I don't know why Stephanie thought I was joking, except that she said I kept talking about it and not actually doing it. Taking a little trip by myself, though, made me more careful than perhaps I needed to be -- hinting, declaring, asserting, planning, all so slowly and deliberately that it probably came out funny. Better that way, though. Household ecologies are delicate, and extrications are more than a matter of logistics.
Adventure with the family can be had in three or four hour blocks. After that, every day this summer is scheduled with the girls' lessons (music, kayaking) and various rounds of camp. Then those hours often overlap with some playdate or another, and that's the day. There is a way around all this. If we really had an idea in mind and we planned in advance, those three or four hour blocks could turn into legitimate outings; but somehow, we fail to make such little plans in advance. We're not good at inviting people over, or for planning outings, and for the same reasons. We join well but also lump at home -- all too well.
So, for maybe two weeks, every few days, I'd tell Stephanie I was going to go on a camping trip. And I was so subtle about it, that the day before, when I was finally definitely going, when Stephanie was arranging some kid logistics with another parent I heard her say, "He just spontaneously decided to go camping tomorrow."
The route wasn't going to range far. I hadn't logged enough time in the saddle to stand the kind of trip that appealed to my greatest sense of romance, one in which I crossed entirely out of the familiar biome into mountains or desert or ocean, all on whatever power I generated myself. But with the help of a ferry or two, I could at least skirt around the far side of Puget Sound.
The plan below was organized around state parks. And because I'd hit three different spots in Kitsap County with ferries back to Seattle (Southworth, Bremerton, Bainbridge), I gave myself plenty of room to bail if my body cramped or crumbled. If it didn't, I'd make a small tour of state parks in central Kitsap.
I started by biking to West Seattle. Loaded touring is a little slower and more unwieldy, but I have a terrific, solid bike, and I didn't bring the really heavy stuff, like stoves or groceries. By the time I got to Manchester, I had biked maybe 20 miles, the sun was out, and I was out in the beauty. I'd biked here before on a group ride around the Sound, but had forgotten the miles of fencing and razor wire, though I'd remember soon enough the solid presence of the U.S. Navy throughout the county.
At the park (C in the map above), the rangers tried to persuade me that their park was more beautiful than my destination for the night in Seabeck (D). One of the rangers also wondered how I'd get there from here. I just pointed to the list of Google Map directions I'd strapped to my handlebar stem, and maybe she figured I knew what I was doing, because she didn't say anymore.
I didn't stay long, maybe forty minutes. I walked a wooded trail, examined some of the old military remnants, checked out the campsites, just in case, exchanged words with a couple families, then took off.
On my way out I saw something that looked like a camel in a yard.
Sometimes people keep camels.
The ride from Manchester to Port Orchard includes a slow road immediately off the water with a clear view to Bremerton and its dramatic bridge and naval hulks on the other side. I blew a tire in Port Orchard and tried to stuff inside it the long, skinny tube I'd been carrying around as a spare for years. Fortunately, a bicycle store was only a mile away, maybe not a coincidence, given that the builders' staple I pulled from my tired came from the grit of town.
The bicycle store or the camel. One of these heightened my sense of adventure more than the other, but which? The camel was exotic and peculiar, but the bicycle suggested a story, a protagonist out of Dickens. The owner danced through the detritus on the floor of his shop to reach me, then sold me a tube. I asked if I could install it there and borrow a pump and wash up afterwards, and he said fine, but I'd have to do the work right outside. My bicycle had been blocking the only ingress and egress available. When I reached what felt to be good pressure (his weak pump had a broken gauge), I too picked my way across the floor for the filthy bathroom in the back. He cursed the governor for her rapacious taxes as I paid.
Who was I going to curse for tiling the waterfront with highways? My bicycle map told me to stay on the highway and then exit to another, but the ramp was in a left lane. I headed into Bremerton and pointed the nose of my bike in the general direction I wanted to go, and eventually, with the help of a young clerk who had never heard of Seabeck but had access to the Internet, I got back to Highway 3 and the exit advised.
The sun was shouting down for all the world. My exit, Newberry Hill, baked in it. A large concrete retaining wall loomed on the right and the hill, as it seemed at the time, went straight up. After struggling to find my way and fighting the highways in the sun, hitting that wall drove me right off my bike, which I walked until I crested and stopped off a driveway to nowhere strewn with road waste and litter. I crossed the street to find some shade and found my jaws too tired for the energy bar I was chewing. But before turning off Newberry Hill I filled my water bottles with cold carbonated water and downed an ice cream sandwich, and the turn onto Seabeck Highway also brought with it trees and shade.
In another 10 miles, I was in Scenic Beach State Park. It was a beautiful spot opposite the Olympic mountains across Hood Canal. The campsites and trails are forested and laced with mossy curtains. On a bike, I took the best campsite in the whole park and paid less than half the cost for the privilege.
And though I was counting on a grocery or something more than a pizza place to lure me over the hills for dinner, I was content with a handful of jerky and nuts and dried fruit.
So here's the wondrous part. I walked through the trails. I walked on the beach. I waded in the water. At one point I read a fifth of Wiesel's Night in preparation for teaching it to ninth graders. But otherwise, nothing. I didn't read, didn't write, didn't listen to music. I was available, not busy, not full.
And at eight o'clock, I sat down on the beach and waited for sunset. Nearby, another couple waited, silently. We sat and watched the water reaching to the shore and shielded our eyes from the progress of the sun towards the mountains.
What was I thinking about in all that time? I wasn't fretting. I wasn't planning. I wasn't reflecting, or counting blessings or wondering. Time passed. Oyster shells scraped across rounded pebbles. My chest and face were warm, not unpleasantly. And then I walked back through the woods before it was dark.
Nothing in this trip was better than the presence I experienced here, the quiet of my mind. The next morning when I had breakfast in Poulsbo restaurant, I was unembarrassed to eat without reading, because then, still, I un-Americaned and didn't mutli-task; I ate, I looked around or didn't, and comfortably enjoyed my eggs and lightly buttered rye and the man at the other table reading a paper and the server preparing for the day.
Fay Bainbridge State Park wouldn't be the same. Its campsites all had RV hook-ups and a small bush beside that. They lined up next to each other rather like a row of toilets without stalls. I finally selected a site next to a friendly looking older lady sitting in a canvas chair outside her big RV. We chatted. She told me she didn't have Internet on her phone, so she couldn't tell me the weather, but that her husband could do it. When I returned from paying for my space, the husband was cursing at the friendly older lady. He was very loud. I was ashamed, and confused about my role. I jumped on my bike and went to Winslow six miles away. I toyed with catching a ferry to Seattle for the day, and then coming back at night to sleep. I could see a movie. But I turned around and went back. I wasn't going to let this schmuck turn my adventure. I returned with a sandwich, a beer, a yogurt, cherries and grapes, and there was not a trace left of the couple when I got back.
A ranger told me there were cheaper campsites for bikes on the bluff above, and he'd refund me if I'd give up my space. I was only too glad.
I wandered the beach, talked to a family stranded without gas in their boat, finished preparing Night, started another Holocaust book by a different Hungarian Jew who also, as a young teenager, went to Auschwitz then Buchenwald -- Fatelessness, by Imre Kertész -- failed to finish my beer, then returned to my campsite, where firewood scavenged from pits around the bluff made a fire to warm my body and ward off the mosquitoes buzzing round.
I biked 120 loaded miles. I can still feel the adventure in my back, in my bottom. It's nothing that I'm most proud of.
Adventure with the family can be had in three or four hour blocks. After that, every day this summer is scheduled with the girls' lessons (music, kayaking) and various rounds of camp. Then those hours often overlap with some playdate or another, and that's the day. There is a way around all this. If we really had an idea in mind and we planned in advance, those three or four hour blocks could turn into legitimate outings; but somehow, we fail to make such little plans in advance. We're not good at inviting people over, or for planning outings, and for the same reasons. We join well but also lump at home -- all too well.
So, for maybe two weeks, every few days, I'd tell Stephanie I was going to go on a camping trip. And I was so subtle about it, that the day before, when I was finally definitely going, when Stephanie was arranging some kid logistics with another parent I heard her say, "He just spontaneously decided to go camping tomorrow."
The route wasn't going to range far. I hadn't logged enough time in the saddle to stand the kind of trip that appealed to my greatest sense of romance, one in which I crossed entirely out of the familiar biome into mountains or desert or ocean, all on whatever power I generated myself. But with the help of a ferry or two, I could at least skirt around the far side of Puget Sound.
The plan below was organized around state parks. And because I'd hit three different spots in Kitsap County with ferries back to Seattle (Southworth, Bremerton, Bainbridge), I gave myself plenty of room to bail if my body cramped or crumbled. If it didn't, I'd make a small tour of state parks in central Kitsap.
I started by biking to West Seattle. Loaded touring is a little slower and more unwieldy, but I have a terrific, solid bike, and I didn't bring the really heavy stuff, like stoves or groceries. By the time I got to Manchester, I had biked maybe 20 miles, the sun was out, and I was out in the beauty. I'd biked here before on a group ride around the Sound, but had forgotten the miles of fencing and razor wire, though I'd remember soon enough the solid presence of the U.S. Navy throughout the county.
 |
| Manchester State Park |
I didn't stay long, maybe forty minutes. I walked a wooded trail, examined some of the old military remnants, checked out the campsites, just in case, exchanged words with a couple families, then took off.
On my way out I saw something that looked like a camel in a yard. Sometimes people keep camels.
The ride from Manchester to Port Orchard includes a slow road immediately off the water with a clear view to Bremerton and its dramatic bridge and naval hulks on the other side. I blew a tire in Port Orchard and tried to stuff inside it the long, skinny tube I'd been carrying around as a spare for years. Fortunately, a bicycle store was only a mile away, maybe not a coincidence, given that the builders' staple I pulled from my tired came from the grit of town.
The bicycle store or the camel. One of these heightened my sense of adventure more than the other, but which? The camel was exotic and peculiar, but the bicycle suggested a story, a protagonist out of Dickens. The owner danced through the detritus on the floor of his shop to reach me, then sold me a tube. I asked if I could install it there and borrow a pump and wash up afterwards, and he said fine, but I'd have to do the work right outside. My bicycle had been blocking the only ingress and egress available. When I reached what felt to be good pressure (his weak pump had a broken gauge), I too picked my way across the floor for the filthy bathroom in the back. He cursed the governor for her rapacious taxes as I paid.Who was I going to curse for tiling the waterfront with highways? My bicycle map told me to stay on the highway and then exit to another, but the ramp was in a left lane. I headed into Bremerton and pointed the nose of my bike in the general direction I wanted to go, and eventually, with the help of a young clerk who had never heard of Seabeck but had access to the Internet, I got back to Highway 3 and the exit advised.
The sun was shouting down for all the world. My exit, Newberry Hill, baked in it. A large concrete retaining wall loomed on the right and the hill, as it seemed at the time, went straight up. After struggling to find my way and fighting the highways in the sun, hitting that wall drove me right off my bike, which I walked until I crested and stopped off a driveway to nowhere strewn with road waste and litter. I crossed the street to find some shade and found my jaws too tired for the energy bar I was chewing. But before turning off Newberry Hill I filled my water bottles with cold carbonated water and downed an ice cream sandwich, and the turn onto Seabeck Highway also brought with it trees and shade.
In another 10 miles, I was in Scenic Beach State Park. It was a beautiful spot opposite the Olympic mountains across Hood Canal. The campsites and trails are forested and laced with mossy curtains. On a bike, I took the best campsite in the whole park and paid less than half the cost for the privilege.
And though I was counting on a grocery or something more than a pizza place to lure me over the hills for dinner, I was content with a handful of jerky and nuts and dried fruit.
So here's the wondrous part. I walked through the trails. I walked on the beach. I waded in the water. At one point I read a fifth of Wiesel's Night in preparation for teaching it to ninth graders. But otherwise, nothing. I didn't read, didn't write, didn't listen to music. I was available, not busy, not full.
And at eight o'clock, I sat down on the beach and waited for sunset. Nearby, another couple waited, silently. We sat and watched the water reaching to the shore and shielded our eyes from the progress of the sun towards the mountains.
What was I thinking about in all that time? I wasn't fretting. I wasn't planning. I wasn't reflecting, or counting blessings or wondering. Time passed. Oyster shells scraped across rounded pebbles. My chest and face were warm, not unpleasantly. And then I walked back through the woods before it was dark.
Nothing in this trip was better than the presence I experienced here, the quiet of my mind. The next morning when I had breakfast in Poulsbo restaurant, I was unembarrassed to eat without reading, because then, still, I un-Americaned and didn't mutli-task; I ate, I looked around or didn't, and comfortably enjoyed my eggs and lightly buttered rye and the man at the other table reading a paper and the server preparing for the day.
Fay Bainbridge State Park wouldn't be the same. Its campsites all had RV hook-ups and a small bush beside that. They lined up next to each other rather like a row of toilets without stalls. I finally selected a site next to a friendly looking older lady sitting in a canvas chair outside her big RV. We chatted. She told me she didn't have Internet on her phone, so she couldn't tell me the weather, but that her husband could do it. When I returned from paying for my space, the husband was cursing at the friendly older lady. He was very loud. I was ashamed, and confused about my role. I jumped on my bike and went to Winslow six miles away. I toyed with catching a ferry to Seattle for the day, and then coming back at night to sleep. I could see a movie. But I turned around and went back. I wasn't going to let this schmuck turn my adventure. I returned with a sandwich, a beer, a yogurt, cherries and grapes, and there was not a trace left of the couple when I got back. |
| Unloading in my new site. |
A ranger told me there were cheaper campsites for bikes on the bluff above, and he'd refund me if I'd give up my space. I was only too glad.
I wandered the beach, talked to a family stranded without gas in their boat, finished preparing Night, started another Holocaust book by a different Hungarian Jew who also, as a young teenager, went to Auschwitz then Buchenwald -- Fatelessness, by Imre Kertész -- failed to finish my beer, then returned to my campsite, where firewood scavenged from pits around the bluff made a fire to warm my body and ward off the mosquitoes buzzing round. |
| View of Seattle from the ferry home |
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