Early morning bike ride.

The island is completely flat, but I still manage to get winded in the first five minutes! Then I make the clever move of crossing a patch of pine needles. I’m only riding about two miles an hour but somehow I go flying off the bike head first into the pine needles. I think I was actually moving faster in the fall than when I was riding.

Good thing no one saw me. I jump back on the bike and keep riding. When I pass the next group of bikers, I speak and they smile. Not sure if they're smiling to say hi or because pine needles are hanging off the bike, my clothes and even my arms.

Jeremy and I bike onto the beach. Audrey was along but she didn’t actually bike—lazy baby! Somehow the beach access points are invisible from the beach. So when we finally get tired of sinking in the sand, we can’t figure out how to get off the beach and end up crossing through a neighbor’s yard.

Riding the bicycles through these shady lanes awakens memories hidden beneath 30 plus years of other memories and I am back in Oradell, New Jersey exploring all the hidden places of my little town.

Depending on the day,
my bike is a wild mustang galloping across the plains,
a motorcycle rumbling through the busy streets,
or simply a bike wandering down the driveway
and accidentally across the one string fence
my dad erected
to protect his grass that never grows
on the edge of his prized yard.
We pedal down Demarest
past the neighbor;
past the neighbor’s neighbor;
all the way past the McGintey’s house
and further.
Leaving our little street
We launch out beyond the spaces
we know and into space we don’t.
We ride beyond, beyond, beyond
the comfort of a carefree eight year old world
to the wandering and wondering path
of a forty year young man.