CONFLUENCE, Pa.—We are in an itty-bitty town that is dotted with old houses. The low mountains slope downward into three giant converging rivers. There are herculean oaks everywhere. Lots of wildflowers. If they were going to remake “Sound of Music,” they would shoot it in Confluence.
And I’m scribbling notes about it all in my little notebook. Because this is what I do. I have carried a notebook for years now, it goes everywhere with me, and I write everything down. You never know when inspiration will hit you with a two-by-four.
Today the little Pennsylvania community is overrun with cyclists who are biking the Great Allegheny Passage through the Appalachian Mountains. Which is what my wife and I have been doing for the last five days.
We ride for hours until our butts have lost all sensation. Then we pull over and cheerfully pop handfuls of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication.
Out on the trail you get to know your fellow trail-riders because you pass each other a lot. You’re following the same bike route.
You sleep in the same towns, shelters, hostels, or roadside ditches. You eat at the same spots. You steal the same canteen water from the same unsuspecting residential homes.
I meet an older couple from Manhattan, New York. They are doing the trail together with two top-of-the-line mountain bikes. He’s 67, and recently recovering from a stroke. She is 63 and his lifeline.
He has a voice like a guy who might own a pizza joint in Brooklyn. She sounds like Edith Bunker. I love these people.
He’s fallen off his bike twice on the trail due to muscle weakness from the stroke. But he’s not discouraged.
He says, “Listen, I got no broken bones—knock on wood—and no cuts. I’m making it to the end, or so help me.”
I meet a young man from California. He’s doing the trail entirely on foot. Sometimes he hikes…