Day Three: Warm Easter, Warm Showers
Woke at 6:30AM today after cool and pleasant camp on “bikers island” in the Surf & Stream RV park. Lizzie encounters young boy cavorting groggy family along dawnbreak easter egg hunt through the RV park. Boil water on alcohol stove, make oatmeal with flax, almonds, sunflower seeds and craisins and some coffee, our breakfast and pack routine still clocking in at over an hour. Rushing me does not help, Lizzie says. Of course she’s right in numerous ways.
Judging from the prior day which, behind us, is finger in the wind, we steer inland to hem skirt of the New Jersey Pineland National Reserve.
Roads quiet and temperature approaches 70, our first ride in shorts and jerseys. Gobs of sunscreen on early. An intermittent energy bar or chew as 10 miles fall softly behind us.
Splended pinelands! Sap and smoke on the breeze from recent fires, apparantly uncontrolled to our untrained eyes. Cycling by burnt trees draws one’s attention in insuperable, immeasurable ways. Where did this fire ignite? Whence did it exhaust itself? How did it begin? How ended it? What was it like to be here when everything was still aflame? When will the traces of this fire sink? Matters like these, we know so little.
(Later I will hear Tom, my WarmShowers host, describe a catheter ablation surgical procedure to treat his 90 year old mother’s atrial fibrillation procedure. Matters like this, we know so much!)
Biking along with mind abuzz about how consciousness pulls out thoughts and objects for perception. How is it that I try and attend to the splendour of a great pine forest? Am I trying too hard, overthinking things? Always; but why upon retrospection can I not recall singular instances from atop my bike, a single tree, why do I only recall a pine forest in general?
When it comes to fires, would not a single tree burning within a forest be a truly remarkable sight? Bet I’d remember that tree for a long time.
And why do I not find this road remarkable? It was built by humans. Who were they?
How firmly will I remember this trip when all is done? Will I finish?
Stopped for lunch in Chatsworth on the porch of historic Bixby’s General Store, now an antique furniture store. Closed for Easter. Peanut butter, nutella and bananas in tortillas — yum! Gooey!
A few miles out from our WarmShowers host in Bass River we stop to cool down at a pond off Chatsworth Rd. It’s never too early to start the swim season.
An exchange in the dirt lot as we mount bikes and turn over pedals:
“Nice bags!”
“Thanks!”
“Where ya headed?”
“California!”
“WHAT!?”
Tom and Simone
(To be continued…)
