Started my new job today, working for the guy I worked for during Spring Break.  I like this guy an awful lot, which makes me want to do good work for him.  Which makes me nervous about failing.  Which makes me less likely to do good work.  Vicious, ain't it?

Turns out, you sailor folk, that he and this other guy lofted and framed the Sloop Providence.  Funny how the world just get smaller and smaller, ain't it?  A little like this:

Walked into Anchor Steam Tattoo parlor in Newport this past weekend, and there is a very nice young lady sitting there who says "I know you, your wife has a great "Vote" tattoo, and you are a friend of Liam."  All of these things are true.  Then it turns out she knows our friend Michelle as well.  So wierd.  We are all only about a degree or two from each other.

That wasn't what I wanted to talk about.  Wanted to ttalk about riding my new (borrowed) bicycle.  It is about a 1980 Motobecane Super Mirage that a friend of mine is very generously letting me use this summer.  Sweet damn ride.  And the way I get to John's shop in the morning and back in the evening is by taking a bus for about 45 minutes and then riding for about twenty minutes on this ten-speed.

This morning was cool and clear and sunny, and the first part of the ride is on a pretty busy street, which was not so fun, but then you turn right at this sign that says "Peter's Pots," which I always try to make into some kind of nursury rhyme, but can never quite do, and then you are riding through farmland, in the cool sun of a Rhode Island summer morning, and it is just lovely. 

Then I plunge into the woods, and everything is sun-dappled two lane roads, with pine and oak forests stretching on either side, and a lovely tunnel of tree branches to ride underneath.  Up and down and over a charming little bridge, past an Audobon preserve, it is really a treat.  I mean, my ass is bruised from the bumps and my thighs are burning a little, and not in a dirty way, but this biking thing is really kind of okay.

I was sitting in the fo'c's'le of the Lettie G Howard last weekend talking to some good friends that had gone on a huge bike trip down the West Coast, and this real cool lady named Christine said that bikes were the perfect speed for traveling, that they were slow enough to see the world, but faster than walking.  Dave Gunn, the ruggedly handsome  Bo's'un agreed.  I did not really know what they meant until this morning.  It really is a great way to travel, no lie.  Not ponderously slow, but close enough to the world that you remember that we are part of it, and that we ignore the realities of our surroundings at our peril.

So get a bike and ride, dammnit.

Happy trails.