Rhode Island

Atlantic Coast Bicycle Trip
June 7, `77 pics James bridge, map

Rhode Island was pretty nice. At first, the roads were bad, but they
got better. The nicest part was where all the bridges came together by
the bay. I had to hitch across the Jamestown Bridge. I wanted to stay
and explore the history around me, but unfortunately, I was on a
schedule. Tomorrow I'm supposed to meet a friend at the tip of Cape
Cod. I got to know Richard at CMU. Before he became a college student,
however, back in Houghton Lake, he was the little kid brother of a
friend of my best friend, Mike. It was nice that we were able to hook
up and become friends once he reached college age. Richard was under
time constraints, so instead of doing the whole trip together we
planned to meet in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and from there we
would ride north together.

When I peddled into Dartmouth I was wondering where I was going to
camp. I stumbled across an old vacated Howard Johnson's restaurant and
although it was a little early to stop, I took that as a signal to
call it a day. Walking through the deserted building, I decided to use
the lunch counter for my bed (after I cleaned off the inch of dust).
Because I didn't have to worry about rain, I could leave my bike fully
packed, and that made it easy to get an early start in the morning. I
still had more than a hundred miles to go before I reached Provincetown.

There was time to kill before I called it a night, so I went over to
the near-by gas station and became friends with the attendant. Before
the night was over I had played a game of basketball with one of the
locals (in the schoolyard across from the gas station) and watched
Rhoda on TV with the gas station attendant. It was a good night! Sunup
found me back on the highway. It was cloudy with a little rain—okay
for biking, but that was about all.