Papa Looks back- cross country bike ride

"June 1980 It had been a hot day but I could see in the trees along the road the beginning of the cold evening which lay before me. I was watching the shadows creeping along the ground when I suddenly saw them. Like old tired men resting in the shade, the line of empty coal barges tied up on the bank of a small river I was following. Rusty swirls on their sides and bottoms, they waited here in the growing shadows, a half or more mile long. Their work for the year was done. They would not be needed until cold weather would come again and Ohio people needed heat for their homes and businesses I watch silently and slowly and suddenly I saw it. One of the lines was a bowline attached to the bitts. I was transported almost 50 years and a half a nation away. I was trying to make my first bowline hitch as a teen-ager in front of the Pacific ocean in San Diego What a jolt for a memory flash. "

Thanks Sandlin for such specific instructions. Papa has a bunged up back so has been extra-sedentary lately and says maybe he'll do another one tomorrow. I know he'll enjoy Noel's cat & mouse episode.