Biking Away the Summer

For the past three and a half weeks, my son has been taking a summer class at Johnson State College. Aside from the fact that I’m impressed with his pluck (the class is General Chemistry, and it meets every morning from 8 AM to noon; next fall he’ll be entering his junior year of high school), I’m also impressed my dedication to helping him achieve this goal. Since my son doesn’t yet have his driver’s license, it’s my job to get him to class each day, then hang around for four hours until he’s ready to head home. With fuel flirting with four bucks a gallon it doesn’t make any sense to drive the twenty minutes back home, then go back and pick him up.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds. For starters, I’ve been able to use the time spent up in Morrisville (where the class is held) doing the things that everyone in Stowe does up in Morrisville: shop. Ironically, though Stowe bills itself as a great place for visitors to “shop,” the kind of shopping small innkeepers need to do (what I call survival shopping: supermarket stuff, farm and garden supplies, etc.) is better done in the blue collar setting ten miles north of here. If I need a new yoga outfit or special creams for my body, Stowe’s the right town; but when I need toilet paper and cheap plastic do-hickies, I head north.

Another benefit of being trapped in a different locale for the morning is that I’m close to the Community College of Vermont, where I teach. While I’m only teaching one class this summer, there’s still plenty of work (like reading essays), and I can go to CCV and use the instructor’s office (which is painfully air-conditioned) and plow through my work while I sip coffee.

And speaking of coffee (which I’ve begun drinking again after a 14-month hiatus; more on that in a future blog), when I’m done with CCV, I’m free to sample the local coffee shops offering free wi-fi. My favorite is the Bee’s Knees. It’s laid back and the coffee’s good. Plus I can look out the huge front windows at the morning bustle as it passes by. Another favorite is the Lovin Cup Cafe in Johnson. Located on the first floor of an old Victorian home, the place has the feel of someone’s living room, which makes it perfect for plunking down on one of the couches and answering emails.

But the best benefit of this arrangement is that I get to ride my road bike every day. As soon as I drop my son off, I change into my bike shorts and take my bike off its rack and hit the road. Biking in Vermont is a pleasure that can’t be overstated. It would be trite for me to waste this space talking about the barns and the cows and the babbling brooks I get to ride past every morning, or to wax philosophic with platitudes about the breathtaking views of the mountains, yadda yadda.

What’s more interesting is the intimate relationship I developed with the road and my bike. After three weeks of hard riding, my bike feels like an extension of my body. The feeling must be similar to what pilots feel with their planes: I just look where I want to go and my bike goes there. I’ve also become a connoisseur of macadam, asphalt, and other road surfaces. Averaging 12 to 15 miles per hour on a thin-tired bicycle requires concentration. While the views around me may be bucolic, most of my time is spent surveying the upcoming road for cracks, detritus, and roadkill. Nothing can ruin your day faster than running over a partially-flattened beaver. (Beaver carcasses are notoriously greasy--some say they’re slicker than owl shit, but I have my doubts--and greasy bike tires are unstable, to say the least.)

While I managed to avoid the remains of various mammals and marsupials that decorated the verge (once I rode by a bloating deer corpse; a hundred yards later I rode past a festering coyote carcass; though I kept a sharp eye out, I never saw the third act of this roadside tragedy: the remains of someone wearing green plaid, holding a rifle), I did have a run-in with a jagged piece of steel that someone had carelessly tossed from a car window. The piece of metal looked like something from a medieval torture chamber, rusting and serrated. I managed to avoid it with my front tire, but it sliced open my back tire, and the resulting high-speed explosion nearly sent me under the treads of a passing oil truck. With no way to repair it--I needed a new tire, as well as an inner tube--I was forced to walk four miles back to my car.

Vermont roads are famous for other unexpected cycling hazards. While patches of sand can destabilize anything on two wheels instantly, my worst fear as a cyclists is the dreaded Wall of Manure. Farmer’s barns may look lovely on postcards and in magazines, but the cows that live there are busy turning grass into milk and manure, and on a hot day the scent of nature can form a physical obstruction as dangerous as any rotting body. To try and suck air precipitating cow dung after climbing a ferocious hill in the July heat is to experience something close to drowning. The body won’t allow it. Eyes water. Skin burns. Lungs seize. But the legs keep pumping, because to stop is to be swallowed up in the miasma.

My son’s class is over, so I’m back to biking from Stowe, and while it’s still a gorgeous place to cycle, I’ll miss my morning cows, my sandy turns, and my Smithsonian-caliber collection of North American fauna piled up on the side of the road. Oh--my son’s class? He got an A. I’ll burn fuel for that any day. Especially if I get to bike away my mornings.