I must start off by saying it is VERY hard for me to figure out what day of the week it is right now, and certainly what the date is. Today was the 8th day in a row on the bike, and the only way to know the day of the week is to see if the motel gouges me. If it does, it must be Friday or Saturday. None of that is relevant to this post, just a brief explanation as to why I’m off on my timing!
I‘ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about why I’m doing this. I don’t particularly love riding my bike. I don’t ride a lot at home because I always end up the same place and I’ve been down all those roads many times. What I do love is what I see when I’m riding to new places, on strange highways and byways. I talked the other day about my friend Stefan, without whom I probably would have stopped riding after the second AYH trip. I think about my late friend, John Illig, a lot. He through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail and then wrote books about each of them. Today, I thought a lot about my mom. She was born and raised in Oakland, CA but in 1955, she picked up and moved across the country by herself and enrolled as a 16-year old at Vassar in Poughkeepsie. I rode through Poughkeepsie today and by coincidence, it is graduation weekend at Vassar. Back in 1959, graduation for my mom (at age 20) was on June 8. That was also the day she and my dad got married. So I’m two weeks late for Mother’s Day and two weeks early for what would have been their anniversary (my dad passed away before my senior year at Rice). She took some huge risks at a time when not many women did.
At some level, perhaps I owe my willingness to do some of these things other people don't (sane ones anyway), to my mom’s willingness to do the same years ago. I can state with 99.9% certainty that none of this occurred to me back in high school when Stefan and I took our last two trips. I can state with 100% certainty that in the very remote chance it did occur to me, I never would have given my mom a shred of credit back in the day! Consider this a belated thank you to mom for supporting and encouraging my adventures, even now, 40 years later.
The Chapel at Vassar this afternoon. The wedding was here back in ‘59. Please note this is NOT Theo Chapel. That typo in the text sent me on a wild goose chase around campus.
The view from the pedestrian bridge over the Hudson River.
Unless these people are hiding horses behind that fence, it’s not keeping anything in or out.
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