Come In, The Water’s Lovely!

After Berea, Kentucky, things looked up markedly. The strenuous climbs of the Appalachian Mountains gave way to rolling green countryside with beef cattle munchin’ and mooin’. There were no more coal trucks and, best of all, there were far fewer loose dogs. Those dogs that did give chase stopped in their tracks when they saw the can of “Halt” pepper spray in my hand. I’ve not even had to use it yet.

I saw the Abbey of Gethsemani on the map and went to see it. The abbey is a community of Cistercian monks – often referred to as Trappists. To my shame, I always thought the name “Trappist” came about because the monks observe silence at various times of the day, i.e they keep their trap shut. Having been a Franciscan friar myself for four years, I should have known better. They’re called Trappist after La Trappe Abbey in France. It was the perfect place to sit and ponder.

It’s funny how tunes enter my head when I’m cycling along. Today’s “tune de jour” was “We Love Sprinkles” – probably induced by the damp weather. I’d heard this tune at the Sprinkles cupcake ATM in Los Angeles. You insert your credit card in the ATM, select your Sprinkles cupcake, and out it comes in a nice box, accompanied by a choir singing “We Love Sprinkles”. And so the gentleman whose Jeep Wrangler had broken down on a back country road in rural Kentucky will never forget the day when a vision in hi-vis green rounded the corner belting out “We Love Sprinkles”. Shirley Bassey would have been proud.

Despite the bad weather, I’ve been making some great headway. A couple of days ago, I crossed the time zone from Eastern to Central, i.e. the clock went back an hour. Yesterday evening, I crossed the 1,000 mile mark. And today, I crossed from Kentucky into Illinois – my third state.

Author: CL Mackay

Aspiring gentleman of leisure in San Francisco, who fancies himself to be a trust fund kid swapped out at birth. Not dented by the male menopause and a pesky diagnosis of leukemia, this former strawberry blond cycled across America, coast to coast, in 2016 and is presently cycling from Vancouver, Canada, to the Mexico border. View all posts by CL Mackay