". . . Do you ride a bicycle, Gina?"
"At the beach, I do, like to and fro the house."
"Gina sounds like the biggest slouch. Harry, do people in New England ride much?"
"They do, Cynthia. Groups cycle together in Vermont and New Hampshire. Entire classes go on overnights."
"Have you done it?"
"On several occasions. Once, our journey lasted for three days. It was great fun." She was looking at John wide-open, then bent her head bashfully.
"Where did y'all go?" he asked.
"Our guides mapped the most scenic route. It was not the most strenuous we could have taken. Most of us sat on the limbs of a neat sugar maple to eat our lunches. It
was so large, there was room for plenty more of us. Farmers have tilled around trees for generations, rather than removing them. The area immediately around the tree was
a bowl-shaped depression."
"That's interesting, Harry."
"You didn't get any chigger bites?" Gina asked. "You sure can't sit in a tree in the sunny South."
"Ohh, you guys, it was such a cool tree, like being inside a green globe. We were loony just from being there. It was such fun." Harry kept looking at John right in the eye.
Then her face closed as if giving up. Boy he was tired of this.
"I drove off a diving board on a damn bike," Mel groused. "It was three years ago . . ."
"Mel, Harry was saying--"
". . . The last time I was on one."
"It doesn't sound like your favorite thing."
"I wanted to leave it down there."
"Down where?"
"In the pool, baby. The folks that had it, though, were comin' home for Christmas. I had to dive in that friggin', cold-ass water and haul it out. Gawd, I liked to froze!"
"Oh, dear," Cynthia said, laughing.
