Chest Pains.
Clears up a lot of misconceptions...Fast!
Sit up and take notice of the time that is left.  Don't know how long it will take to make the concept stick but I will keep on until I get the point.  Here it goes.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Rode home from Phyllis/Stuart’s in a tremendous rain storm.  From my seat I could see long bolts of lightning out in the East over the Shawangunks.  The vista from some of the hill tops on route 17 was enough to crank me several notches on the Caution meter. Then I hit the rain and the Caution meter broke off as it cranked all the way at the end of the scale and snapped.  I had hit some showers just  as I passed out of Wurtsboro but they were nothing.  When I got to Blooming Grove and turned onto 17 the temperature dropped and it got darker, grayer. 

Right after the on ramp the downpour started but I thought it was hail.  The sound it made when it hit my face shield was like pennies hitting a storefront window.  A .22 caliber sound muffled by the padding in the helmet.  It was cold too.  It began to soak through on my boots and the deerskin gloves.  They became nothing more than sponges.  The rest of me was dry-ish.  I figured I would be soaked through if the intensity of the rain continued. 

Surprisingly the traffic slowed significantly.  Usually people in cars and trucks have a false sense of invulnerability when they hit a heavy rain.  I felt stable despite the rain and comfortable at fifty, maybe fifty-five.  But traffic slowed to forty-five and I felt boxed in with the “wakes and wind” of tons of automobile all around me.  Not to mention a tractor-trailer or two in the mix.  I can handle the road and the weather but I was straining a bit trying to predict what all those autos might do in the blinding downpour.  My mind was processing a thousand bits of information a second.  My eyes scanning the wheels and the lights of the cars and the water on the road and the buckets of water coming down.  Truthfully, riding the motorcycle is not something I was thinking about.  That was happening automatically.  All systems were  in survive mode.  If I don’t know how to ride by now, I thought to myself, I won’t be learning here.

Exit 130 off of route 17 was like a river.  If anything the rain was getting harder.  On the north bound side there was a line of cars pulled off the road with their lights blurry through the rain and haze on my helmet shield, they looked like a string of pearls on a gray velour display.  I was in the ramp up the Long Mountain Parkway-in the left lane wanting to go about fifty.  The cars were remarkably all on my right and I pulled past and into the front of the line.  No trucks in front of me with their accompanying, buffeting wind.  No super slow economy car full of grandparents and kids doing thirty.  Nothing but road and a few miles of very wet, but none-the-less, magnificent scenery.  I was very lucky.  I only looked back in my rear view mirrors once and I saw the line of cars and trucks half a mile behind me- I never looked back.  Didn’t use the brakes once until I hit the traffic circle at exit 18.  Same on the “Goat Path” below the Bear Mountain Bridge.  Just lucky. 

When I got home I was high.  I had taken on less water than I had thought.  The rain suit worked.  I pulled the over clothes off and hung them to dry.   There was a dry towel on the work bench.  I dried off the instrument cluster on my bike and the face shield on the black helmet.  Then I dried my hair.

Berry Season

(skip this top part if you are only interested in the berry picking...)
It is hot.  I mean very hot!  In the early a.m. before the sun gets too strong I work in the garden and do my outside chores.  This includes soaking the garden plants and weeding and plucking off the dead parts of the tomatoes and etc… I have my system of collecting rainwater and, so far this year, have not had to use any well water for the garden.  That is about to change as we have not had significant rain fall since last week.  My six day supply will be gone tonight.  It will take a good downpour for at least an hour for the three rain barrels to fill and that won’t be happening for the next couple of days.  This evening I will fill one of the barrels from the well.

It takes a lot for me to hide in the air conditioning but this summer I am happy to have the cool, electric breeze.  The only thing better would be a swimming pool but I don’t have one of those so I have to find alternative, indoor activities so I can stay in the ‘cool’.  My journal is one.  House chores is another.  Watching TV and reading fill a couple of hours but I hate watching the TV.  This morning I finished the outdoor stuff and instead of hiding in the A/C I took the bike and headed out for a ride through the state park.  I packed my backpack, a banana, a yogurt, some ice in a baggy and headed down the road. 

My destinations were vague.  My first stop was in Fort Montgomery at the motorcycle shop where I drooled over the bling.  They had a nice used BMW Roadster (a 2012 with under 2K miles) which they took on trade for a ‘Multi Strada’.  (must be nice to have bucks!) Tempting, but too much money for a bike in my opinion.  If it had been a clean ‘California’, a little bit older and a lot cheaper, I probably would have been riding a different bike this afternoon.  I did find out there is a group of retired guys who meet at the shop every day and go for a ride together.  Sounds like something I should try out next week. 

I left the bike shop and took Firefighter's Memorial Drive through the military academy at West Point and then 293 to the parkway.  Nice back woods road with no traffic.  Speed can be a problem as there is a lot of wild life but I was in a slow-goin’ mood and the cool breeze made me feel wonderful.  After that, on the Long Mountain Pkwy, I didn’t even mind the idiots who were tailgating me –and I was doing seventy!  I left them when I took the turn off to old route 17 heading to Tuxedo-another old four lane highway that is long legged and relaxed.  I stopped for gas in Tuxedo and turned around.  I was getting tired and the heat was coming off the asphalt in waves.  I retraced my steps back towards home. 

When I got to the ‘goat path’ (the name given the approach road for the Bear Mountain Bridge from the Annesville Circle) I took advantage of the fact that there were few cars sharing the road and I could do it the way it should be done.  This twisting, curving road is a bikers dream.  If you don’t have at least one nerve jangling moment where you think you might not make it out alive then you didn’t ride it right.  Call me an idiot, I don’t care!  Anyway, when you are almost down to the Annesville Circle there is an old historic toll house.  I turned into the gravel parking lot outside the toll house and parked under a tree. 

I know from hiking there with Benny that there are the most magnificent berry patches right out back of the house, hidden in the woods.  The berries are protected by gobs of poison ivy and their own prickly thorns.  But if you know how to pick them and how to avoid the ivy you can eat your fill.  I unlocked my top case and took out my lunch.  I sliced up the banana and stirred it into the yogurt.  I walked into the patch and as I ate the yogurt I picked the sweet raspberries and plopped them into the cup.  Eat, pick, stir, repeat.  Un-fu*king believable.  The berries were so ripe that they were sticky with their own sugar.  They melted like chocolate on my fingers.  When I was done with the yogurt I went back to the bike and took out the bag of ice, which was three quarters melted.  I drank the icy water out of the bag and then proceeded to fill the bag with more berries.  When it was filled up I put it back into the insulated lunch box and into the top case.  I brought them home to eat later. 

Back in the house, my shower was great.  I have some DVD’s from the library and some primo left-overs in the refrigerator for diner.  I have my hand picked dessert and tonight’s Shabbat service (with my friends) to look forward to.  The heat is tough.  But today was good.  I am one lucky Fu*ker.