Going off to discover (part of) America on a bike at 60 (okay, I used a car, too).
I don’t know why, but this picture of the Riverside Church in Manhattan is particularly beautiful to me; I wish I had been able to crop the car out, but I was taking the photo from my bicycle seat, so perhaps my perspective was not the best. It is somehow more like an etching than … More Traveling forward into the past
There is a lot more green space in Manhattan than I would have guessed. As I stood on the George Washington Bridge looking southwest, I realized that when I lived in Manhattan as a child, I was not really aware of its physical orientation on the East Coast. I didn’t really know, for example, that … More Looking Down the Length of Manhattan
Places do matter. They are different from each other. People in those places are different and the thoughts and experiences you can have in one place bear no resemblance to the thoughts and experiences you can have in another place. I assert this only because there are people in my world who believe that place … More Biking into the Maw of the Metropolis
Earlier in the day, before Martin and I sang at the open mic, I rode south along the Potomac to Mount Vernon along the Mount Vernon Trail. Strangely, I had never visited Mount Vernon before. I’ve been to Jefferson’s Monticello twice, and in general I love old houses, but somehow Mount Vernon had always seemed … More Visiting the President
After the glorious June greenness of the Shenandoah Valley and McCormick’s farmstead… my next destination was Arlington, Virginia, where my old friend Martin lives with his wife Patti. And now you have to meet Chester. See that battered old guitar? It has a name, and that name is Chester Lee Kachouzel. I tossed Chester in … More Chester and Martin
Photo by Ben Greenberg While I love mountains, having lived in and among them most of my life, I also love the corresponding valleys. I mean seriously, can you have a mountain without a valley? A fish without water? A lover without a beloved?
The first full day out of Tennessee, June 2, I stayed in Abingdon, Virginia, at the Jubilee Retreat Center, which is run by the Catholic Church. I highly recommend looking for such retreats–they are in beautiful places, they are quiet, and they are relatively cheap, all things that I value greatly. I wanted to bike the Virginia … More On the road to Damascus
As I left Knoxville and headed North on the first of June, it was threatening to rain. I didn’t care. I needed to get out of Knoxville, urgently. Conflicts at work were dragging at me and I could not shake thoughts about them. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate. Knoxville needed to be left in the dust … More Traveling North
So this is a picture of Siena, a city in Tuscany in Italy. After a summer of teaching ESL at the American School in Switzerland in 1982, I rode with my friends Dani and Bruno by bike through the Appenines from southern Switzerland to Siena. Dani’s girlfriend, later wife, Marlies, was taking a cooking class … More The Tent in Siena
I don’t know why, really, I was willing to take a month, a whole month, and go away from my home and my job. Some of it had to do with a turning point in my life. I turned 60 a few months ago, which surprised me a good deal. I never expected to live to 60. … More ON
Em Turner Chitty 