My Quest

October is a great month for sea food on the Eastern Shore -- the oysters have arrived, and the crabs haven't left yet. So last night, Susan, Pete, and I headed to Schooners, a dockside restaurant and bar in Oxford, for some fried oysters and crabcakes. We were sitting outside, on the harbor, near the outdoor bar. At around 8:15, we saw a fireworks display to the south. Since it wasn't the 4th of July, no one was quite sure what was going on -- until the waitress told us that one of the guys' fathers was a caretaker for a huge place down on Island Creek. The fireworks display -- all 25 or 30 minutes worth, easily as good as Easton's display on July 4th -- were for a wedding (!!!)
So that settled it -- Sunday's ride would start with the Island Creek loop, to see if I could find evidence of the grand event. I took the normal route, out the Oxford Road to Almshouse, then White Marsh to Sanderstown. I got a bit of a late start; by 9:15, the fog was burning off, leaving the fields with a heavy dew. Everything was glistening in the morning light.
When I got to Island Creek Road, I had a strange sense that I was almost there. . . .I pedaled along for a while, wondering how far was "almost," anyway? After a while, I found it:That's right, a Lovefest at Martins Point -- I'm not making this up. Either a really big wedding, or a late celebration of Woodstock's 40th anniversary.
My quest now complete, I continued the ride, singing the B-52s' "Love Shack" to myself. It was a beautiful Fall day -- with the first of the migrating Canadian snow geese in the sky. I rode the Island Creek loop, with a detour out to Chloras Point and Peace Cliff Road -- where I could see a sailboat race out on the Bay. Then through Trappe, across Route 50.
Instead of the normal route up Koogler, I went further east, through Bruceville, past one of my favorite cemeteries. The farms on this side of 50 are larger than to the west. Most of the cornfields had been cleared, and I noticed a much larger number of hawks gliding over the cut fields. With the tall cornstalks gone, the field mice are easier for the raptors to see -- plus, the rodents are stocking up for the winter. The hawks were flying very low, so it was easy to see the white feathers on the underside of their wings.
I crossed Miles Creek, which runs to the Choptank, not the Miles river. I then headed further north, up Dover Neck Road to Black Dog Alley (again, I'm not making this up -- I've got to find out where that name came from). I cut back to Easton sooner than planned, both because it was really windy and because my lower back tightened up. Finished at about 47 miles, my last tune up for the Sea Gull.