May 24, 2014
Vandalia to Lebanon
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
THERE ARE TIMES when America excels itself. Where else would you find a fire-breathing dragon? And one, what's more, that's simply there. It advertises nothing, it costs nothing and it exists just for the pleasure of existing.
Well, I wasn't going to leave Vandalia without seeing it and, after I rode the length of Rock Island Avenue, there it was on a junction, tall, silver and as close to a dragon as you can get in shaped steel. Across the road, a drinks store that has the tokens but which leads more leisurely hours than a passing cyclist. And further along, a building supplies supermarket where the staff gave me two free tokens "so as you don't miss the show."
And you drop a token into a box, you turn round, there's a roar, flames bellow from the creature's mouth and then five seconds later it's all over. It's not, I admit, on the scale of a Rolling Stones concert but it's quite something in a suburb of a small town in the middle of nowhere.
My destiny for today was to meet a man I'd long thought of as a friend even though we'd never met. Jeff Lee is married to Joy Santee. Joy Santee is a lovely girl I met in the dying moments of my first attempt to ride across America, so that I don't actually know her although timing alone meant she played a role in my life. And then she met and agreed to marry Jeff.
So that was it, really. I rode into Lebanon, a pleasant little place of interesting shops and buildings and a mock-cobbled street and the air of a good place to live, then bowled out past the university where Joy is a professor of English, and then finally met Jeff. Joy had fled at the notion of my arrival and preferred to be hiking some muddy, rain-dripping trail somewhere...
Great guy, Jeff. Not surprisingly, we see life in the same way. And we both like curry, our treat of the evening.
You can't fault a man who rides a bike and likes curry.
Today's ride: 96 km (60 miles)
Total: 1,816 km (1,128 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |