘neath my window.
