I don’t know if Eddie-the-Shaman and his companion Shary managed to fix anything for me on the Sprit Path. I do feel more energy, that is for sure. I assume that is where the path of enlightenment lies, someplace in the North Woods. It seems reasonable.
 
Driving from the airport down in Traverse City on the Grand Bay to the Little One, I picked up one of the paths in the little gem-town of Charlevoix. The village guards little Round Lake and the channel beyond into Lake Charlevoix and water access all the way to Boyne City. The logs used to come this way, when the tall pines still scraped the blue sky. Now it is yachts.
 
US-31 thrusts across the drawbridge on the Pine River that the Commander of the Ninth Coast Guard District requires to be raised twice an hour between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. for the passage of recreational vessels all year long. Starting on April Fools Day, the bridge schedule is extended to ten at night to accommodate the flood of people from Down Below. They come by car, for the most part.
 
The path of enlightenment Up North- or at least the path that leads to Little Traverse Bay- is what is left of the Michigan Northern Line. It begins just north of town. There used to be regular service all along Lake Michigan’s shore, but that died with the boat passenger service that brought the throngs up from Chicago.
 
Rail service lingered until 1986, but it was hardly regular or convenient. It was operated as a novelty for the tourists who arrived by automobile. Eventually the Penn Central Company sold the track for scrap to the Equipment Company of Greenville, SC, and that was the end of it.
 
It is too bad that we hitched our mobility exclusively to the automobile. There was a time you could hop the local in Charlevoix and travel all the way around the Bay to Harbor Springs. Ernie Hemingway knew that time on the Bay when trains ran next to the blue water of the big lake, but it was not to last. Now it is just cars and the salt-bleached pavement of US-31.
 
What remained was something precious, though. The Michigan Northern Line might be defunct, and the rails and sleepers pulled up out of the soil, but the land remained. That is now a nicely paved bike trail, part of the marvelous rails-to-trails movement that started right at the time that the Michigan Northern died.
 
The railroads were dying everywhere then. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy was part of a bright idea to save the old right-of-ways as places where people could stroll or jog or bike. They are headquartered right here in DC, just a couple miles down the former right-of-way of the W&OD rail line that ran from the District through Arlington and out to Leesburg on the right side of the Potomac.
 
The path of enlightenment in Michigan was pristine, where I could see it paralleling the highway. A couple miles north of town a heavyset and bearded man with fierce eyes was shambling along. Periodically I could see a colorfully clad and determined cyclist heading north or south.
 
It looked like an ideal place to fly along, and I made a mental note to bring the bike the next time I came to the northland and it was a little warmer and more accommodating.
 
Back in DC, the cherry blossoms are out, and the temperatures were soaring toward eighty degrees. It was Good Friday, and it actually was a most excellent one, filled with promise.
 
I decided to throw the bike in the back of the police cruiser and take it to the path down to Mount Vernon and go for a blissful solitary ride and perhaps find a little enlightenment.
 
This is a new infatuation, or rather the reincarnation of an old one. When I lived in Hawaii, I made a furtive attempt at completing a triathlon. Not the Iron Man- that is beyond what any working person with a family can attempt- but there was a thing called the Tin Man, which was considerably scaled back on all three distances in the swim, bike and run.
 
I did well enough to complete the course and be thoroughly humbled by the true believers. In the process of discovering my inadequacy, I did spent a fair amount of time on my old Raleigh Record ten-speed. I crashed the bike once on the Nimitz Highway and hated being in traffic with the loons behind the wheel, and despite the remarkable sense of freedom, went back to jogging and doing the annual Morning of Pain of the 26.2 miles of the Honolulu Marathon.
 
I had not ridden much since I left the Islands, but the Shaman Path is exuding new energy on several fronts, and peddling is softer on the knees than pounding the pavement.
 
I pulled the Bluesmobile off the Parkway at the Washington Sailing Marina. I got the bike out of the back set and pulled on the palm gloves and set the helmet on my noggin. A family was unloading bicycles from an SUV and I could see that the bike-path was more crowded than I had anticipated.
 
When I wobbled into motion on the broken asphalt of the parking lot and rolled toward the smoother pavement of the path, I realized that I was inserting myself into something that was chaotic.
 
The path is narrow, less than a single auto-lane wide, and divided by a yellow dashed line into north and south channels. The family was in front of me, a little girl in pink pumping earnestly on her little cycle, and I realized to my horror that a Lance Armstrong wannabee was hurtling toward their backs, veering into our lane, passing a couple who were blissfully strolling hand-in-hand.
 
“Good God,” I thought, and then I heard a barked “On your Left!” from astern as someone flashed inches away, passing me and the family and nearly merging head-on with the other cycle ace.
 
They managed to avoid one another purely by chance, and then with all my speed lost, I tried to accelerate around the little girl as someone else overtook me, and passed silently in contempt.
 
The crowd was bewildering in its diversity. A woman dragging a roller bag plodded along. Homeless men lurked in the shade, their belongings deeper in the trees. Joggers moved with steady deliberation, some at a good pace, recreational cyclists as young as five peddled along absently, waving, and some of the Big Time bikers were flying past all traffic at twenty miles an hour, or more.
 
Coming around a curve at the end of Runway 33, I saw a determined fellow taking a swig from his water-bottle as he passed a knot of pedestrians at speed, a maniacal look on his face, heading directly at me.
 
I got north to the parking lot at Gravely Point and pulled off the path to regain my composure. Eco-commuters barreled along, men and women passed, jogging intently, more kids on bikes with Mom and Dad, and dozens of Cherry-blossom addled pedestrians. The whole thing was near chaos.
 
I let the bike roll to a halt and dismounted. I smoked one of the cigarettes I had secreted in one of the two water-bottles that mount on the frame of the bike, watching the jet lined up for departure on the active runway. I could see that I was going to have to get my bearings a little firmer in this new world I was entering.
 
The trip back south went a little smoother, and I was encouraged that this might actually start to make sense someday. I hopped down off the bike at the Marina, breathing hard but feeling no pain in the knees. I walked the bike back down the gravel lane toward the Bluesmobile, pleased at the experience I checked the odometer on the little meter on the handlebars. Not quite six miles, up and back.
 
Pathetic. But a start on the path of enlightenment. A was satisfied with what I had done. Then I noticed a late model sedan cruise by slowly. A man with very intense eyes locked his in mine. Odd, I thought. He pulled the car into a parking place not far from the Bluesmobile and continued to look at me.
 
I got the keys out of the little bag under the seat and peeled off the palm gloves. I ignored the man, who eventually got out of his car, and walked slowly off toward a path that lead into the undergrowth. As I closed the car-door, I realized that there was another man walking slowly into the trees behind him. I realized that the park was not only a place to access the bike path, but also a haven for men looking for anonymous sex with other men.
 
I sighed. If I was going to use this bike path as a means of enlightenment, I was clearly going to have to find another place to park. There are some things I am pretty confident I don’t want to know anything more about.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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