Childhood vacations are their own mythical place in my mind. With a few exceptions they blur together. Generally they revolved around Vermont or camping on Martha’s Vineyard. Mostly they were with my Mom’s family and, invariably, they involved cycling. I usually spent two summer weeks in Montpelier with my grandparents and even those bleed into the time we spent there as a family.
Vermont summers are short. My grandparents made the most of them. Grandpa enjoyed his job as a paper salesman–driving around the state peddling paper to local shops and printers. I believe he was damn good at it. His embrace of the world was warm and gregarious. His curiosity ran deep. He was just as likely to drift into the economics of a dairy operation as he was to inquire about someone’s printing business. He engaged easily, listened well, and people responded in kind. No surprise; his gift rolled with him. Every town had a community store and most had a creemee stand. Grandpa knew all of them, and they all knew him. Any time some enterprising soul threw up another creemee stand or started selling vegetables on the side of the road Grampa was sure to be among their first customers and often among their last. There was no sin to be found in a two-creemee ride even if Grammy didn’t approve.
Grammy and Grampa were especially fond of traveling out of Montpelier on Route 2 out to Middlesex. The road cut through a broad river valley whose vistas distracted from the nearby interstate. Outside of Sunday rides with my Dad, this stretch of pavement gave me my first cycling forays into the wider world. From Middlesex there was the broad-shoulder of the scenic highway out to Moretown and from there to Waitsfield the surfaces and shoulders were mostly good. These were their regular family routes stacked in ascending distance and difficulty. If we felt even more ambitious, we could loop over “a good grade” (Grampa speak for a long climb) into Waterbury and drop through town back onto Route 2 for the return to Montpelier.
We had two other familiar options when cycling out of town. Heading from Montpelier out to Stowe was a special trip where Route 12 was either the way back or the route out. Either option was a 40 mile commitment. Route 14, the other pave option, pointed us off into The Northeast Kingdom –– a land of great adventure where we were guaranteed a lot of “good grades”.
At times, it was too much. I recall days dreading how I would bake in the afternoon sun or how the driving headwinds blasted through the river valleys. I would develop sudden stomach aches at the thought of some rides. At one point there was a conversation with my Mom about how my Dad really wanted to ride with me and how my headache would go away once we were moving. I didn’t always get out the door, but apparently I went often enough.
Since Grampa spent his life driving around the state he knew it well, but not all of it. Vermont remains a rural state and it was even more so back then. Large chunks of it had no printing presses or stationary stores, but they most certainly had maps, and with maps come schemes. We had a system where there was usually a sag wagon and a picnic. Grandpa chose some new section of map and we all set out together. My Mom and Grammy swapped riding and driving. On the times that I was with the group, I would ride what I could and then get in the car. There was never room for the five of us in Grampa’s Saab, so someone was going the distance.
While maps are built out an orderly set of colors, lines and symbols, the roads themselves were quirky and given to sudden shifts in personality. The rare bits of smooth Vermont pavement gave way to all manners of crotch abuse even beyond the typical pavement patches. The crevasse: shoulders sometimes slid off into the neighboring drainage to create long crevices just wide enough to swallow a wheel. The ball busters: the raised or cratered seam that pounded hands and privates. They typically showed in the gaps between concrete slabs. Ten to 12 feet was just far enough for a few good pedal strokes and close enough that it was impossible to get a butt off the seat in time. Patchwork: pavement, bit of dirt, back to pavement, back to dirt and the potholes that form at each of those transitions. And, the special torture of a freshly oiled road covered in sharp gravel. The maps told us nothing about these vagueries.
We were always surprised and often dismayed at how much elevation could hide in one small section of wrinkled paper. I recall the dreadful anticipation of the mountain that loomed ahead and the route that veered off to the side, a sweet gray ribbon laid across the sweeping valley which turned out not to be our destiny and the turn we really wished we weren’t taking. Grampa always had something new in mind. “Try turning here’, we’d hear. And so we discovered, “That was a bitch of a climb,” or we might get suckered by the infamous “It’s all downhill from here.”
Martha’s Vineyard was especially hallowed ground. Even before it became the mysterious gateway through which cycling entered into their lives, summer camping on The Vineyard was a tradition. Grammy and Grampa, of course, knew the campground owners well, their children, and eventually their grandchildren. While they took their car over on the ferry, we would typically cross with just our bicycles and meet them at the campground for a few days out of their extended stay. My parents made it a point of pride to catch the first ferry of the day. I had no access to the adult logic that drove this decision, but I did get a kick out of sleeping in the car, and the magic of rolling our small bikes onto such a big boat in the cool morning air. There was a certain flavor of cozy that came from knowing that everything we needed was rolling right along with us. Bikes were how we moved around the island. Beach, breakfast, lunch, and back again. Sometimes there was a car to carry the picnic, sometimes not. When we did special dinners in town, we crammed our tired, baked bodies into their sedan. And sometimes my aunt, who was decidedly allergic to cycling, would bring her car.
As a family unit, we also made it out to Block Island a couple of times with just our bikes. We ventured out in the blustery shoulder seasons when the island was quiet and the weather cool. I have no memories of sun, but neither serious rain. Gray clouds raced on stiff breezes. A hard gale only coaxed the faintest tremble at the very edges of the thick scrub and stiff grasses on the bluffs above a moody sea. Tip to toe, the island could be traversed in less than an hour without much shifting required (depending on the mercy of the winds). It was a place of shorts, and long sleeves with us tucked behind dunes or in the lee of a porch with our books. Heading into town for breakfast was not so much a physical activity as an immersion into the rich sea air –– a brief conversation with a chatty breeze that made the donut just a bit tastier.
I was never alone on those trips, but even when in the proximity of others cycling is a distinctly private journey. Each person is alone with different struggles, different pain points and different head space. Among the family there was no talk of drafting. Sometimes the person in front would blink out of sight over the top of a climb, and it was usually unclear how far back the next person might be. Despite these hard facts there was a special warmth in knowing that I was rolling with my pack. At some level we were Tribe rolling across the savannah. I might not see them in the bush, but I knew they were out there. Without doubt, most of the miles I have ridden since have been solo, and yet I never shed that sense of presence when I am on a bike. There is always someone ahead, someone behind. Someone in my head. My tribe rolls with me.
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