“So are we gonna fuck?” I said.
“Don’t you think we better make some time?” Kate said.
“So you’re going back on your word.”
“Not necessarily.”
Kate blew me a flirty little kiss and turned back to the minimart to get us water.

We were headed to Woodstock, NY. I figured we could find a cheap hotel nearby and go into the hippie village and get Kate some quality vegetarian food and me some good local beer. On the other side of the New York Thruway we hooked up with a small beautiful road, NY 28 N. It runs right up into the Catskills to Woodstock. The road got windy as the land rose. Riding curves on a bike is not an intuitive procedure.

For me the 60s are still large in my imagination, a glowing multicolored ball of good energy and unmet promise. They are the time my parents looked funky, when racial barriers were broken, when war was rejected, when Utopian communities were planned and formed, when my parents got together, when young people who grew up in far flung towns met in cities and exchanged spit, blood, and dreams. As far as I can tell the 60s ran from about 1967 to 1972. They started with the killing of JFK and ended with the oil crisis in the Mideast. They were five years of intense hopefulness and searching, when America was at the apex of its world influence, and everyone who lived through them was changed, no matter how young or old they were at the time.

We rode another hour or so before the rain front came and the grey clouds built up. We had reached the heart of the Catskills and the valley was narrow and the sky above us a small strip between the ridgelines. When the sky darkened there was very little light left at all. The rain began to fall and it was cold. I thought we were about ten miles from the campground I had picked out on the map. Woodland Valley, a pretty name and a green triangle on the map was all we had to go on. I decided to pull over at a roadside tavern to get out of the rain and to ask for clearer directions. Road maps these days show all the numbered roads in good detail. The roads that just have names don’t count anymore.

“I’m gonna run check it out,” I said.
I didn’t care how much it cost, I just wanted a room. Kate said she wouldn’t go for it unless it was less than $50. The Phoenicia Inn looks like an Old West tavern. It’s got a rickety weathered wood porch. An old-timer was sitting outside smoking a cheap cigarette. He barely turned his head as I hopped up the steps by him. The front door was loose on the hinges. Inside there was a foyer with two broken pinball machines and another door to a bar. I walked in. It was dark. Two grey-bearded guys in plaid flannel shirts were drinking beer, side by side without speaking. At the far end three women crowded each other. One was eating and the other two smoking. One of the women smoking was black and she spoke in a loud voice waving her cigarette.

In Chapter III Giles and Kate find a home in Else World, ride into Pennsylvania, and then meet Trinity of the Starcrest, a spirit of the underworld who warns them of the danger of reckless love.