Just Pedaling Along Here and There

Part One: In Town

"I wish I could join you, but I'm working," said Kelley, in a way that seemed to underscore the fact that I am so emphatically not. We were in a parking lot in Solvang and I was unloading my bike from my car when I saw her headed into the dry cleaners'. I had a dental appointment at 11, but the way I see it, if you have to go to the dentist, you might as well get in a bike ride too. (Makes sense, doesn't it?) There was just enough time for what I call the Ballard Canyon loop. It was a perfect day and I had my road wheels on.

The Santa Ynez Valley is so storybook beautiful you feel like you're in a movie sometimes -- a happy one that's rated G -- all technicolor sweetness, with windmills and church bells and folks holding hands. Everyone in Solvang seems to be on Prozac, or maybe it's the pastries, and it's tempting to be cynical, but the truth is, people are friendly -- it's pleasant. We lived there for a couple of years in a little rental unit on a horse ranch while our house was being built. Miranda found frogs in the meadow and played soccer on Saturdays and even got to watch the birth of a foal who was christened with her name. One day school was cancelled due to flooding from heavy rain, but the sun broke through and we walked to a little lace-curtained café and had French toast for breakfast, just the two of us. Everything was sparkle and rainbow that day, and it's the sort of thing I remember when I think about the era when we lived "in town."

So you can appreciate my nostalgia and enthusiasm as I set out on my bicycle along the familiar Valley roads. I took the little back street that parallels Mission Drive and was rewarded with my first surprise of the day: a nonchalant chicken was out for a stroll. Curious.

I rode briskly along Alamo Pintado, enjoying the rush of cool air, feeling frisky and capable for the first time in weeks. A dove cooed softly from its telephone wire perch. Then a small mystery: a white-haired old man in a crisp white shirt, pressed gray trousers, and good shined shoes was bent over pulling weeds by the side of the road. Using his time constructively while awaiting his ride to the courthouse? Maybe a last-minute impulse before the funeral? Or just a very tidy man.

Entering Los Olivos on a sleepy Monday morning, it is easy to forget the Sideways-generated tourist invasions. It was just a quiet little town today, the place where long ago children flew newspaper kites and the men in the "spit and argue" club sat in front of the post office swapping stories and airing their opinions. I pedaled past the Berean Baptist church, built in 1894, and said a quiet thank you, as I always do, for the remnants of the past that have somehow survived. Across the street was a profusion of roses.

And the best part of the ride was Ballard Canyon, climbing and winding, descending past vineyards and grazing horses, Angus for sale signs and rural mailboxes with their red flags raised affirmatively, dignified old oaks and upstart purple irises. I coasted back into Solvang, past the Danish cemetery that always seems oddly cheery somehow, and along the back alley street where a shoe repair shop is tucked away, the kind that smells like leather and oil, and a Mexican market that sells tamarind candy and chili-coated gummies.

So I went to town.

Part Two: At the Ranch

Maybe if it’s summer Sameer and Emilie will come out and wave. There will be talk of Pablo Neruda, odes to the canyon perhaps, or Andy will invite me in for cappuccino or margaritas, depending on the time of day, and Dawn might drive by, her car filled with flowers, or Gary, surfboard in truck, time’s winged chariot at his back, or affable Scott, bearing dog biscuits and willing to chat. Then I’ll pause until the dust clears and pedal into the watercolor day past the place where a little girl once kept her horse, a shred of my heart still snagged on that fence like a prayer flag, and Ziggy will bark and run down to investigate and Jeanne may emerge from her garden and we’ll shout across the creek the way housewives used to shout over backyard fences as they hung their laundry on the line with wooden clothespins, except that we’ll be talking about secret chanterelles or wild strawberries on the ridge tides turning hens laying the names of the full moons, and Cindy just may stride by with her walking stick, dressed in neon green and a bright gold necklace glinting and jangling like Mardi Gras coins and I’ll laugh at how we might appear to others but none of us cares because there are sycamore trees and hummingbird sage and a red-tail hawk soars above, and deer have gathered in a clearing and the peaceable cattle move slowly on the hills and even if we didn’t know about the Indian cave we would know about the sacred, and the winding path of this canyon, and the way that we become the place in which we live.