BIKING IN DISCOUNT DRUG MART
I saw a bike inside Discount Drug Mart. It wasn’t for sale. It was blocking an aisle. A fully loaded bike – camping gear, front bag. I was trying to get blueberries but couldn’t easily navigate around the bike. A girl came up and said the bike was hers. I asked if Drug Mart let bikes in. She said yes. She was biking from Maine to California, she said.
She was Audra, 20, from Maine. She goes to Mount Holyoke and is studying film and environmental-something. She was biking out the southern route, Route 66.
She hadn’t heard of the song “Route 66.” I sent her a link to the Nat “King” Cole version. Also, I told her I had contributed to Adventure Cycling in Missoula, Mont., like forever. Like since it was Bikecentennial, 1976. I like maps — bike maps in particular.
Audra did the trip solo. (This all happened in August.) She said she’d send me a film of her trip. Cool. I haven’t gotten it yet, young lady!
All this went down next to the blueberries at Discount Drug Mart in Lakewood, Ohio.
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I had an essay, “Rushing to the Gate is a Young Man’s Game,” in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, about airport travel. (No paywall.)
4 comments
I just listened to Nat King Cole’s version of “Route 66” and would have to say it really is pretty good and not very familiar. However the version on the tv show, which was my favorite show in the early ’60s, is absolute perfection! I’ll be right around the highway when I get to Phoenix in two weeks….
“She hadn’t heard of the song ‘Route 66.’ I sent her a link to the Nat ‘King’ Cole version.” Reminds that it’s time to spin Nat’s Christmas LP. And while I’m at it, some of his jazz trio work.
Stumbled upon your site after having read your review, in City-Journal, of Donald Hall’s ‘Old Poets’.
Was getting teary-eyed holding back my amusement reading your blog; the bike story broke me: I had to laugh.
That is poetry.
Hey, Sam, glad to hear you like the blog-o.
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