| Cross-Country Ramble 35:
Event-Filled Sunday Date: 3/27/98 7:54:48 AM Central
Standard Time
Some days are uneventful: you get up, check out, eat, bike, eat,
bike, snack, bike, check in, nap, shower, eat, watch TV, do email
and sleep. Sunday was not one of those days. It had more packed into
it than most weeks.
We made it to Christ Episcopal Church in Covington, Louisiana,
just in time for the readings. Like most regular church attendees,
I've heard the parable of the prodigal son a hundred times. The
sermon following focuses on either 1) the repentance of the wayward
son or 2) the ungratefulness of the elder son or 3) the love of the
father. This time, we're getting variation three. My mind wanders. I
recall that Luke wrote his Gospel account in about 70 AD. Why did he
choose to include this parable? Why was it important to him? I
imagine Luke reading this story to his congregation of Jewish and
Gentile Christians in 70 AD.
Flash! One of those cartoon light bulbs goes off in my head. To
the original hearers, the story's about them! It's a story of
faithful Jews, Johnny-come-lately Gentiles, an issue that divides
them and a love that unites them. For me, this makes this old
parable into real story about real people with real issues. I'm
excited for days.
At the coffee hour after the service, we hear that there's a bike
path which will take us most of the way to Slidell, our days'
destination. "Head out route 22 toward Abita; you're sure to see
it."
We take their word for it and head out route 22 to see what turns
up. It's a beautiful biking day. The sky is blue, we have a breeze
at our backs and temps are in the low 70's. The first thing to turn
up is a little restaurant alongside the road. It's lunchtime; we're
hungry; we turn in. Our first hint that this is not your ordinary
roadside cafe is that we see a guy out back with an 18" tall white
cook's hat on. Of course we don't have reservations, but someone has
canceled and they can work us in. I'm feeling a little underdressed;
my biking shoes click on the hardwood floor. What a menu! The brunch
starts with mimosas. My first course is a veloute (soup) of
artichoke & oysters. Elegant and smooth! Our second is poached eggs
with a complex cheese-based sauce. Tasty! The accompanying orange
translucent fish eggs burst in our mouths. My dessert is crème
broulet. Smooooooth! Carol's is fresh fruit over blood orange
sorbet. Intense! This is a lunch that will live in our taste buds
forever.
The promised bike path turns off just a few hundred yards down
the road. It's a beautiful bike path--a six feet width of smooth
asphalt on an old railroad roadbed right out of BicycleLand.
Everybody's out biking or rollerblading this beautiful Sunday. I'm
particularly touched to see the number of biking parents out with
their kids, who are either biking or rollerblading. Mostly we have
the swamp alongside. Trees are growing out of the water. We see what
must be Cyprus knees, several egrets and a big blue/gray heron. It's
so quiet, we can hear ourselves think. We can talk quietly to each
other.
We're thinking that this path will take us all thirty miles to
Slidell. But it doesn't. You can see that the roadbed goes on, but
the path isn't finished yet. A passing jogger gives instructions
that get us quickly to a path along the shore of Lake Ponchetrain.
Folks are out at the shore picnicking, wading and just walking on
this, one of the first nice days of spring.
The bike path starts up again for a while, and then ends again.
Three guys in a rusty van out of the movie Deliverance pull up. I
suppress fear and we talk. They tell me we'll have to swim the bayou
to get any further via this route. I bike ahead a bit to check.
They're right. We're looking forward to finishing our day on 9 miles
of busy US 190.
A kid on the rustiest bike I've seen since I was a kid pops
wheelies around us and asks about our bikes and where we're going.
He knows a great way to get to Slidell which only requires us to go
half a mile on the highway. He starts giving us instructions, then
gives up and says he'll show us.
We're back on the highway a moment. He's obviously chagrined at
how we ride, on the side of the pavement with traffic. He scares us,
too, riding against traffic on the wrong side of the road. As cars
come, he either runs off on the shoulder, or simply changes to a
lane the car isn't in. When there isn't traffic, he's running
circles around us popping wheelies. Happily, we're not on the
highway long before his "short-cut " starts.
It's a great route, paved and with hardly any traffic. There's
one really interesting part: a half-mile stretch of unimproved
roadbed and a trestle you can see the water though. We turn this way
and that so many times that I'm completely disoriented. It occurs to
me that we've put ourselves completely in the hands of this
hyperactive 13-year-old. He tells us his name is Nero. He's only
lived on this side of the lake since December; he moved up here from
New Orleans last December to live with his grandmother. He's learned
the back routes to Slidell because that's where the fun is. After
guiding us for over an hour, he tells us we're close to Slidell now,
that we can make it the rest of the way on our own. It's getting
dark and he needs to get home. One of his instructions is that when
we get to a certain tee in the road, we can go either way. We can do
that, we figure. We go on, following his instructions as best we
can. It's getting a little chilly in the late afternoon. Are we
really heading toward Slidell, or is this some kind of strange hoax?
We cross a bayou on a floating bridge. None of the things we see are
on our map.
Aha! A city limits sign. It's Slidell! There's a "vacancy" sign
flashing ahead and we've still got a few minutes of daylight left.
What a day!
Ken
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