Foreign Territory

1 June 2008

The phone goes at 6.14 a.m. Must be Cheryl. She seems to know to ring me just before my alarm is set to go off. I got in from New York City late last night and didn’t get to bed until nearly midnight. She was up late too, it turns out, and she’s half-asleep asking me if Tom’s ride is still on. The roads are wet from last night’s thunderstorms, but the sun is out. As far as I know the ride is on, so we’ll see each other in the park at 7.30. She rings off seconds before the alarm starts beeping. I shut it off and roll out of bed.

Bloody hell, I’m going to need coffee if I’m going to ride sixty flat miles in the wind today. Good show that we’re starting down in Salem County, over an hour away. If I don’t have to drive I can have a kip, or at least down some caffeine before we get started.

I’m just finishing breakfast when Mike B. rings. He wants to know if I want a ride to the park, and if Cheryl wants to ride with us. I tell him I’ll be ready in ten minutes’ time and pour coffee into my travel mug. I grab the pack of hex wrenches and a tape measure and fetch the new saddle that hurts my bum. Cheryl has been complaining about her saddle lately, so I promised I’d try to put my reject on her bike for her after the ride.

Tom is waiting for us at the car park. He says Cheryl is running late and is on her way. Glenn pulls in, and then Cheryl five minutes later. We work it out that Cheryl is going with us and Glenn with Tom, so we put the bikes in the boots and head off.

Instead of sleeping, Cheryl and I share my coffee. As it’s only half and half to begin with, I’m not really feeling much other than not quite as knackered as when I got out of bed. We chat about all sorts of stuff on the way down, including the possibility of my looking for work closer to home, at BMS. Cheryl is warning me about layoffs, telling me that their stock isn’t doing well and that they’re going to lay off scientists sooner or later. Then there’s Terry’s having been sacked over at Lexicon last week: 20 percent of the work force cut in one go.

Howard is already there when we arrive. ‘You silly man’, I tell him. ‘You could’ve carpooled with us.’ He says he was running late. With his speed and his GPS I wonder how many miles it will be before he does a runner on us.

Tom says he might complain about the wind later. I tell him ‘Cheryl and I will be the ones whingeing.’ She says she wants coffee.

Tom tells us that where we are now, Fort Mott, on the Delaware Bay in Salem County, is technically in Delaware. When the state lines were drawn, he explains, Delaware’s territory was meant to extend a mile or so from its shores. With the western New Jersey coast being so close to the Delaware shore, we are now within the bollixed Delaware boundary. So even though we’re in New Jersey, we’re in Delaware. There aren’t any houses here, though, just the state park, so there’s no getting away from property taxes by living in Delaware, New Jersey.

This, then, the park, the river, and the far shore, is Delaware:



As soon as we hit the road, Glenn continues our discussion about the differences between being a scientist in academia and in the corporate pharmaceutical world. We started in on this Saturday last and continued it two nights ago. I promised him I’d send him my vita so he could help me adjust it for the corporate suits. For a week now my head has been spinning, thinking of the pros and cons of Penn and the big unknown that doubling my salary and one-sixthing my commuting time would bring me. It would all be theoretical if there weren’t a position open at BMS right now that he thinks I might be able to fill, and if I didn’t feel so much like a second-class citizen in the lab I’m in now. If I’m going to get stick, I might as well be paid more for it.

We stop for pictures at an inlet. I have my mobile for photos. Glenn and Tom have proper digital cameras.

This is my picture:



And this is Tom's shot of the same thing:



I’m giving Glenn and anyone else within earshot tidal wetland botany lessons. I’ve already taught him Phragmites communis, the common reed. Now we’re looking at great egrets, which I can’t tell from cattle egrets at this distance. But Glenn knows. They alight in a tree, which looks silly because the birds are so big.

We move on to catch up with the rest of the lot, who are stopped ahead. Howard has a flat tyre. I get some more pictures and point out Spartina alterniflora and Nuphar luteum. It’s been yonks since I’ve learned these names and I can’t remember what they’re called in English.






Glenn's got some good ones:






Tom spots a snake on the guardrail. It has clearly run up the curtain and joined the choir invisible, but not so long ago that we can’t play with it. I drape it over Kermit and Tom snaps a picture.



Kermit's got a good breakfast.

Further on we pass some Saggitaria by the water’s edge. I’m teaching Cheryl the difference between a marsh and a swamp. So far we've just seen marshes.

We pass loads of farms, some with horses, some with sheep, and some gone fallow for the season.

Every other road is called Somebody's Neck Road.

There must not be much to do in the winter here. One chap has polka-dotted his garden:







(The top one is mine, the second Tom's, and the final three Glenn's.)

We encounter a herd of cows with calves. When Glenn and I stop for a picture, the calves scamper off to their mothers and eye us from a safe distance. A few of them moo. (Glenn's picture is the second one.)





A bit further on Glenn and Tom stop to look at a turtle in the road:




A sign for deer skinning is worth saving:



A closed shop has its porch crowded with wood cut-outs and a moose round the side:



We stop for a water break although our real food break will be ten miles on.

Inside the little shop Cheryl notices Little Debbie oatmeal pies on the shelf. "Little Debbie, Little Debbie," we say in unison, and I add, "I'm comin' on home baby." We've been doing this for years, ever since I gave her a cassette for Spin class with Southern Culture on the Skids' "Camel Walk" on it:

Baby
Could you eat that there snack cracker
In your special outfit for me
Please?

Yo ye pharaohs
Let us walk
Through this very desert
Searching for truth and
Some pointy boots and
Maybe some snack crackers

Baby you make me wanna walk
Like a camel
Ooo-eee!
Walk!

Who's in charge here?
Where's my Captain's Wafers?
Don't go around hungry now
The way you eat that oatmeal pie
Makes me just wanna die

Baby you make me wanna walk
Like a camel

Oooo-eee!
Walk!

Say you don't think there's uh any way
I could get that quarter
from underneath your uh pointy boot do you?
All I want is one more oatmeal pie


Little Debbie, Little Debbie
I'm a comin' on home baby
'Cause you
Make me wanna walk
Like a camel


Cheryl buys coffee and entices me to share. It’s crap coffee compared to my premium beans but I finish it anyway. It’s practically water. Three of us get what look to be muffins but are meant to be shortcakes. I ask Tom if there’s a loo, but there isn’t, so I can’t wash the snake off my hands. I save my shortcake for the next stop.

Glenn asks why Jack never learned to drive, so I explain that he’d moved to England with his family, gone to school there, then come back to Philly for university where he met me. We were too skint to afford insurance for two people anyway, let alone a second motor, so we got by with just the one car and me driving us everywhere. Soon it became a bit of a challenge to see how long he could go without having to drive. Twenty-three years on and he has yet to sit behind the wheel.

We hit the road again, and I tell Glenn my sordid history of working for emotionally imbalanced scientists, including one who wound up in hospital. We agree that stable people are rare in the sciences. He also likes his job and isn’t stressed, which makes him an odd one as well. Maybe there are more like him in the corporate world. I certainly don’t see too many where I work.

Tom takes us up the only hill on the ride and down the other side. We turn on Hell Neck Road:




Something is clicking in my crank. I ride up to Tom and ask about his mechanical skills. We run through the possibilities, including a bad bottom bracket. ‘That’ll be this ride scuppered’, I mutter.

I wash the snake and sweat off my hands at the rest stop. Cheryl and I decide on Cokes and we share my shortcake. Tom checks all the screws on the chain ring and I try to shake the crank. Nothing budges anywhere, so we figure there’s no need to worry.

When we push off again the headwind is so strong and loud I can’t hear the clicking anyway.

We get a good view of the Salem nuclear power plant in the distance. Stick your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye.



I have to stop for a photo of this one:



‘Frog Ocean Road?’ Someone needs a biology lesson.

Then again, biology does some odd things, like grow trees from old pilings in the middle of an inlet:




We’re heading straight into the wind now, and Howard is pulling ahead now that he knows we’re close to home. The lot of us are quiet now just trying to keep the pace. Soon a tower appears ahead of us. ‘That’s the lighthouse’, Tom tells me. ‘It’s a range lighthouse. There’s one on each side of the river. Where the beams meet is the middle of the river.’

When we get up to it, we’re looking at the ugliest lighthouse ever, a towering grey todger wearing a steel mesh condom. Tom and I stop for pictures. Howard biffs off with Cheryl and Mike in tow.

‘I want to get a picture of the bay hales’, I tell Tom. ‘Hay bales. Hay bales.’ We’d seen them on the way out but the lighting was all wrong. Now it’s better:



We finish the ride with fifty-eight miles. I dig into my pack for my change of clothes. If I’m going to be an hour in the car before I get home, I’m going to put on clean knickers. But I still feel grotty even after I wash and change.

Once back in Mike’s car, the three of us decide to skip finding a diner and just go home. After a bit I notice that Cheryl has gone quiet. I look back and she’s having a kip. Mike and I prattle on. Cheryl wakes up in time to get us off the highway and back to the park, where Mike and I change her saddle. It’s not until we’re finished that I figure out what’s been causing her so much trouble for the past month: when she had her bike cleaned, whoever worked on it put her seat post back in crooked. She decides to keep the new saddle anyway and see what happens. So much for my career as a bike mechanic. I should keep my day job.

*****

So, Ben, how did I do, then? Was it brilliant or crap?