Saturday, July 9. Chilicothe, OH, to Bloomington, IN. Light broke in through the slit between the tarp and where Kate had hung the tent fly as a door. It slanted across my face and warmed it until I woke up. Kate was still asleep. I had to piss badly. When she heard me stir she slid down into her sleeping bag and rolled over. I found my pants and pulled them on lying down. I crawled out of the tent onto my shoes and pulled them on. The sun shone through the trees. Dew had wet the ground. The tent city was bustling with breakfast activity. The kids had already left the confines of their own camps and they were clustering in tentative groups along the ring road, the older ones making elaborate plans for the endless Saturday ahead and the younger ones, overwhelmed with fear and excitement, trying to listen in and glance back at their parents simultaneously. I got my toothbrush and headed to the camp bathroom in the middle of the ring road. An elderly couple sat behind their pull trailer on two fold up chairs drinking coffee. They were well within range of the stink the camp bathroom wafted but they seemed not to notice.

We walked past the visitor center down the path to the mound. Kate saw the watchtower and walked towards it. The Harley couple was coming down the steps as we were going up. How do I know? Because they were wearing shiny black leather chaps and you can't get away with that shit in Ohio unless you're on a HOG! They did not look tough. I got my first real view of the mound from the top of the platform. The serpent's tail is a tight coil that unwraps and undulates gently and then makes a ninety degree turn, continues to undulate to the head. There is some controversy about the serpent's head. The body of the serpent ends in a kind of trumpet-flower shaped triangle a few feet from which lies a separate egg-shaped mound that would fit into the trumpet mouth if you shoved it in. Some people think the snake ends with the trumpet, an open mouth, that is about to devour the gigantic egg. Others believe that the trumpet/egg are together the neck and head of the serpent.

We rode away from the Serpent Mound feeling satisfied, I think, that it was a good destination for a motorcycle ride. A mystery point, something to consider later. American. I put in a Shuggie Otis album and we rode off to the rhythms of 70s R&B in the bright sunlight back through Faulkner Town. It was the most exhilarating moment on the trip. Whenever Kate felt good, when her mind wasn't wandering back to Providence, I felt her hands on my sides. I could look in the bike's rearview and see her eyes laughing deep inside the helmet I had made for her.

You've probably noticed that the States get bigger as you go West. Indiana is actually smaller than Ohio, its neighbor to the East. Illinois is big, especially north to south. It looks gaudily big on the East side of the Mississippi River. On the other side, every state is a monster. Distances stretch out. Towns are farther apart, cities, houses, Driving into southern Indiana, we had our first taste of the changing scale of things. The flatness of that state and the large evenly spaced corn farms give you the feeling that you are a bug crawling across the back of a large being. The sky seems to widen and you see things from farther off.

"I really like that dark blue bike," Kate said. "That's the first bike I've seen that kind of makes me wish we were on it instead of yours."
"Don't let the Hawk hear you? It might buck you off."
"I love the Hawk. But look at the way the blue and the silver go. And those handle bars are awesome. I think that's the kind of bike I want. Only smaller."
"The bike you want, huh?"
"I'm thinking about getting one to learn on when I get back."
"Attagirl."
The platitude came out to hide the involuntary sting I felt at thinking about Kate going back to Blake. We had only a day and a half left. It wasn't something I could get my head around at that moment.

The sun had dropped low in the sky and it glowed bright orange. The road continued north for about fifteen more miles until it joined with Indiana 46, the road that heads due west to Bloomington. There were no cheap hotels along the way. We would have had to go on into Columbia and I just made the turn and kept hammering. The longer I rode, the more furious a rider I became. It was partly a way of fighting the fatigue and staying focused. Like becoming an iron centaur, half man, half machine. But it was partly that I was angry at Kate for having control over me.