Heading east on Highway 1

My intention was to have a post about every city as I reach it.  Madawaska was due today.  I have it written, but I am rapidly discovering the blog that I have envisioned in my head would take up about 40 hours a week.  Being a believer that life is worth living, and living it, I don't have that kind of time.  Last night would have been a perfect night to write up, edit, and publish the Madawaska post; but I drank beer with a friend of mine.  The good news for me is that it is twice as far from Madawaska to Van Buren, and the weekend is coming.  I wrote the post, but I am not happy with it.  I am letting it sit for a day or so before going back to it and shaping into something more befitting of the vision in my mind.  Skipping ahead...

Tooling along US 1 I am heading out of town on a little recovery run.  I had thought the scenery would turn from rural woods and farmland into town, then back again quickly.  Not so.  There seems to be some sort of sprawl; I can't call it urban, but the town strings out along the road.  To get in I ran the five miler where I thought of my wife and sister.  Coming out, I was forced inside.  On my way home from work the thermometer in my car read 95.  It was 7:30pm.  I think the heat index was still above 100.  I opted for the low humidity, persistently 69 degrees of my complex's workout room.

My thoughts drifted around like they do.  Rather pleasantly about my daughters and love and how I would begin this post, for mill running it was quite nice.  But I heard him when I stepped off the mill.  Just now I realize that I was so surprised by him that I forgot to wipe it off.  A cricket.  I love the sound of crickets.  It is one of the sounds that brings me back places.  Crickets are good memories, but omens of summer's end the way spring peepers are of its beginning.  I remember sitting at night with my grandfather in the back of his house watching the cars come over 206 on the next hill into town.  He had an outdoor wood stove.  I remember the way they would signal the return home after spending summers at the lake.  I didn't like the lake.  I felt like a teenager in a retirement community.  I didn't have fun there so the crickets meant that I would have three, maybe four weeks at the most and I would see my friends again.  Now they mean an impending family reunion.  I like crickets.