07 September 2025
It was pitch black when I woke up. I silently slid off the mattress, feet first. Gus was in his usual spot, tucked between the aluminum wall and the foot of the bed. I was careful not to step on him or disturb Abby as I made my way out into the narrow hallway, pulling the accordion closed behind me. I felt my way to the back of the Airstream, turned on the light, and tucked myself into the seat by the table. Frank was fast asleep below.
This is home, in the Airstream, in Cedar Mountain under a canopy of trees, bikes parked outside, and the only sound is nature. Getting here has been a long road.
I didn’t always have a place called home. Now I find it everywhere.
When I was nineteen, the only place I experienced home was on my motorcycle. I was brokenhearted and going to college at Stevens Tech in Hoboken. Dorm life never resonated. I slept on couches in secret corners of the campus library, in the loft on the rooftop of the Chi Phi fraternity house, and on the bench seat of my red GMC Sierra.
My high school sweetheart had too many good reasons to dump me, and a year later, the loss continued to sting. Without love, I was a zombie going through the motions.
I went to the default college that my father and sister went to, and worked on movie sets in New York City in a union started by my mom’s family. The paths were paved for me. When it came time to party, I wasn’t really having fun — instead, drinking until blackout drunk.
The only place I felt at home was on two wheels. Any excuse to ride my motorcycle, I took it. That machine took me back — to the source.
When I was three, I learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels, and I never looked back. My first bike had a banana seat — a single speed with pedal brakes. I started riding BMX bikes in grammar school, leading the way to mopeds and dirt bikes, until I finally restored my dad’s 1971 BMW R60/5.
I rode it wherever winding roads with fall-colored leaves led to women and food. That was my Aunt Marie and Grandma Jenny in Park Ridge. It was the Mullins girls in Ridgewood. All of them were beautiful, from ninety-three to seventeen.
By God, those Mullins girls were gorgeous — all four of them — and that included their mom.
Mr. Mullins was the music teacher in Rutherford. In grammar school, he was an adult who played the piano in the gymnasium and visited us in our classrooms with an acoustic guitar. We all sang Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver. I didn’t know his girls until I met them in church, when we were in high school. By then, I realized Mr. Mullins was John Denver — a hippie type with that worn, brown leather sportscoat, longish straight hair, and soothing voice.
I was visiting home from college when my mom pointed out the house they used to live in. I had no memory of ever being there, playing with those girls when we were little children, being in the home of a schoolteacher.
They had moved to North Jersey, and I asked Mom for the address. I’m sure she was feeding me all these tidbits because she knew her son was heartbroken, and she knew I was enamored with one of the sisters.
The first time I arrived at their home, it was unannounced. That’s how we did things back then. I just rolled up on my motorcycle and rang the bell. Mrs. Mullins invited me in, and I made up a story that I was looking for advice on a piano piece I was trying to learn.
I was really just hungry.
Mr. Mullins wasn’t around, but I ended up hanging there for hours with the three girls and their mom. The one I liked made me an ankle bracelet out of braided colored strings. I had to take off my engineer boots and white tube socks to put it on. Barefoot was the way to be in that home.
The five of us were sitting at their kitchen table eating a snack when one of them asked, “What season are you?”
“Huh? What? What season am I?”
They giggled and decided to play a game. They all wrote down a season, separately, and then shared their answers. I had no idea what was going on.
“It’s unanimous. You’re Fall.”
I remember just thinking, girls are so different than boys.
Whenever I dropped in there unannounced, they knew what I was up to. But I never mustered up the guts to ask the one sister out. I figured if I did, she’d say, “No,” and then there’d be no more visits. There’d be no more bracelets, hugs, or impromptu snacks — no more reminders that this wasn’t home.
But I was looking for love. In the end, I didn’t find it there, and those drop-ins faded into a sea of lost chances, leaving me with sweet memories and a fashion guide for life.
This week, I screamed down Ridgeline on my REEB SST, a Colorado-made, steel-welded full-suspension mountain bike. When the dropper post is down and my butt grazes the rear tread, there’s no time to figure out the line. My bike and body are one.
My mind is blank — eyes track the trail far ahead and, at the same time, what’s under my front wheel. My body reacts. The line traces behind me. If I think anything, it’s exhale. I purse my lips and blow, like I’m trying to dry glue without disturbing it.
This is where I’m closest to the eternal.
Home is a fallen leaf on a gravel path in Cedar Mountain on the first of September. It’s yellow and green and burnt orange and red with splatters of dark brown. I pick it up and hold it close and think about this leaf — just before it fell, it peaked in its brilliance.
I think about all of us humans. We’re leaves on trees, coming and going, season after season. If I live my life right, if I’m lucky, if God wills it, I’ll peak brilliantly just before I fall. Through all the seasons of my life, I’ve chased what looked like love, but when I found it, it was home.
When I’m home, it’s after a two-wheeled adventure, surrounded by Mother Nature, followed by sharing food with good company.
Riding my banana seat bicycle from the kindergarten schoolyard, home to mom, a hug, and a big plate of leftover lasagna.
Pedaling my BMX up and over Ridge Road to the far side of Rutherford, to my high school girlfriend’s place. Her mom made the best potato pancakes.
Cruising on my BMW up to Gram’s, where I’d find double hugs from her and Aunt Marie. They’d make meatballs and ziti.
Gripping my Harley tight on Charlotte city streets on my way to Lupie’s to hang out at the bar with John Kelly. I’d eat a giant plate of meatloaf and wash it down with an iced-cold Busch Light.
Hauling two little ones in a trailer up steep gravel paths in Umstead Park — their two wheels behind mine. We’d take a break and snack on packs of Nabs, everyone fighting over who gets the peanut butter stuffed cheddar cheese ones.
Perching at the bar at Crank Arm Brewing after a group bicycle ride — falling in love again for the first time. Every meal since meaning filled.
My sister-in-law’s sourdough.
My mother-in-law’s pumpkin bars.
My wife’s rice crispy treats, her scrambled eggs with cheese, or poached on toast. Her skillet bread, pan-seared salmon, and garden-grown tomatoes. Her loving embrace.
Home is the longing for it. It’s after the hard ride up a long mountain pass to a ridgeline. It’s after coming back down the other side. That’s about when I can almost taste it. Home is after the long road trip, it’s after the journey, and after all the trials and tribulations searching for love. Home is breaking bread with beautiful humans.
Sometimes it lives in memories with Mom, with Gram, with John Kelly. Other times, it hurts — when I think of my daughter, sharing a rack of ribs, hands messy and faces covered with sauce. It’s reminiscing of loves lost and never found. It’s laughter with close friends and a giant pile of wings on the table. And when it’s dinner with my wife and son — it’s home.
Here in our Airstream with Frank and Gus the dogs, in Cedar Mountain in September, riding my mountain bike in DuPont Forest.
Skipping from rock to rock below a gentle waterfall, in the early morning before hikers arrive. Mist in the air, and sunlight twinkling on the water, flies dancing, slippery green moss on slate blue slabs, dark where wet and chalky where dry.
The boys splash about in the miniature rapids, slip and slide on the rocks, jump out, then shake all about.
Abby and I look at each other and smile.
This is home.
Thank you for reading.
Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.
— Andrew
