Charm Me

Saturday
June 22, 2013
2:30 p.m.

It’s 86° in the shade, and 81° in the house. The central air isn’t working.

Rich brings the motorcycle up to the house, and we get ready to go. I further insulate an insulated cup filled with ice water, grab my mp3 player and my sunglasses, and we’re out the door.

“Where to?” Rich asks.

“Take me to Charm,” I tell him. “I’ve never been to Charm.”

Charm is a small Amish town, and as this is my first time out on the motorcycle this year, I want to ride through some of my favorite country.

It feels wonderful to have the hot sun on my face and the wind whipping through my hair again. Traffic isn’t heavy, and we take our time enjoying the beautiful scenery.

After riding for about an hour and fifteen minutes, we arrive in Charm. We stop and get off the bike at Guggisberg Cheese. We don’t go in to see if there are cheese samples, but we do take a couple of pictures. Rich is armed with an iPhone. I have a little Bloggie in my hand.

Enter here for cheese!

The mailbox for the cheese plant.

My hair isn’t terribly tangled, and I silently thank my cream rinse for doing its job.

A group of motorcycle riders passes us. Not a single person is wearing a helmet. We’ve probably seen over one hundred riders today, and maybe six people were wearing helmets. If we ever have an accident and die because we weren’t wearing ours, you must write in your blogs, “Well, at least they died doing something they loved.”

The Amish are friendly. When we drive through the area in a car, they never look at us or wave. However, when we are on the motorcycle, men nod, boys wave, little girls smile, and even women relaxing in chairs under the shade of a tree will wave and smile as we go by. I wonder why that is? I find it incredibly enjoyable.

There are no ice cream cones or sundaes today, but that doesn’t keep us from having to watch where we step. Horse manure is plentiful in parking lots and along roadways.

By the time we get home, my bum is numb. Maybe we stayed out a little too long on my first day, but it was worth it.

How’s your summer going so far? We’ve had rain, rain, and more rain. Some of it has been in the kitchen and in the basement. A nice man sledgehammered our old cement porch at the back door and hauled it away. Rich is now building a deck for me. A new place to write! I’m woefully behind with reading blogs, but I have been productive by trying to write two books at once: Susan Hunter and her misadventures in Canada – as well as the two sisters and their efforts to solve a murder. Despite the rain, I think summer is coming along just fine.