I expected little from last night’s ride – it was a dull Wednesday, or I felt dull and it was a Wednesday, I guess -- it was cloudy, gray and cold, and I had about an hour before supper to quickly retrace my usual, seemingly worn out route.
So off I went, as it started to drizzle, but about five miles out I decided to hit the highway instead of my backroad, and then, back off the highway ten miles out, I decided to try some new damp gravel roads….
The first dead-ended about five miles in, in what could have been a sweet little valley with a small stream, but it was a Redneck Culdesac, crowded with newish, middle class homes full of people trying to get away from people, living right next to other people trying to get away from people – and the most striking feature: “No Trespassing” and “Private!” signs on every other tree and fence post. ATVs and the occasional confederate flag…. Five acres of freedom butted up against your neighbor's acres.
I turned around, figuring I’d head home, but soon found another gravel road leading, I knew, East, strangely smooth and damp, and therefore dustless, and I assumed it would bump me back out onto another highway. And it did, but not before winding through working farms for a good twenty minutes of absolutely blissful adventure. Well, the kind of “adventure” an old man can have between work and supper – there’s probably some A. A. Milne quote appropriate here, but that would be too cute, and it’s bad enough to be riding a bright green Vespa on gravel farm roads.
Anyway, new roads! New farms and barns! Only a vague sense of where I was going.
And, most importantly, I’d crossed the line separating the “No Trespassing” ex-urban, commuting misanthropes from the generation-deep working farms, where everybody waves as you pass. Miles between each house, clean yards, and, aside from the machinery, a world that hasn’t really changed in over one hundred years.
And there it was: that feeling. The rush of a new discovery found latent in the most familiar of environments, like rummaging around in the garage and suddenly you find it, a tool you’d misplaced years ago and assumed was long, long gone.
This is why we ride.
I got back on the highway and zipped back toward home, turning first on to my familiar backroad so that I could check out my favorite, hidden graveyard, now that the county had repaired its flooded-out road. Up its little incline, kill the engine, and slip off my helmet, remove my earplugs…to a rush of birdsong. Not a bird in sight, but at least half a dozen different species singing in the spring. The grass lush between the stones….
Oh, great god Vespuvius, let me have a few more days like this; let me remember I love the things nearby, those things right around me and just out of sight. Let me long less for change and appreciate what is so close at hand. Let me ride deeper into the familiar. Let me trespass and appreciate the freedom of owning nothing but the wheels beneath me.
