I’M ON standby for departure. As soon as Jonny’s able to sneak out of work we’ll get headed north in the travel van. We want to get there early enough to dig holes and pour concrete before the day gets dark & cold.
My gear’s on the front porch, ready to throw aboard.
I hear plaintive oinks from the front walk. Poor iron piggy wants to go. She thinks it’s awfully cruel of me to tease her like that, break out the gear, she gets all excited and—! finds out she’s not going.
I could have ridden up & back on probably half the Vermont weekends this summer, the ones where I wasn’t needed to drive the van or a truck. But getting anywhere in one piece in the mayhem of the Boston-to-DC megalopolis has its physical and mental demands. I thought it better to put those resources into the reasons I needed to be there in the first place, whether it was working in the woods or helping out on the construction crew.
Oh well… iron piggy will get her ya yas in 2023, I think. We’ll roll those big-mile days like we used to.
Enjoy your weekend and take care, all.
Tony DePaul, October 7, 2022, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Always look forward to your postings! Constant sense of true north, for me anyway.
Thanks Michael. I thought of you the other day while re-reading the Cora Bowen story for the first time in years. Funny, but the self-study I’ve been doing on long-form fiction has me looking at that story in a much more critical light. Entirely different genre but now I think I see it as seriously flawed. I’ll have to catch up to you at some point for your take on it. If you’re local, that is, and not back in LA.
Thanks, all. Back on grid now. Just walked in the door. Somehow it seems tougher to have just a Saturday & Sunday up there instead of a full three days. We had so much work to do we hardly stopped to eat. It was pretty cold & windy. Both nights were down around freezing.
Tony,
I think you look forward to these jaunts into the mountains, even if you’re not on the bike (and yes, the most treacherous thing about riding these days is negotiating traffic). Good luck this weekend; you’re going to wrap it up, right?
Will
Beautiful bike!
Isn’t it wonderful that you can help build, pour, carry, climb, cut, and all the other jobs you’ve had!
We are so grateful that my dad is part of this journey with us! A labor of love to build our family home away from home! Jonny loves to tell me that at this point he knows my dad even better than I do because they’re not just family, they’re friends.