September 24

A hot day, at least since 4:30, when I stopped to pitch my tent, next to a Catepillar equipment yard.

While I was waiting outside a supermarket for the rain to let up in New Paltz at noon, a guy came up and introduced himself as the manager of a hostel, a clean, sociable place, he said, where I would be most welcome. Too late, or too early, but I appreciated the gesture.

About an hour and a half later I was riding through what was once Hawthorne and Cooper country, and is now horse farms and exurbia, on the edge of low mountains shrouded in mist, following my map as best I could. I thought I had taken a wrong turn at Shawangunk and was studying the map just past an intersection when a guy came up behind me and stopped in the middle of the road. He had a dismantled bike in the back of his car, and he wanted to congratulate me taking a tour. He told me I was on the right road, and we talked for about thirty seconds before another car came along and he had to dive away. In less than a minute he passed me again, waving, going the other way, and I wondered if he had gone out of his way to have that conversation.
Fear, grief, sorrow, self-pity: these are the components of homesickness and my hindrances.