2003-09-14

Acoustic Bicycle Tour 2003

Stories

First one that comes to my mind today, this Sunday, Sep. 14 of last month�s travels:

I was headed early on in the morning towards New Haven, heading west from Madison. I had spent a good deal of 3 days recuperating and resting at Hamanasset State Park, enjoying basic facilities like running water, camp grounds, and a wonderful sparse beach meeting the Long Island Sound. I was rushing to meet Kelli, who was going to rendezvous with me at the Train station. This was the end, I had decided, of the trip. I was cutting it short, now into my 11th day. 3 days remained until the final show in Middletown, and the nice even count of two weeks exactly . . . but the road life had been wearing me down, and I decided that at hitting New Haven, my original point of beginning, a full circle had been met. My plan could be altered, as it had throughout the course of the short tour. It was, I guessed, No Big Deal. I would cut out the last show, Klekolo Coffee House, Middletown. My girlfriend was also hard to say �no� to on the phone, as she asked about meeting up with me. I guess it was only fair for her to come up with new plans short notice, since I did it all the time. (And it invariably affected her day to day lifestyle).

So, leaving the oasis of lawn sculptures and small town cafes and cinemas that was Madison, Connecticut. Relatively early, shortly after dawn, I gathered my things, waking before most of the morning bustle began at the Campsite. I turned off my mosquito whistle, which had been affectively deterring all but the most hardy of the miniscule hellions all night. Stood up and stretched and rolled up my sleeping bag. The only sleeping bag in the campsite with no tent pitched over it, bare to the elements which was OK. Mars was floating overhead in the closest path it had been for the past 60,000 years. (check #) Unrolled on top of a picnic table, I slept on it like a charm, like a baby, like a log.

The now familiarity with which I packed the belongings into plastic bags if they were dirty, into the suitcase if they were slightly clean, zipped it shut and squeezed it into the trailer where it Just fit. In such a way that my knuckles were rubbed raw from the luggage against the canvas against the zipper I was constantly opening and closing for a sip of water, the video camera to capture some bird or sign in the sky, the sun screen as the day heated up, and so forth. The familiarity of those red raw fingers. The familiarity also of the itchiness still fading from bug bites persisting over a week as swollen skin, memory of tissue. Of nerves.

I waved to Charlie, and he waved back, fishing pole in hand. He was my camping �neighbor�, parked nearby with his family. He had come up to me two days before, soon after I arrived at my picnic table, and had asked if I wanted anything from Shop�n�Save. We were not so far from humanity�s luxuries, after all. He had been at the site for 3 weeks now. And though this was also his last day at the Hammanaset state Park, for now, he was going fishing off the pier. He had invited me to come along last evening, and I sadly missed him. Too much excitement videotaping the people and the rv�s and the campers.

To digress from the digression: I quickly slipped through the entrance just as I had planned for the past two days, and was paid no mind or heed as I biked away from the pay booth, having paid no fee for no amount of axels on my vehicle. The bicycle held up that morning, as it had all along; a used 50 $ purchase with ten speeds.

The trip from Madison to New Haven is short. I made it in 3 hours. I stopped once for a bagel at Dunkin Donuts. I also stopped sporadically to video tape things on the road. My shadow, road signs, I can�t remember what else.

Upon entering New Haven, a large urban setting, the roads tend to merge, conglomerate, and temporarily lose their down-home, small time feel. Large and larger trucks skittered by with a roar. Traffic became more and more morning rush hour-like.

This had happened a few times before, I had encountered similar environs shifts in Middletown and Hartford. Basically there will be some sort of escape route for cyclists before the road merges with an interstate highway, and if you�re lucky there will be a sign that is visible telling you this. In Middletown I saw the sign, but could find no other feasible way of getting to my destination before the sun set, and so, took the highway. Thus I took my life, and shared it with my hands and those of the road. In Hartford, there was no warning, but the highway had huge shoulders. Since I was biking in the predawn morning, it was actually inviting with its solitary freight trucks occasionally rolling by. So, with all this experience on my side, I decided to keep on the road I was on, �Route 1�, the old Boston � New York Post road. In cities however, time just sort of cancels out these old artifacts. Who knew where the Post Road was any more, I quickly found myself on the Interstate 95, headed towards what looked like a major bridge. Traffic was heavy as I approached.

Now at this point your hero is of course looking for a pedestrian walkway across the bridge. They always provide one, somewhere, a little gesture to the needs of inhabitants of the city. There is no exit ahead of me before the bridge begins, and only an entrance ramp introducing even more trucks onto the highway. A state trooper has come to a stop ahead of me. As I walk the bike along a shoulder that is about to end, standing between highway and rampway, the policeman backs up a bit, gets out of his car and cuts across traffic to come face me:

�What the Hell are you doing?�

He wears those huge opaque glasses that form a sort of rectangle above his nose, reflecting all and allowing none to see in. He is irate.

I explain that I am trying to get off of the highway, and am about to complain to him of the scarcity of posted signs for pedestrians and bikers when I decide not to.

�You aren�t doing a good job of it, are you?� He Yells.

He then goes on to yell at me some more. Luckily because we are in traffic, and in danger, he doesn�t have the time or luxury to keep it up for too long. He asks where I am from, so I tell him I am from New York.

�Do me a favor. I want you to leave as soon as possible. Go back to New York. You are an idiot. I don�t like idiots in Connecticut.�

He then pointed for me to go back down the entrance ramp and get the hell off of the bridge. Soon I find another smaller bridge that has the pedestrian walk that I am looking for. The cop was rightfully angry, I suppose, but it still hurts to be called an idiot. And he demonstrated his resistance to different ideas, his rigidity and, like all cops, his need to correct or help someone.

I say this because I remember another run-in with a cop, this one on a bike, a few days prior near Jewitt City, coming south from Danielson along the East coast. As I passed him, (and this was strange, evidently he had nowhere to be as I was able to overtake him with 100 lbs of weight attached) I asked him how far he thought it was to New London, my destination for the night. We struck up a quick conversation, and he was curious and friendly. He explained that he had biked this area all of his life, as a little kid. He thought most cars would drive safely by me, and I only had to worry about the people that might be changing a radio dial or talking on their cell phone, distracted.

The thing that kind of bothered me, makes me bring this up � He reached down, noticing my front wheel lock was sticking out a bit, and loosened it in order to push the lever all the way in. He explained that I should look out for that sort of thing, and that a friend of his lost his front wheel on a bump, flew over the handlebars and ripped open his face.

While I appreciated this warning, and considered it for the next few days (it kind of haunted me like a vision, actually), I felt it a little bit insulting. After all, had I not been on the road for 8 days already? The man I had tune up my bike surely knew what he was doing, that wheel was surely tight.

The policeman admitted quickly that he shouldn�t be touching my bike really, and withdrew his hand. And I was grateful for the advice, and the story, and the friendliness. But it just adds to my point, that some people feel the need to dispense with help, that they know what it is that any particular individual needs. That they quickly look for what they can fix in a person, or a town.

Anyway, it�s not a judgment so much as an observation.

I will tell more stories of the Acoustic Bicycle tour in the near future. At least 11 of them, so there will be one for every day. That seems reasonable.