Share the road

By Sarah Cutler

Three years ago, I sold my car. It suited my life in New Mexico and my personality; it was a joyful, life-affirming decision. Last December, I moved back to Northeast Pennsylvania.

“You gotta have some nerve, don’cha?” calls the gentleman in the car, unhelpfully trying to wave me through an intersection ahead of his car.

It’s not the hills (oh Endless Mountains!). It’s not the condition of the road (is that a pothole or a fox hole?). It’s not even finding space on the road (shoulders? where?) The most challenging part of riding a bicycle around here is the culture shock. I am an exotic beast: humanoid on an orange bike. Since I’ve yet to find a workable car-share, I’m mostly foot powered. My vision is to share the road.

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Parable of the buffet

The dishes were still in their boxes in my brother-in-law’s new, smaller apartment. So, once we’d moved him in, he (laid off a few months ago) and I (ditto) had to decide where to go eat. The conversation came around to all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets—which reminded him of some lunch breaks at his old job.

“It was crazy,” he said. “We’d go to one of those Chinese buffets, and my co-workers would load up on all the meats they could. I’d have some fruit, a lot of broccoli, maybe a little chicken—then we’d go back to the office and they’d be groaning, or falling asleep at their desks, and I’d be working away as normal. I couldn’t understand why they’d eat like that… ”

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Black Jack

A smoky Las Vegas casino. A bald-headed dealer who is kind of a jerk. He speaks in sharp snappy dialogue, deals and shuffles with confidence. A scantily clad waitress is overly nice to me; her lips curl up in a grin as she passes me my drink. A Jameson on the rocks in a short glass, the napkin sticks to the bottom as she moves it from her tray to the smooth green cloth of the table.

It is a wonderful thing to hit blackjack in Las Vegas, especially when you’ve bet big. The chips multiply into beautiful crisp stacks that I pull toward myself with two hands. Baldy is smug, like it was lucky, a one-time thing. But I know I had a hunch, a twinge of nervous energy somewhere between my ankle and my knee, that told me that was my hand.

I’m up $300 and feeling good.

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