October 30

Working backwards:

I just rode a mile and a half through rush-hour traffic in St. Augustine to a Winn-Dixie for microwavable and refrigerable groceries for two days. The Winn-Dixie has the first bike rack I've seen at a supermarket, and it was filled, and all the bikes are locked. I parked mine at the end of the rack, and left it, unlocked, as I have been doing. Inside the store, as I was pushing my cart towards the produce, I met a fellow struggling with shopping bags, assorted clothing and his bicycle. I asked him if bikes got stolen that much around there (to my shame I didn't offer to help him in his struggle) and he said,
"It's unbelievable".

Having emptied the milk crate on my bike in order to carry the groceries back to the motel (Ramada Inn, pool, internet, microwave and fridge, $60) I realized that my bike would be the perfect shopping cart. I go back to get it, and follow a big guy in his early forties towards the bike rack. This guy was 6'4", big shoulders, nobody to mess with. He went to the end of the rack, put his groceries in the milk carton of his bike, and we congratulated each other on our intelligent choice of hardware.

Another guy, who was also black, at a filling station/convenience store thirty minutes north (by bike) of St. Augustine struck up a conversation while I was drinking a bottle of chocolate YoHo. I was standing on a verandah five feet above the ground, where he was standing next to his car. He admired my rig and we talked about the usual stuff: where I came from, how long I've been on the road and where I'm going. He has been to Canada, but not to Nova Scotia. Loved Montreal, includes it with his favorite cities: New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Lima. He recommended a couple of seafood restaurants in St. Augustine, and said that I gotta see the something Basilica, the oldest church in America.

An hour before that, I was riding on Ponte Vedra Blvd, past immaculate mansions between the road and the beach. That's pronounced "ponty vaydra". I had to ask my way from a carpenter, when Adventure Cycling misdirected me. The carpenter addressed me as "sir". That's been happening a lot in the South, but one black guy, younger than me called me "boy", which is another improvement in race relations. The sun was bright and the air redolent with the fragrance of a blossom (hibiscus maybe) which I've been smelling all day, and which triggers deep but murky memories and puts me in a playful mood. A guy going north in British Racing Green convertible slowed and signaled to me to stop. He wanted to talk. He has made several bike tours in North America and Europe, and he asks knowledgeable questions, and we have a good conversation. He said that he would have invited me to stay at his little beach house, but his wife wasn't there and he wouldn't be back for several hours. I rode a long, long way before I saw a "little" beach house.

About 11:00 this morning as I was taking a rest before crossing the Amelia River a guy, about 60, riding passed me and then turned around and came back to see if there was anything I needed. He races his bike, but has never toured on one, and wanted to know all about it.

I mention Erin in all these conversation, how supportive she has been and how we plan to meet for a couple of weeks somewhere warm this winter.

I'm feeling a little guilty about the pleasure I've had today: it's been that good. Shorts and T shirt since sunup, tail winds, a no-sweat 52 mile ride with lots of breaks, tropical vegetation and an armadillo on the roadside, that fragrance, which verges on clinging but never gets there, and which filters vision.

At sunset, which gave a soft warm light to the genuine and the schlock alike in St. Augustine's Old Town, I got lost returning with my groceries to the motel. I asked directions of a man on a park bench: tobacco stains on his fingers and in his beard and a bicycle beside him. He gave me perfect directions to the motel. I cannot call it home, but it sho feels good. I was surprised this morning as I rode past mansions and pristine beaches and verdant growth by my lack of envy or greed, and then realized that I still don't want to live, permanently, anywhere but Chester, with my family and friends. But for the first time since I left I feel good about being on the road. Kerouac wouldn't have had the stamina to do this.

Amelia Island Parkway, just south of Fernandia Beach, runs through a super-plush stretch of gated estates. The road, like many in the Deep South, is narrow with wide grassy shoulders. There were places on back roads in the Carolinas where those shoulders were so littered that there were times I needed to pee and was reluctant to stop. Not so the Amelia Island Parkway. The only litter I noticed was a solitary champagne bottle.

I spent last night at the Ft. Clinch State Park. I set up camp, cooked my supper, crawled into my tent and bedroll at sunset, read a little, drifted off to sleep, and woke an hour later to the rattle of the pans I'd left on the picnic table. I grabbed the flashlight and looked outside. Several raccoons were investigating my gear, and especially the milk crate on my bike, which holds my food, and was leaning against a fence: superhighway for raccoons. They didn't like the light much, but they didn't dislike it enough to leave, so I told them to go away, which they did, reluctantly. I wasn't fully back into my sleeping bag before they returned. This time I shouted and threw a shoe at them. That was a much greater inconvenience to me than to them. The shoe missed, they continued their burglary, and now I had to get dressed to retrieve the shoe. I put my glasses on and the world was weird. I had sat on them, popping out a lens and bending the frame. One-eyed, I got my shoe, and took everything out of the milk crate and put it in the tent. The raccoons, two adults and two smaller ones, stayed five feet from my bike on the other side of the fence and watched. They would turn away from the flashlight if I shone it directly in their eyes, but they wouldn't leave. One of the small ones once nuzzled up to one of the adults and got what I took to be reassurance. After I got everything I thought they might try to eat into the tent, I went back to bed and tried to sleep.

The Metta Sutta, as translated and paraphrased by Gil Fronsdal, contains these lines:
"Let no one, through anger or aversion, wish for others to suffer. . . . Toward all beings one should cultivate a bountiful heart. With loving kindness for the whole world should one cultivate a bountiful heart."

I repeated those lines the rest of the night when I was awake, which I frequently was, trying not to worry about how I would get my glasses fixed, and trying not to think of ways to murder raccoons. In the morning I managed to get the lens back in, and twisted the frames so that I could see again.