Day Five: Desolation Angels
7:30AM: Wake from intensely deep sleep, flop feet into Rob and Cindy’s kitchen for fresh carrot juice, pancakes and coffee (Rob) and over hard eggs (Cindy, but our request). Debbie soon joins. Cindy charts ideal route to Atlantic City boardwalks, sending us over alternate roads and bridges from initial sortie into Egg Harbor Township.
Stroll past Rob’s backyard garden and family camper, goodbye bluebirds, fetch bikes from garage. Seven bags strap up and off we go. Lizzie and I get to talking as our legs warm up. We’re both feeling awed by humility and generosity absorbed from Debbie, Rob and Cindy. Their openness breathed something new to me I lost touch with in New York, blinded to most all but career, not putting up travelers (and why not?), not exposing myself to those seeking that something you only catch when taking unexpected, unexpectable turns.
Lizzie and I, we’re carrying so many people with us down the mid-Atlantic coast today.
10AM: Hit the coast at Margate City, ride north to Ventnor City, stop at Ventnor No 7311 for baked goods and to replenish coffee grounds supply. Meet some folks from DC taking long oceanside weekend, they attest to “half working.” Man walks outside to check out our bikes, toddler acts affronted he wasn’t brought out for the show & tell. Lizzie recharges with dog spirit guardian batteries.
11:30AM: Hit the boardwalk pumping 1962 album The Original Norman Petty Masters by the Fireballs on bluetooth speaker. Invent a game where you try to balance your bike on a single wooden plank at the very center of boardwalk. Other planks are diagonal but the center one is STRAIGHT and SMOOTH. Lizzie initially aloof but later addicted, biker in opposite direction proffers a frown as he shirks to the side, realizes she means business and isn’t giving up the plank.
The Trump Taj Mahal is closed.
Guy Fierri’s voice advertises a chophouse somewhere.
If you put Adirondack chairs on a boardwalk, people will sit in them, even if facing a hideous casino.
Do you think anybody has been to every last Ripley’s Believe It Or Not?
Ocean City
2PM: Boardwalk fun dries up fast and we bike over two large bridges to Ocean City. Debbie clues us into 8th street cafe scene. We stop in small diner and order club sandwiches, grilled cheeses, half lemonade half iced tea and a chocolate milkshake. Men in diner kitchen singing “I knooow, it’s only rock and roll, but I liiiike it…”
Pit stop in Tuckahoe bike shop for an extra 700 x 32 inner tube for Lizzie’s. Riding on patches is fine, but carrying a fresh patch-free tire is a smart bet.
Avalon
4PM: 14 mile stint from Ocean City to Avalon, thru Sea View and adjacent towns, some blossoming out to seven blocks or thinning down to a single row of houses! Tired from ~6 hours riding at slow paces, shake shake shake out the wrists, keep moving hand positions, now one hand, now knuckling the handlebars, bikes careening down beachy streets unadorned by cars as we stretch our stiff backs, along with our shadows…
5:15PM: Approaching final bridge to Avalon…what’s this, the bridge is closed? Can’t be, and it isn’t! Bridge has some structural issues, authorities tried to close it but ol’ Avalon town said NO, you won’t strand us, the bridge will remain open, with one lane! There was apparently no good way to slow down traffic, so someone parked a civic truck in one of the toll lanes. Bobbed heads under the toll gate, closer to lancing self than I care to admit, but pass in tact and float down into Avalon.
Find the mighty Alcarese house in stately shape, let ourselves in (whew, no alarm), drop off a few bags, equip flip flops. Must find food! Whelp every last place is closed as the sun rolls behind the white and blue boards adorning Avalon beach houses. Wait, the liquor store’s open! Buy beers and chips, gets us far enough to cook up frozen burger and tamales, eating spoonfuls of Lizzie’s peanut butter and swishing sips of cold beer while stovetop hisses and steams towards happier stomachs…
On the road less than a week and shedding years of harmful, harming doubts. Thoughts occur in an approximation of the sequence:
- “I could live like this.”
- “Could I live like this?”
- “How could I live like this, and sustain it?”
Live or die — it doesn’t have to be a choice, as Camus may have intended it. Consider it as a reminder that you are always already choosing. Then consider the quite mortal words Anne Sexton once wrote to herself, and to us:
“Live or die — but don’t poison everything…”
