Gettysburg Weekend Part 1

 

Just So You Know Whose Territory You're In

22 October 2021

"It's a superspreader event down there," TEW says as she and Plain Jim enter the room, carrying their dinners in round, foil bowls. 

I'm on the bed in Tom's hotel room. He and I are sharing takeout pizza. 

Jack H and Dorothy come in, masked, because, unlike the rest of us, they were biking in Maryland before they got here and didn't have the chance to get tested first.  Jack H has a paper bowl full of cookies from downstairs, and he sprinkles some individually-wrapped Pennsylvania Dutch chocolates onto the bed.

This is social life on the road in Covid times. 

We're in Hanover, near Gettysburg, PA, for the Philadelphia Bike Club's annual Fall Foliage Weekend. In the before times, Tom would come out here and mingle with two hotels' worth of road cyclists. He even wrote a book of easy rides around Gettysburg (that's Cheryl and Al on the cover). He says it's the prettiest and best-organized bike trip we'll ever take, thanks to the over-the-top efforts of Linda M. 

We agreed to make the trip, provided we stay well away from everyone except each other. I got my own hotel room, as did Tom. In the before times, we might have figured out how to share the expenses. Tom and I both tested negative within 24 hours of each other, so he picked me up at home this morning. 

Jim and TEW, and Jack H and Dorothy, arrive at the hotel only a little before we did. None of our rooms were ready, so we change in the lobby bathrooms. I commute to work by bike; bathroom clothes-swapping is second nature to me now. We hastily eat our packed lunches in the parking lot. Mine is a bagel and three hard-boiled egg whites.

Damnit. I forgot to change my cycle computer battery, and now the receiver is out of juice. I pull it off the stem and tuck it away. There's a RiteAid across the street. I'll get a new battery after.

I nervous, even though it's only 28 miles. I'm never at my best when I ride mid-day, and I'm never at ease when I'm on a bike trip. If I can't handle today, what am I going to do all weekend?

None of us, it turns out, wants to push the pace. We're on vacation, and we have no other plans.

TEW has never witnessed the Holy Kickstand blessing, so Tom performs it. She's going on a solo ride and will meet us back here.

The steepest climb is in the fourth mile, but there's a rewarding view at the top. 

I haven't looked at any of the routes. I have no idea where we are. The route is called "Northern Exposure," so I guess we're going north? With my cycle computer gone, I have to wake the GPS display to see how far we've gone. I'm trying not to do that. Just pedal.

It's been another tiring week, just like the week before: glassblowing, bike commuting, weightlifting. Every fall I go through this. My knees start to hurt after spending four hours at a time zipping around on a cement floor, never mind the usual walking and standing I do at work. I don't want to give anything up, though, and I don't want osteoporosis, so I keep up the weight-bearing leg work. One of these days I'll take some time off, maybe after we change the clocks.

Tom leads us into the center of a small town, New Oxford, around a traffic circle, to our rest stop, the infuriatingly-spelled "Deja' Brew." I mean, if you're going to try for the accent, do it right, do them both, and put them where they belong: déjà.

It doesn't stop there. We need to "cozzy" up as well. Sigh.

I'm so hungry that I eat a whole cookie. It's chocolate chocolate-chip though, and so worth it. The whole shop is full of pastries I want to take home, and one of the attendants is rocking the most excellent, knit, pale purple, witch hat ever to grace this earth. I buy a pumpkin cheesecake brownie to take home. I'm that hungry. I don't even like cheesecake. Tom says we'll come back here on our way home Sunday. I'll have eaten all the sliced carrots and celery I brought with me by then. There will be plenty of room.

We head out back the way we came. "There's gonna be an elephant," Tom says. We ride next to a pasture with a pond and a tan horse. "There it is!" he says.

We stop, looking for the elephant. He points to a strange, gray shape across the pond. "Over there."

None of us is sure about that until I zoom in.

We get a better view of it when the road bends, up a hill, around the side of the pasture.

The terrain is rolling. "Like Burlington County, with wrinkles," I offer. Sometimes the smell of manure wafts through the air. Sometimes we're next to corn fields. There are lots of ponds. Jack H says they all look alike, that it's the same contractor building them all.

Sometimes it's neighborhoods. Sometimes it's fascist campaign flags. Once it's the side of a barn with a Colonial-era flag painted on it, sporting the words, "This is God's country. God bless America." I hold up my middle finger.

The ride is going better than I thought it would. The cookie helped.

Two miles from the end, we get separated at a traffic light. There's time for me to take a picture of the Utz pretzel factory.

I prefer Snyders, actually. They're here somewhere too.

We roll into the parking lot at 3:00, when official check-in starts. Our rooms are ready, so we disperse. I notice that none of the people behind the check-in desk is wearing a mask. Not everyone milling about the lobby is either. Adams County is a red zone. These people are fucking stupid. I'm noticing this behind a snug KN95, $25 for a pack of 25 in assorted colors from Amazon. How hard is this, people? Fuck.

Tom, Jim, TEW, and I meet in the lobby at 4:30 to make a quick trip to the Utz factory shop before they close at 5:00. I'm glad I ate a protein bar before we left, because this place is wall-to-wall empty calories, all salt and carbs, which I would have no trouble plowing my way through. I don't plan to buy anything, but then I see a tub of mini pretzels, the kind we keep at home, that takes months for Jack to work his way through. This will be a souvenir for him, I guess. 

This giant tub, which I can just about get my arm around, costs me all of $5. "I don't need a bag," I tell the clerk. She looks annoyed, turns around, fills a plastic bag with packs of (I'm not making this up) "birthday cake" pretzels -- some speckled, white, sugary concoction over pretzels that I know I will devour sooner or later -- and pushes the bag towards me along with the tub. Not bad for five bucks.

I feel as if I'm in a different country.

We disperse again. I walk across the street to the drug store to get new batteries for my cycle computer, and then I go back to my room to install them and stretch my back, and also answer some work email. At 6:00 I do down to Tom's room. He orders a pizza and we drive to a desolate big-box mall, where the shop is hidden next to a gigantic farm feed store. 

The pizza is surprisingly good. I tell Jim and TEW that I will have coffee ready for them at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I brought a kettle, press, and beans with me, and I'm determined not to drink it all myself.

We'll head out for a 50-mile ride tomorrow, not with any of the others who are completely filling this Hampton Inn and the Holiday Inn across the parking lot. We're not going to the organized dinner tomorrow either. There's a hot breakfast buffet, apparently, but we've all got our own food up here in our rooms.

I go downstairs in my KN95 to grab some paper cups from the coffee station, and get stuck behind a maskless crowd entering a conference room for some sort of lecture. Get me out of here. I hurry past.

This is travel in the age of Covid. Get used to it.