September 30

I left the campground at 9:00, and rode for half an hour in the cool morning on backroads Pennsylvania. Deer season opened recently. Pennsylvania must be crowded with deer. I heard a shot at least every thirty seconds in the woods where hunting is allowed. Or maybe the hunters are shooting at each other. I was
glad to be wearing my orange polo shirt.

I stopped at a crossroads to check my map, have a drink of gatorade, and eat a bag of trail mix for breakfast. There was a ten acre field on the corner where I had parked the bike, fenced with two strands of wire, unbarbed, and the fence was very close to the road. About fifteen head of cattle were grazing in the field, and 0ne, which I thought might be a young bull because he had a ring in his nose, came up to the fence to investigate me. He was soon joined by all rest, several of which also had rings in their noses, and I didn't see any bullish behavior so I relaxed, a little. They put their noses within a foot of the fence, but wouldn't touch it. It could have been an electric fence, but I doubt it. An electric fence for a field that size would be expensive to operate and maintain.

A couple of pickup trucks and an SUV came by, their drivers taking an interest in our little gathering. It might have seemed I was preaching to the cattle, or trying to lure them over the fence with my trail mix. Finished with my breakfast, I rode on.

I rode on hilly back roads, but the weather stayed cool, and there was no head wind. Roads with names like Pine Swamp, Cold Run, and Buck Hollow. After I passed through a little settlement named Plowville on Buck Hollow Road the traffic started getting heavy, all going my way. For the next 3 ½ miles there was a constant stream of pickups, cars, SUVs and Harleys passing me on a narrow, curvy, hilly road with no shoulders. It turned out that they were going to a major dragstrip: big grandstands, big crowd, I would have loved to take it in, had I been eighteen.

I stopped at 11:22, just under the wire, for a real breakfast at a diner in Amish country. I had SOS, which in the Air Force stood for something on a shingle, and is known otherwise as chipped beef on toast, for the first time since 1961.

The depression, loneliness, fear and loathing, have eased. Still there but not as bad. A new title by Elmore Leonard, The Hot Kid, helps.