John Michael Swartz

Caught the 7:53 am train to Wassaic from Grand Central Terminal. Decided to use the MTA TrainTime app instead of buying a paper ticket. It occurs to me now that the friendly, colorful (and often hailed as a triumph of human centered design), early-2000s vintage vending machines – now being phased out and replaced by OMNY machines for the subway system – may perhaps persist for a while longer for the MNR and/or LIRR.

I bought a coffee and croissant at a stand right by the departing track, awkwardly wheeling my bike through the (thankfully) empty queue of stantions and webbing. It turned out that my train would be leaving from one of the lower-level tracks which has a flight of stairs down to the platform. Uh oh. As I was dribbling coffee down my arm, a very nice lady offered to carry it down for me while I handled the bike. Although her very generous offer came after I had already flattened the croissant into my frame bag in a vain attempt to free up at least one hand, I was nevertheless very grateful for her service.

This particular train to Wassaic is split into two legs. I think this may be due to the changeover from electric to non-electric engines. The change is rather fast, even though it's directly across a narrow platform. I blindly shoved my bike into the first door I could find and it turned out to be an inter-car vestibule where passengers are forbidden to stand. I did not like the idea of pushing my bike down the very narrow aisle, even if I could manage to turn my bike 90 degrees while holding open the heavy pocket door leading to the inside. The conductor was friendly and said I only have to move up one more door at the next station.

I think that many of my friends can relate to the “rebellious rule-follower” anxiety: we feel and understand ourselves to be “other” or “othered” in various ways; we develop or adopt cultural identities and expressions based on this otherness; we are constantly aware of the shifting line of privilege which spells the difference between “what a charming weirdo” and “that scary weirdo needs policing.”

Once my bike was secured and I was seated, my mind turned to more important matters. My mucocele persists. So much so that I decided to pass the rest of the time on the two-and-a-half hour train ride by attempting to make a dental appointment. I am not looking forward to a surgery, minor or otherwise, to have the damaged salivary gland removed or altered with a procedure with a name as unlikely as it is upsetting: marsupialization. Neither do I enjoy having to modulate my smile out of embarrassment of the variably-sized lump which has formed inside my mouth near my lower lip: a classic location for the harmless yet unsightly ailment.

Cellular reception is spotty. I am on hold, besides. The music was unremarkable. After a number of dropped calls (I have memorized the menu options), I am informed that I can be waitlisted for the next available appointment. Today the mucocele is rather large and this stirs within me a not insignificant amount of anxiety. I inquire as to whether I can be entered into the waitlist while also seeking out more expeditious treatment elsewhere. Yes, the helpful operator says, but that I should keep in mind that I will then have to re-enroll into their system should I receive alternate treatment and then wish to return. Something about insurance? At this point I decide I have made enough medical decisions for myself for one day, agree to the waitlist, and turn my attention elsewhere.

There is a mother gleefully trotting her toddler up and down the length of the train car. One of those blue-eyed blond little angel food-cake-sized affairs. I try not to be cynical. In fact I try to encourage optimistic thoughts about the persistence of the primal and profound bond between mother and child. “In these times” the fact of this child’s existence is enough. “A child must exist.” It is difficult to stop the train of thought only slightly past the evolutionary imperative to nurture offspring merely to reproductive age. Human parents have evolved to express complex emotional and cultural obligations (so far as we can know, anyway, though I reserve a poetic right to assume the same to be true for other species). I manage a weak smile of harmless, eye-contact-free acknowledgement of the rare and fleeting innocence of this child's novel experience of the world.

Meanwhile, there's a young woman, perhaps college-aged, in what I can only vaguely remember as some sort of dance leotard covered by other fragments of cloth and accessories ("The Bennington-Sarah Lawrence type looked like she’d spent the whole train ride in the john, sculpting or painting or something, or as though she had a leotard on under her dress."), spread across the two mirrored benches directly across from my bicycle. I am mildly annoyed as this situation relegates me to a bench with my back to it. I have it as a goal to be a bit less paranoid about bike theft during this trip. It really is unreasonable to be so anxious about not being able to see my bike without merely turning my head when it is literally seven feet away, strapped to a pole, weighing 60 pounds, and with an embarrassingly loud freehub. It will go nowhere without my noticing. I have a special renter’s insurance policy on it, besides.

The real challenge is that instead of my usual bike lock, I have brought only a glorified zip tie, reinforced with a thin band of steel and "secured" with a decidedly plastic locking mechanism reminiscent of those found on a briefcase. I have the three digits set to "069" (note to self: change zip tie lock combo). This kind of lock, which is really more of the idea of a lock – a symbolic gesture which says to a casual thief "ah ah ah!" with an impotently condescending finger wag – is sometimes referred to as a "cafe lock": it is only useful for short amounts of time in well-lit public spaces and when you are in direct eye contact with your bike at least 90 percent of the time. I reasoned that this would be sufficient for the few times I would be in small towns buying provisions at quaint shops with wooden porches.

My imagination was nevertheless able to synthesize a counter-anxiety: Vermont is a land of large pick-ups. There are perhaps assholes who would think nothing of chucking the whole thing into their muddy truck bed (on top of piles of logs, rusty blades, and maple syrup empties or whatever). Merely to be assholes. White, manly assholes stealing the twee bikes of moderately brown city fags. (note to self: erotica idea.) You may think of it as the land of thoughtful, mildly socialist Bernie Sanders types. But property ownership and woodsy isolation makes people lose their fucking minds.

We live in a particularly assholish time. Mom expressed her anxiety about my trip with the phrase "everything that's going on". She's an immigrant who adored Reagan, but since her white veteran husband's death, and since Trump's second term, maybe she’s able to see more clearly the existential threats to herself and her children. Near the end of my first long bike tour in 2018 I was extremely tan – or at least that was the illusion so long as I was wearing the same clothes in which I had acquired the tan: it was otherwise a rather harlequin kind of effect. I sent her a roadside picture, to which she responded "you're looking very filipino. wear sunscreen!" A week or so later I ran into my Black hairdresser at a bar. He remarked on my color too, adding rather seriously "let's see how long it takes you to get a drink now."

Very rarely has my mom brought up anxieties about ethnic identity or expression. So it's memorable when she does. She's a pretty imaginative person so I may be witnessing her grappling with her inherited Republican identity and the party's increasingly overt return to racism and xenophobia, their aiding and abetting of racists and white supremacists. She came to the country "the right way". But does that even matter to this administration or its sycophants?

---

It turned out to be a busy day. I started up the Harlem Valley Rail Trail at around 10:30 am. There were still the remnants of moisture on the pavement where the shadows of the trees had not yet allowed the sun to turn it to petrichor, which nevertheless mingled with the other aromas of farming and exurban lawn-care. Was it dew or had it rained? I don't know.

I realized that the HVRT was not as well appointed as, say, the C&O, with respect to the location of water and bathrooms. Details on these are sketchy. I ended up using a porta-john (I’d never really considered whether I’m annoyed that my name is not only associated with toilets, but movable rental toilets). Then when water was becoming scarce (I had forgotten to fill my larger bottle at Grand Central) I thought to myself, No problem, I'll filter some at the next opportune moment. There was a stream flowing under a small, concrete bridge with easy access and discreet sight lines. I pushed my bike down the short embankment and propped it against the obligatory wall of colorful graffiti.

I failed to take what would have been the first moody glamour shot of my bike in this position, because I soon discovered that my filter wasn't working. Water simply would not flow through it at a reasonable rate. My heart sank. If this was a problem I couldn't solve on the trail, it might be wise to simply turn right back around and go home. Temps were in the 90s and I'd need to move a lot of water through me.

I tried to reassure myself by searching about the issue. But my internet connection was weak and the results I did find were inconclusive. I did have the intuition that I simply had to wait for the filter to soak in some water before it would work. It had been sitting dry for several years, not yet having seen any serious use. But the anticipation was terrible and I cursed myself for not checking it before leaving home.

I reminded myself, however, that I was making this trip partly out of a desire to cultivate a bit of devil-may-care, end-of-times, fuck-it-all, je m’en fous impulsiveness. In the past I have spent weeks planning: not a bad thing, but it gives you a lot of time to adjust everything to be perfectly within your comfort zone at all times, to plan so many bailout options that the sense of spontaneity, adventure, and reasonable danger is lost. In this case, I threw together as reasonable a new-to-me route as I could, with a few guiding parameters (free camping where possible, 50% gravel/dirt where possible, around 3k feet max climbing a day if I could help it). I knew – or wanted to come to know – that I could rely on my wits and good judgment to adapt to and solve problems.

Millerton is the first substantial town on the HVRT, and where I would leave the trail to cross the state line into Connecticut briefly before swinging up into Massachusetts. Rolling into it in a bit of a panicked water-seeking mode, I began to search for spigots I could surreptitiously use. Hose water is very hit-or-miss but if you can get it straight from the tap, it's usually okay, maybe a bit turbid depending on how long since it was last used. There was a lovely little back porch on what turned out to be a youth center. The hose was in use by somebody watering the garden. I said hello to the teenager sitting at a picnic table swiping at his phone. I peeked inside to see some choreography happening. I decided to move on.

I am sensitive about snooping around children. When I was 16 years old I was taking pictures at a local park where, apparently, there had actually recently been a pervert trying to photograph the children playing there. As I was walking home later, I was accosted by an angry mother in a minivan, her children squinting at me saying "that's the one!" I told her I had nothing to hide because I was not a "sex criminal". (I think I had heard this phrase recently in a movie or TV show spoken by a fussy Hugh Grant-type.) I gave her my home address as proof of my confidence in this fact. Later that afternoon, after having fallen asleep on the sofa reading "Naked Lunch" my dad woke me up and calmly informed me that there were some people at the door who wanted to speak with me. It was the police. They immediately realized that I was not the sex criminal they were looking for.

Proceeding onto the main street, I spied several alluring restaurant options. But I was still of the mind that I ought to save money and really try to lean on my three pounds of bear-canisterized snacks and whatever I could get with SNAP. On the other hand I was really striking out with spigots. The church had none. The coffee shop had one behind their trash cans in the alley, weirdly low to the ground and, alas, dry.

And so, standing in the hot, hot shade, schwitzy and crestfallen, I struck up a conversation with a young woman who had been part of the waves of bike tourists traveling in the opposite direction all morning. I had waved or nodded to the passing pelotons, and a few times I'd called out some variation of "Uh oh! It looks like I'm going in the wrong direction!" like a dumb, gay dad. Anyway, she recommended both the coffee shop (which had already been annotated on the crowd-sourced bike route planning application I use) as well as what she described as some kind of sporting goods shop just next door. The coffee shop would definitely let me fill my bottles with water.

What luck! I decided to ask about a filter at the sports shop first. First challenge: hobbling my bike with the aforementioned zip tie and trusting that it would be fine for five minutes... In the door... immediately overwhelmed by a tastefully-sweetened cedar aroma. The infusion simultaneously exuded "fancy" and "pretentious" with "outdoors" a distant third place. The place looked like a location set from the original run of Twin Peaks. I got the impression that their focus was on fly fishing. In retrospect, I don’t know why I thought that. I think maybe the lady I had spoken to had also gotten an incorrect impression and so I was primed by her description. It turns out the place used to be a classic “Guns & Ammo, Candy, Lotto” kind of general store, but had recently been sold to become a fancy gift shop. In my profoundly un-curious misapprehension, I fantasized that fly fishing must sometimes take on the same kind of rarified patina of old and new money that, say, skiing does: another sport whose culture and accouterments elude me.

Whatever nonsense I was thinking under the influence of the cloying scent, the friendly clerk behind the glass display counter offered his assistance. I didn't dare walk any closer for fear of offending his sense of smell. Although I had only been biking for about ten miles, the heat had left me well-moistened. And for the first time since my 2018 tour, I’d mainly be wearing tank tops, liberal amounts of sunscreen, and mosquito repellent. There was no barrier between my chaotic musk and the refined air of this genteel Brooks Bros-y establishment.

Of course they didn't have any water filters, let alone my particular filter (I imagined an aphorism, “Gentleman anglers don't drink from strange sources.”). He un-ironically (and I will stress this point with a somewhat redundant sincerely) recommended I try the CVS down the road. He was eager to help so I did nothing to indicate my profound skepticism. I sensed he was an homosexual and perhaps sensed that I was too, in a roughshod, haphazard sort of way. I politely and patiently listened to him (as I would several other people on this trip) give me detailed directions as to where I would find this People's General Store. I hid my disappointment, thanked him profusely and left.

I went back next door to the coffee shop. I wheeled the bike through the alley toward the back of the building, suddenly becoming aware of a person on their smoke break. Asked if I could leave my bike there and they said "yes" enthusiastically.

Ordered an iced coffee and a bacneggnchz. Got asked by the young lady behind the counter about my disintegrating cell phone, which I had used to pay with the virtual MasterCard that Midea had given me in exchange for cutting the cord on one of their recalled u-shaped air conditioners. She was looking to move away from the expense of the Apple ecosystem. Despite the fact that throughout this trip it became unresponsive to pinch-to-zoom gestures (terribly inconvenient for using MAPS) possibly due to a combination of heat, moisture, or body grease, I assured her that it had served me well and that I'd replaced it at least five times, care of the generous insurance plan. Got the wifi and the bathroom code. Bulletin board by the bathroom.

I always make it a point to look over the community bulletin boards that exist in local cafes like this one. There was nothing outstanding on this one, but they all typically leave me with a little bit of optimism about the basic human desire to connect: to make a modest amount of money, to cultivate a modest amount of local notoriety or influence, or to organize around shared interests or needs. This, as opposed to the monstrous proportions of social media like TikTok or Instagram, which promise immodest fame, immoderate fortunes, distracting us from forming genuine connections with our friends, family, communities.

Wifi weak near the front picture window so I moved toward the center of the room. No REI near enough. But enough chatter on the 'net to give me hope that my filter simply needed to soak for a bit. Was it because I was so out of sorts that the BEC slid apart in my hands several times, egg ejected from the English muffin with the assistance of mayo and cheese lubricant, flopping onto the table? Or was it bad sandwich engineering? I decided that I... I mean it... was tasty but slightly pretentious.

Left my bike in direct sunlight instead of shade, so that a significant portion of my gummy bears had melted together. Not altogether unpleasant. It’s like eating fruit leather. Optimistic. Ran back inside to fill my water bottles.

---

Back on my way. I don't recall if there was any fanfare signage or palpable change in the air, tense, or mood when I passed into Massachusetts from Connecticut. About halfway through the day, and the day's total distance, I reached the first quiet dirt road. Many merely-millionaires’ houses. Took a reassuring selfie to send to Mom. Took an illegible video of some baby goats in a grassy yard. It reminded me of my ride around Cold Spring, NY, last summer with my friend, before I broke my ankle at the climbing gym.

On very hot touring days like this, I make space in my frame bag to carry an extra liter or two of water in it and refill my bottles from it as necessary. I stopped in the shade to do this on this first stretch of bright white, picturesque, and expensive-looking gravel. Joy of joys, the water filter was working exceptionally well. But I soon discovered that the silicone bladder (what an unattractive phrase) was leaking from a tiny pinhole, perhaps caused by the sharp corner of the flexible titanium windscreen of my cookset.

I tried patching it with seam tape. I tried patching it with my butyl tire repair kit. The silicone remained impervious to both. Actually, the vulcanizing cement did leave enough residue after the patch itself had fallen away to temporarily plug the hole. In retrospect, besides the inconvenience of some moisture inside my frame bag, the leak was not large enough to actually prohibit filtering water. But I was nevertheless dedicated to finding a solution. And what else was I on the road for? When everything is optional, why not give the day this direction?

At some point on my way to Great Barrington, I passed a man who was having a conversation on his airpods while bicycling at an even more moderate pace than myself. We reached a sign in the road at around the same time which indicated that the bridge ahead was closed, have a detour. I gestured to him about it, assuming he was a local who would know, and he indicated that it was fine to go. Cornfields I believe.

Sometime later I passed by some cows crowded beneath the shade of a tree. I knew I wouldn't be able to make a particularly good photo of it, but I tried anyway. At which point the man from before caught up. We biked together for a number of miles while chatting. He was riding a Crust and had the exact same make and model of my twee handlebar bag (“Fabio's Chest" in gray and black waxed canvas/cordura blend). His son, he said, had gotten him into such hipstery bike things, but back in 2017 when the current "bikepacking" phenomenon was still relatively niche.

He told me that he bikes about 14 miles each way several times a week to his gym. I didn't get precise details about what his work was but it seemed to be some sort of left/socialist consulting, and he's able to do most of it while cycling about. His organization had consulted with, for example, Zohran Mamdani. Pushing back against the billionaire class. I said jokingly "None of whom would live up here!" (referring to the obvious expressions of wealth in the properties we had been biking past). He pointed out that these were probably “just” millionaires, rather than the tech CEOs and their actually unimaginable wealth.

At this point I noticed his lavender nail polish, an Easter candy shade. Fascinating. He told me about several swimming holes, offered to guide me to one, which I would have done if I wasn't concerned about getting to the lean-to before sundown. He understood, and told me about another swimming hole in the direction I was going. Some day I will feel that I have the time and wherewithal to partially disrobe in and partake in an informal public dip, and then somehow become dry enough to get back onto my bike for another couple dozen miles without noticeable discomfort. So many others seem positively gaga about it.

OK, it did actually happen at least once. On my way back from Montreal with Chris in 2018, I think it was somewhere near Copake (maybe it was actually Copake Lake) at golden hour, he wanted to go for a short swim. Being from Minnesota, he has ample experience with pond swimming. Convincing me to join him, I was not warned about avoiding all the invisible bracken near the opaque and shallow shoreline. I scratched up my frontside well and good. Later on, we stopped and talked with a handsome man in a speedo who regularly swam there. There seemed to be a bit of sexual tension. I guess gay men are occasionally to be found by the roadside in various states of undress.

---

Rolled into Great Barrington around 5 pm. Thought about going to Ye Olde Food Co-Op but it was tucked away in a large brick building with no obvious storefront, like some kind of DMV. Besides feeling as though I would be uncomfortable leaving my bike anywhere, it wasn't giving welcoming vibes. So I went across the main drag to a weirdly-shaped and sized CVS. (Two CVSs in one day!) I guess sometimes they just take over whatever building had housed the local pharmacy or drug store regardless of the form factor. Like the old Rite-Aid in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that used to be a theater, then a disco (it still had a disco ball when I was inside over ten years ago), with its ramped floors and unnecessarily high, ornate ceilings.

(Jogging my memory by looking at the excessively detailed Google street view of the place, because I was not so much in a New Topographics mood with my camera for this trip. It's a standalone building. I remember the odd L shape inside, the vaulted ceilings, the generally cramped feeling. Maybe it was an icehouse or a schoolhouse? A little church?)

It took me a while to find the entrance, which had 3 or 4 narrow and cracked concrete steps up to a teeny vestibule, up which several elderly or infirm people hoisted themselves or gingerly picked their way down to a nearby idling vehicle. I think I didn't register the entrance right away because of the outsized red awning which almost entirely obscured the door. Recognizing the particular importance of the handrail here, and not being able to find a way to lash my bike to it in a way that didn't interfere, I parked it at the steps down to the cellar, which was just adjacent to the entrance, behind some half-hearted shrubbery.

They had a modest "food" section. I tried to strategize for a good ratio of calories to weight, besides whatever I could find somewhat appetizing from within the somewhat limited ultra-processed pickings. I got a can of chili (pull-top! fiber!) and the larger size microwavable macaroni and cheese cup. The chili was significantly heavier and I figured I'd find a place to eat that before going up the final climb to camp. The mac and cheese would wait for some unspecified future meal, and though somewhat large in volume, was really the champion with respect to weight vs calories: probably under an ounce, but 450 calories all told! Starch! Dairy solids!

I pushed my bike a few blocks down to the hardware store. It's a large hardware store that caters to the seasonal needs of the locals. There are many young people roving about in groups outside, one of whom talks me up to admire my bike, which I've leaned against a large box of foam pool noodles in front of the large plate glass windows. Inside, I ask a register clerk where I might find sealants or glues. Aisle whatever.

So there I was, looking at a dizzying selection of goops in tubes. I would be approached by no fewer than three older middle-aged man-clerks offering their assistance – or, as I suspected, to busy-body the sweaty weirdo wandering through the Berkshires. To be fair they were all kind and helpful, probably because it was clear that I really did have a very specific problem to solve: repairing that annoying pinhole in my silicone water bladder (ugh, that phrase).

Clerk one gave no memorable advice, vaguely musing over the selection of caulks and epoxies with me. Clerk two directed me to the camping section, where I did in fact find Aquaseal -- a goop used to repair waterproof gear and inflatables. I had left my own tube at home in the name of packing more minimally. Which is just as well, because it glues itself shut 100% of the time, and then ends up splurting out somewhere else. Really the only way to use it is to trim a little off the butt end each time. Anyway, whether it would work on silicone – and I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised that silicone is notoriously un-sticky – was unproven.

The third and final clerk basically presented a testimonial worthy of a late-night infomercial. He very reasonably suggested that I probably wouldn't want to muck about with any kind of goop at all. No. What I wanted, he said, was Flex Tape. It's the kind of product that's Seen On TV: invented or spokes-modeled by a guy arising from what I can only describe as the Alex Jones/Guy Fieri morphogenic field. He had used it to fix a hole in his chimney, a broken metal door that had been allowing squirrels to get in. It had held all winter.

I was convinced. Besides the ringing endorsement, the fact that it was not goopy, flat and lightweight was appealing: bikepacking concerns. He expressed more concern about its food safety than I could muster myself, bless him.

Now to find somewhere I could sit down and heat up that can of chili. I ended up in a skate park behind yet another youth center, but this time it was totally empty. I tootled around for a bit in search of a spigot for water, and happily, there were several actual drinking fountains with dedicated bottle spouts. They were so hot from sitting in the sun all day that I had to press the button with the leather part of my glove. I chose as my workbench/dining-table a waist-high concrete skate ramp in the shade. I set up my stove and started heating up the chili. I also laid the water bladder out in the blazing sunlight to dry it ahead of attempting the repair.

As I would discover several more times, my minimalist Click-stand stove really seemed to have a problem opposite the one its sleeve of titanium windscreen aimed to solve. Modest winds supercharge the typically invisible ethanol flame into a terrifying pyre. Perhaps it has more to do with me forgetting to water down the Everclear before igniting. This slows down the rate of combustion, keeping the flame manageable and burning cleanly. This time, however, my chili was cooked as though in the explosion of a failed SpaceX launch. Normally I can extinguish the flame of the Trangia spirit burner by placing the metal simmer ring over it. But even with this little swiveling lid of metal in place, I could see the fuel continue to burn below. I had to pour water on it to smother it with an angry little expulsion of sizzles and steam.

At some point during this affair — spreading out my shit, starting fires, eating chili like an animal, taping up a water bladder — a young family showed up with their toddler. The dad skated, the toddler scooted, the mother had a long phone conversation seemingly about real estate. She either pointedly placed herself between me and her child as though sensing I was a bad seed, or simply wanted to enjoy the shade, same as me. I pretended to myself that it was the latter, continuing about my affairs as though I were a perfectly normal person doing perfectly normal things. Or at least a perfectly ethical person doing perfectly ethical things. If skate-dad wanted to use the ramp, he could ask or wait, as I wouldn’t be much longer; if real-estate mom wanted to ask me what I was up to, I would be happy to bend her ear about my day.

After I had cleaned and packed everything away, I overheard one of them express surprise that I had a bike. “Oh he has a bike!” It had been somewhat obscured by the concrete feature I had been using as a table. I think things started to make more sense to them: I probably wasn't in fact a moderately well-groomed but dangerous chaos-bum. The dad said "hello" awkwardly and I probably just grunted as I rolled my bike past him, tired and annoyed by having to be perceived at all. Sorry for any stray beans on your skate ramp. I do not ride my bike into the woods alone to feel othered by normies. Not my finest moment but at least I’m in therapy for my insecurities and resentments.

I threw my trash away in a bear-proofed metal bin, proud of myself for figuring out its spring-loaded mechanism so quickly. It was also a reminder that I was going to be camping at Beartown State Forest. It's right there in the name, does what it says on the tin, and only about seven miles away.

Spinning over a few steep hills in the residual heat of the early evening, the hours when the earth and the pavement release the energy baked into them by the sun all afternoon.

I stopped at a closed restaurant/gift shop right at the the bottom of the final gravel ascent into Beartown. They're always closed when you want them the most. I still had plenty of snacks, which I ate at what I assumed was a smoke-break picnic table next to the dumpsters. I also took the opportunity to wet-wipe myself, figuring that their light scent would be obliterated by my own musk by the time I made camp, ensuring that I would not attract the attention of hungry megafauna to my tent while I slept. Another bear-proof dumpster, except this one was more difficult to open simply because the giant lid must have weighed at least 100 pounds. I was able to pry a corner up just enough to stuff in my modest handful of trash. A corvid friend on the power line above said something to me. “Hello, friend”.

Slow and steady up the steep road at 17”. Except that the derailleur kept popping into the next, harder cog. I stopped and got out my 4mm hex wrench to tighten the bar-end shifting mechanism. That did the trick, but I kept the wrench in my pocket just in case. Bikes are a lot more like IKEA furniture than you might think.

Emerging from the trees to a rougher road, turned a corner, then started up another road, this one paved with luxuriant grass, lined with ferns and wildflowers, following a line of utility poles into the setting sun. Gorgeous. Concerned that maybe this was part of the Appalachian Trail, I decided to push my bike out of respect, though not another soul was around. It was nice to savor the relative silence, my freehub slowly ticking rather than intermittently gargling.

The actual portion of the Appalachian Trail I ascended to get to the southerly Mt Wilcox lean-to turned out to be a beautifully twisty, rock-bestrewn path over which I had to shoulder my bicycle for about 1000 strenuous and picturesque feet, and about 200 feet of elevation.

To quote the fictional drag queen Miss Chi-Chi Rodriguez, “I got more legs than a bucket of chicken.”