Summertime Defined 2006

Yesterday was the perfect summer day in the Pioneer Valley. I had the day off. So did Lesa. We began by walking into town, having another delicious breakfast at The Woodstar, and walking back home.

At home, a quick Fandago.com search told us that Talledega Nights the Ballad of Ricky Bobby was starting in one hour in Hadley, MA. Could we make it there on bikes in time? Did it matter if we tried and missed it? Did we even have it in us to bike that far? How could we get to the foot of the bike path while avoiding driving on any traffic-filled roads?

Not a cloud in the sky, all there was, was blue. We veered out of the driveway and coasted down to bike path number one, whose mouth dropped us off in the Stop and Shop parking lot. We crossed Rt. 9, pedaled the wrong way through the Wendy's drive-thru lane and squeezed through the whole in the fence, where we stepped over prickly undergrowth, launching grasshoppers in every direction, and lifted our bikes over the railroad tracks.

Here's we encountered a slight detour as a construction crew had blocked off our path (it turns out though, that the construction is work being down to continue the Norwottuck Bike Path from Damon Rd. all the way into Woodmont, awesome!). We made a quick turn and headed for North Street where we took back roads until we came out on Rt. 9, beneath the highway and under the small airplanes heading into the Northampton Airport.

We coasted passed the car lot and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of being on Martha's Vineyard or some coastal-rent-a-bike locale. Ah, it was the smell of frying fish wafting out of Webster's. I felt a million miles away.

The Northampton end of the Norwottuck Rail Trail begins by crossing the Connecticut River on a huge old bridge. The views from it are amazing. Mountains in the distance, trees in the foreground, recreational boats padding underneath, a couple resting on the sandy beah in the middle of the river where they had parked their jet skis, a crew team practicing. "Imagine if we lived in an area this great!" I called back to Lesa.

From the bridge it's smooth sailing past farmland, backyards, the occasional junked old pick-up truck. At one point I heard the squealing sound of machinery. Off to our right a truck was unloading potatoes onto a decades old conveyer belt that pulled them up into a building. Potatoes.

The sun shown down friendlyly, and flashed in and out as we passed beneath trees and hedges. Cars stopped for us at every intersection. We went through some small tunnels and found ourselves on the other side of Rt. 9. Large open fields undulating to a horizon of the green mountains range. Cows.

We turned off at the Mall where the movies lived, through a dirt path over some well-intentioned planks of wood and past some crazy growth of wild flowers.

I locked up the bikes and checked the time. The movie was to start in 5 minutes. We bought tickets, popcorn, and soda and secured prime seats in the center near the front in the sparsely populated theatre.

The movie cracked us up for a couple hours and we burst back into the bright sun of the summertime, shaking off the chill of the air-conditioning, and hopped up on our bikes and headed home.

Before getting there though, we stopped at the store and picked up the makings of a nice simple outdoor grilled dinner which we ate under the darkening sky, feeling exhausted and alive. Crickets were singing and you could smell the late-summer evening grass.

It was pretty good.