Mushrooms and motorcycles

The task of walking the dog fell to me this morning. Val happens not to be a morning person, and when she has the rare opportunity to sleep in, I try to let her seize the moment, as it were, and get a little extra shut-eye. We've become followers of Caesar Milan, the dog whisperer, and that means a nice long walk for the dog bright and early in the morning. So today the dog and I sashayed down toward the Interstate 95 toll booths, me being careful not to get close enough that the dog would decide the interstate was part of his territory. I cut through an unfamiliar stretch of woods on the way home and came upon a small clearing with a six-inch diameter log in the middle of it, as if it had been posed there. The log was covered with the whitest shelf fungi I have ever seen, and the early morning sun was just bright enough to make them seem almost to glow. The dog ignored the sight (didn't trample on it) so it's still there, and I didn't have the camera anyway. I'll have to go back. If I can find the spot again, I'll post a picture. Then I checked my email. My friend Jack Riepe and a few of his friends were going for a ride (that means motorcycle ride, but you knew that) down through my neck of the woods; did I want to join them? I met the three PA guys (and a ten-year old daughter in full gear) at the pre-arranged place and we headed south on new-to-them Route 9 to Dover. We passed a run-down and famous biker tavern, a nuclear power plant across the river, a farm that sells ice cream during the summer, and tooled through salt marshes that sometimes cover the road at high tide. It was low tide. At one point I startled a buzzard who had found a deer carcase on the side of the road that someone had graciously removed from the ranks of motorcycle hazards. On the way back he had been joined by at least a half dozen buddies, and one of them nearly hit me as I rode by. Perhaps he wanted to fill in for the deer. Our destination was a dinner club called Cavalier East. Genuine southern cooking. The cook even had a southern accent. The food was excellent though the crab soup that was the official reason for the trip was not being served today. We'll have to show on a Saturday. I'll bring my wife. Speaking of whom, Val went to her new office to set up the new desks. She was still at it when I got back north, so I joined her and helped out. The task is nearly finished, and poor Val feels about the way I did after cutting all that firewood yesterday. I did not suggest that she was getting old. Time for our poetry lesson. Today I'm going to disagree with my teacher. He says that Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha is written in trochaic tetrameter. Tum ta Tum ta Tum ta Tum ta. I say it's in paeonic meter, two feet per line. (I knew about this type of foot before I read this book.) Paeonic goes ta ta Tum ta. I'll quote a few lines that my dad used to recite to us when we were kids. Judge for yourself: By the shores of Gitchie-gumi By the shining big-sea waters Stood the wigwam of Nokomis Daughter of the moon Nokomis Paeonic works better, doesn't it?