Freedom
My wife figures she’s been cooped up in the house for a year and a half — me, maybe not quite — but for both of us, taking a weekend drive to a wedding in northern Vermont was incredibly pleasant and freeing. A reminder that, regardless your life circumstances (think Afghanistanis or Americans), freedom is nothing to take for granted. Freedom is earned, not a given; it is risky and it is tenuous.
These thoughts percolated in my Grape-Nuts brain as we drove through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and into the Green Mountains of Vermont. It was a clear, sunny, warm, utterly beautiful day in late August. I lived in rural New Hampshire for many happy years, happy because, I suppose, the environment reminded me of growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. (geez, white, green, black mountains? Are you kidding me?)
I like the slower pace of country living.
I like to wake up in the morning to the sounds of bees and birds instead of traffic and construction.
I like the freedom that comes with being close to nature.
Although our time in rural Vermont was short and filled with wedding activities, we squeezed in a couple of drives to take in the scenery and visit a covered bridge, famed for the tumbling waterfall running beneath it. Everything we did made me long to be riding my bike. And so it was that I discovered a wonderful bike shop, sadly too late.
A Visit to The Jay Cloud Cyclery
I rounded the S-curve on Vermont Highway 119 into Montgomery Center, (population 845) Sylvester’s Market dead ahead. I was looking for “The Inn” where my wife and I would be attending a wedding the following day. My eyes swept past a pizza place, then quickly across the street to . . . a bicycle shop!
A little bell jingled as I stepped inside, where I was greeted by Becky. I soon learned she had worked for Ethan Bull, the owner, for seven years and was an avid cyclist herself. I met her young daughter, and was struck once again at how wonderful a rural environment is for raising children.
I told Becky I was just kinda kicking tires, so to speak, but we got to talking. I confessed to living in Massachusetts, but with the caveat that I’d lived in rural New Hampshire for a number of years, too. She asked what I was doing in Montgomery Center, and I told her some good friends’ son was getting married. “What’s his name?” Becky asked, and I told her it was Derek. “I know Derek,” she said. “He and I worked at Jay Peak together for a few years” (Jay Peak being the local ski mountain). We’re way up in the Green Mountains — Ver-Mont — here, just ten or so miles from the Canadian border.
We chatted some more. She told me the Jay Cloud, like many New England outdoor sports shops, didn’t turn into a ski shop in the winter, only selling winter sports clothing which a cyclist, snowshoer or a cross-country skier might wear. I told her about my cycling and writing. I asked how business was, and she said it was slow, mostly because they couldn’t get bikes to sell. The raw materials supplies are crazy short and demand has gone through the roof. I noted there were only five bikes on the floor, mostly Treks; a good-looking Santa Cruz stood near. Made me remember the good times I’d had there, and where my second novel, Madrone, is set.
Becky said ebikes are definitely getting more popular, especially with tourists who want to go riding but might not appreciate the exertion required by the mountainous terrain. I told her I had a bicycling novel coming out, the story of some New England bike guys who created a bike drive that didn’t require a battery. Totally fictional, of course, and taking place ten years ago. She said she’d like to see it. I said I’d make sure that happened.
We talked about the building and its incarnations over the past century as we walked back to the maintenance shop, where I met Ethan working on a bike. But what a bike, the likes of which I had never seen before. It was called Rungu, a behemoth machine with twin front wheels, and an ebike to boot.
I snapped these few pictures, then it was time to get back to the wedding activities. Becky and I shook hands as I told her I might write this blog about our meeting at this very cool bike shop. I wished we were going to be sticking around long enough to rent a couple of ebikes and ride the six covered bridges of Montgomery.
The drive home was pleasant if not uneventful. I took another route, due south through Vermont. We stopped to have lunch with a publishing colleague and his wife in Norwich, upon the site of the former King Arthur Flour “factory” site, which has become the King Arthur bakery, café, store and school plaza (because tourism is where it’s at in America these days; the story told is that the flour was never milled in Vermont but Minnesota instead). We stopped for a late lunch at a sub shop in Claremont, New Hampshire, that advertised:
Sadly, it was not.
