July 1975 Night Ride Home

There is a smell to the ocean that is unique. There isn't just one smell that you sense. Each bay, cove, and bit of openshoreline has its own scent. The sea grasses that hold the dunes in place in North Carolina smell different than the various reeds and runners that serve the same function in New Jersey. Every beach after a storm smells different than during a hot dry 10 day stretch. Still the smell is very visceral, very primal. When I travel I can tell when I am about 10 miles from the beach because the air changes palpably. I don’t know if everyone senses this but I can feel the shore approaching.

One of the strongest memories I have of the years on the beach was of the smell and feel of the sea air at midnight. After I closed down the store, Kurly Kustard to be precise, I would get on a 10 speed bike and wheel down the wet boardwalk. It was about a twenty minute ride home. 

Shutting down the store wasn’t instant. It took a while to break down the store. You had to disassemble the custard machines and drop the blades and gaskets and knobs into the sanitizer. You blended the sanitizer earlier in the evening if you were smart. All remaining dairy products had been drained and put away for the night in the walk-in cooler. The fountain heads had been removed from the soda fountain and the store's awning rolled up. The windows had been slid across the service counter's boardwalk opening and locked into place.

After stashing the cash I would go out the back door. At the base of the back steps I would pick up my bike. If I was lucky and had a roach, I would burn it up, crushing it at the very end and swallowing the remaining small bit of cigarette paper. I was a weird fucker that way. It just seemed better to get all the THC in me and not leave any evidence on the ground. I mean just in case the gendarmes were in the vicinity. I would throw my chain and lock into my backpack and off I would fly.

The boardwalk rules prohibited me from riding my bike on it at that hour. A few blocks down south of the store the cops stopped enforcing the rules. Reaching there I was free to leave the surface streets and tool down the damp and sometimes quite wet boards at whatever speed I deemed safe. On the right night I was free and I was flying.

On a late summer night under the influence of cheap assed Mexican reefer if the moon was up the ride became a religious service with its own sacraments. My muscles flowed smoothly and the bike was just an extension of my desire to be moving. Riding wouldn’t require thinking it would just require being. On those nights as I swooshed down those blocks elevated over the ghostly illuminated white sands of the beach I would glance out at the reflection of the sun’s little brother over the water. The air was cool but comfortable as I split its molecules on my ride.