Type 2 Diabetic. Cyclist Flâneur.   Coffeeneur.    Errandoneur
A bike / map geek with a gadget obsession and a high-viz fetish.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Look What They've Done to My Nap Tree, Ma

4.19.2014 #215 25m
I haven't been on the Montour Trail since November, because over the winter the trail goes through freeze-thaw cycles and develops ruts and runoff and it's bad for the trail to ride on it.

So I was back out there today, looking to reacquaint myself with my old route and see what's new. The trail surface was hard and rutted in some spots, but that's normal this time of year. It looks like a lot of work has been done lately clearing drainage channels on either side of the trail. Between mileposts 21 and 24 it looks like they're about to resurface the trail.

There were some new signage, and some new benches - and the new benches had a flat top surface with no back panel, which makes them infinitely better suited for bike napping. I'm into bike napping in a big way, so I was real happy to see the new bench format. My favorite bike nap spot in the world is on the Montour Trail out in Cecil Township. I can tell you that if you look the area up on Google Naps, you'll see that somebody has apparently entered the spot as an excellent bike nap location. Just saying.


My reverie at returning to my home trail was disturbed when I turned a bend in the trail and saw a scene of violent destruction, and fairly recent violence at that - the shade tree over my favorite napping place had been struck down before it's prime! I was devastated.


I could only stop the bike, unable to proceed, and eventually reversed course. The song kept running through my mind, Look what they've done to my song, Ma (imo, the definite performance was by Claudine Longet) except between my ears it was Look what they've done to my tree, Ma. My mother would just say, hey it's not your tree anyway.

Thomas Wolfe was right, you really can't go home again, not even on a bicycle. It's never there.



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