What a Ride

You Have To Give It Away To Keep It Getting ready for my trip, I take my bike to Mike. He tells me it looks like it needs brakes and an oil change. Amazingly, they have the brake pads and oil filter at the dealer. So, I start putting on the brake pads. The first one is still good and I start to doubt Mike (I should know better than this, he’s a hell of a mechanic). The next pad is almost gone. There are two sets on the front wheel, one still good, but barely, the other almost shot. The back one is about ready to start digging into the disc. I would have broken down long before I got to my brother’s. The one and only rule of the road: see your mechanic before you go anywhere. I have been trying to get my brother to take a ride—or do anything for that matter—for the last ten years. We work really well together but I think it’s hard for us to just be together. I’m looking forward to riding and doing stuff with my old bro. Life goes by fast. Let’s have some fun. He lives upstate near Monticello and that whole area up towards Albany is all gorgeous riding. I’ve been paid on a few jobs so I have enough to take the ten days and have a little fun. I’ll spend as much time with my brother as he wants. Maybe I’ll ride up to Albany and ride the Erie Canal west through New York State on the back roads. At some point I’ll drop south to Pittsburgh and meet up with Pat Malik and Carol. I’ve always wanted to ride a funicular—a cable car—in Pittsburgh and see the city. I’d like to ride the Monongahela River south and see the countryside, then head down to West Virginia and see the Radio Telescope. E.T., phone home. Then, I’ll head back through Pennsylvania along the old Lincoln Highway, which is, I think, the first road to cross the United States. My dad’s parents had a house in a place called Bricktown, New Jersey, in the Pine Barrens. I remember it as a kid, maybe four years old, and have always wanted to go back there. I’ve set myself quite an itinerary and I’ve still left a few places out, but I’ll find them. I’m really looking forward to this trip. I went to Boy Scout Camp as a kid in Livingston Manor where I grew up, probably sixty or seventy miles from my brother’s place. Turns out one of the old time Montauk Boy Scout leaders worked there when I was a kid too, for the Hempstead Council. We got to chatting about it and he filled me in on where it was and its name: Onteora—Oneonta? No, Onteora. I can still remember when we took a black cherry tree log, about six to eight inches in diameter, and sliced it obliquely—at a 45 degree angle. Made it oval, like this: ‘Camp Onteora BSA Camp Summer ’61’ was branded on it. Hung around the house for years, that log, the type of thing somebody should instill in us to save—love letters, thank you notes. Toss the bills and taxes and save the stuff that has meaning. When I hit the area I’m gonna ride the ten-mile stretch we hiked as kids. There was a store where we camped out and I stole a pack of Old Gold cigarettes. Not very Scout-like. But that trip is full of memories. I think this ride will be part memory lane and part new memories.