I was glad to have had this warning sign as I entered Elk, as for the next mile I was prepared to watch out for all of the hula-hooping pedestrians

Andrew and his younger brother are riding around the world. Having already traversed Australia and Central and Southeast Asia, they’re now heading to South America.

In some sections ther is simply no shoulder at all on the Coast Highway. Fortunately, traffic is light at this time of year.

The day’s riding goal was to be the biker/hiker camp at Manchester Beach State Park. But on arrival, other cyclists and I found that the park had closed for the season just the previous day. A KOA was just up the same road, and so I had my first-ever experience of kamping there.

It turned out to be better than expected. Perhaps fifteen cyclists showed up, as this remains prime season for the Coast bicycle route, and we were given a quiet section of the park. Beside the usual hot showers, our $10/person fee (the parks are $5/each for cyclists), we could use their spa and tiny pool, and the all-night yard lights remained off in our camp area.

When I approached Fort Bragg a few days ago, I had planned against all odds to look up the girl who gave me my first kiss, at Tuolumne family camp near Yosemite Park 49 years ago. We were both fourteen, both social misfits, and both quite innocent. After that week at camp, we saw each other from time to time over the next dozen or so years, but we always lived far apart and our lives went in separate directions, and I hadn’t seen Meri in more than 35 years. So expecting to find her in the small town where she grew up was a foolish idea.

Indeed, I quickly exhausted the ancient leads I had: the business her father had owned was long gone, and no familiar names were in the phone book. I gave up the quest and headed south to the Caspar Climate March the next morning. As the majority of the marchers had settled in the area in the seventies, I asked one or two if they knew her, using her family (maiden) name, the only one I had. To my surprise and delight, one woman was a good friend of hers, and took my contact information to give her via Facebook.

So after dinner at the KOA I was sitting at the campsite table with other cyclists when my phone rang. Indeed, Mary had returned to the town where she grew up. With two grown children and two grandchildren, she was now living with Larry, her high school sweetheart, and was raising her five-year-old granddaughter. Both excited to reconnect after so many years, we talked for nearly an hour, she reminding me of visits and connections, the details of which I had long forgotten.

in the morning I left me trailer at the KOA and hitchhiked and rode the forty or so miles back to Fort Bragg. I admit I was a bit giddy with anticipation. When I told a few of the other cyclists of this change in plans, all broke into big smiles: how rare is the opportunity to reconnect with someone from adolescence, especially someone with whom there was back then a new and unfamiliar heart connection! How rare it is even to be able to share this many decades of updates, really half a lifetime, and more than that of life so far.

Larry and Meri at home in the redwood forest

The long-anticipated rain came yesterday and was a drenched, so I stayed two nights with Meri and her partner Larry, a gentle man with whom she’d only reconnected a few years ago. Larry was mature and trusting enough to welcome Meri and I recollecting and reconnecting from long ago, and was willing to share our joy as we reminisced. He has done his own work with circles of men, and we were able to bond as brothers. I was able to visit and observe Larry at his work, which was so interesting to me that it’ll be the subject of the next post. I went with Meri to the farmers’ market and to her granddaughter’s day care, and in the evening Larry’s band, Swingnoodle, Rehearsed at their home. Larry plays mandolin, and the band plays in the Stephane Grapelli/Django Reinhardt swing style. A YouTube video of the band is at:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r98NQ3mnQVE