Notes From the Trail

J and I went for a 24 mile bike ride* last Saturday along the a trail maintained by the Allegheny Trail Alliance. We followed a section that runs next to the Youghiogheny River.

We rented two Schwinns (Cruisers, I think. I know they were NOT mountain bikes), from a private house right off the trail. Across the street was a bar and the Boston Shoppes, a house filled with three stories of eclectic gifts and a tea room.

I had my obligatory encounter with Weirdness in the form of a slightly inebriated DOM** in search of a hot dog at 11:30 in the morning. As I waited for J to return from the car so we could set off, DOM turned to me and said "My wife and I used to take one thing with us whenever we went fishing or biking. Do you know what that one thing was?"

I raised an eyebrow from behind my sunglasses and waited for the inevitable punchline...

"It was a blanket."

He cackled loudly, climbed into his truck, hot dog in hand, and drove away.

We saw lots of springs, the spring that is the season and the spring that is the mineral kind. We biked past front and back yards, peeking into private lives. A little boy, stark naked, running around on a driveway. A little girl on training wheels, happily honking her horn to passerbys, her mother laughing with equal parts pleasure and embarassment.





*Shortly after I put my left hand in the ceiling fan. Gripping a handlebar with a swollen and bruised hand was not a pleasant experience.
**Dirty Old Man. I seem to attract more than my fair share of them.