In the hazy post-afternoon tension of a stressful middle-of-the-week-slash-quarter-end today, a female colleague hopeful for support looked around at us, fanning agitatedly around her face at the warm office air.

"Are you guys hot?" she complained.

"So we've been told," I said cheerfully.

I'm just about done removing from my skin all the slivers of the icy stare she threw my way.

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I just came out of an hour-long meeting where one of the guys kept mispronouncing the word "entities" as "en-titties."

Yadda yadda yadda legal en-titties, yadda yadda aggregate en-titties.

The meeting was about the delicate intricacies of funding an umbrella onshore portfolio of sub-managed hedge funds, but all everybody heard was yadda yadda yadda en-titties.

Don't you just love corporate finance?

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I had one of those nerve conduction studies done at the doctor's office yesterday. For those of you who don't know, a nerve conduction study is when they attach electrodes to you and then proceed to laugh hysterically as they run electric currents through your body.

"You won't feel anything more than a tiny little shock," the technician said. He said it convincingly enough, I suppose. He said it with such a nonchalance and a trust-me-I-know-what-I'm-doing that my suspicions and inflated fear of being electrocuted all but disappeared, and I began to relax.

He lied.

I left the doctor's office an hour later, my hair wound in tight curls and smoke smelling disturbingly like refried beans coming out of my ears. I don't know what the session was supposed to find, but it's a sure good cure for hypochondria.

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This morning as I was leaving for work, a fifty-something woman with a fantastic shock of wild red hair got into the elevator with her little white dog. Her face, deeply wrinkled and sunburned to a brilliant orange was a perfect match for her bubblegum pink top and baby blue shorts. She looked at me.

"This is only the third time she's ever been in an elevator," she said in a husky, smoker's voice, pointing to her charge. "She's a beach dog."

I looked at the dog and nodded in agreement as though this was the most important bit of news I had heard in a long time. "I brought her in from our house on Fire Island. We're staying here with friends because of the hurricane." She looked down as she fidgeted with the leash. "You know," she said, "just in case."

As we reached the ground floor, the elevator door opened and the little white dog jumped. She peered up nervously at her mistress. "Go ahead, darling," the lady said. "It's okay."

We're all waiting for Isabel to hit. I'm a bit excited, to be honest. I love a good storm.

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We spent the past week in New England, biking some four hundred or so odd miles over the past three days up scenic roads and down byways, past country farms and lolling hills, under limitless blue skies and crisp, fresh air.

Ah, the country.

On Wednesday I woke up at 4:30 in the morning. I woke Greg half an hour later and we crawled out into the early morning dampness, shivering at the top of the ridge as we watched a spectacular moon setting beyond the distant mountaintops. A thick fog rolled about in the valley below.

We left southern Vermont by mid-morning, heading across Route 30 into the Green Mountains and towards Bromley, where we entered the deserted ski resort. School was in session, we remembered, and the park was empty. We settled ourselves into a pair of brightly coloured Adirondack chairs and fell fast asleep under the brilliant sunshine.

An hour or so later, we hopped back onto our bikes, heading north all the way up Route 100, whiling and wending our way through the deliciously curvy country roads and their fields and fields of corn, smelling the smells of the open roads and the farms, waving hellos to the grizzled Harley riders speeding lazily by and stopping whenever we pleased to see whatever caught our fancies. Every once in a while, we would catch sight of a moose crossing sign, and Greg and I would put our left hands to our helmets, fingers extended. Our personal little international motorcyclist's sign for moose, we would later agree, giggling.

We made it all the way north through the tricky roads at Smugglers Notch before dusk, and settled into a little motel for the night.

***

The second morning was as brilliant as the days before it, and we awoke refreshed, marveling at the glorious weather about us. We began heading east, and it was a little after noon when we crossed the border into New Hampshire, riding Route 112 into the White Mountains towards Mount Washington.

At the base of the mountain, we paid our ten dollars and the lady there gave us each a "This bike climbed Mount Washington" sticker. We chuckled and pocketed them, thinking it a bit premature to use them.

The eight-mile ride up the steep and narrow mountain dirt roads was exhilarating, and we watched in amazement as the vegetation changed every thousand or so feet until there was nothing but bare rock and a few scraggly, wind-swept bushes. At the top of the adrenaline-pumped ride, we parked our bikes, oohing and ahhing at the views from high above and the strange cloud formations below.

We rode back west through the White Mountains, stopping at a delightful bed and breakfast in North Woodstock for the night. For the second night in a row, we soaked our aching bodies in a steaming hot tub, and tumbled into bed, blissfully happy and delirious from exhaustion.

***

After a scrumptious breakfast of coconut corn muffins, fresh fruit salad and wafer-thin strawberry crepes (all made fresh, of course), we bade farewell to our hosts, Rosanna and Michael, and headed to Lost River, where we walked the wooden footpaths and crawled on our bellies through the tight caves and crawlspaces littered throughout the reservation.

As we exited the footpaths, a tiny chipmunk got up on its hind legs and scolded Greg, chattering at a hundred miles and hour. We laughed as he ran off into the underbrush, mumbling something about the human tourists and this season's lack of food scraps. Two cups of steaming chili later, we again hopped on our bikes and headed west, stopping briefly in Warren to admire the town's oddly-placed Mercury Redstone missile before aiming our bikes homeward to southern Vermont.

On the way home, we made our way through dozens of little towns, the occasional curious onlooker waving at us. It was in Lyme where we saw the three old ladies sitting on their front porch, two engaged in deep conversation and the other waving and smiling. I waved back as I rode off, watching in my side mirrors as she went back to her companions.

We rode south for a couple hours, hugging the Connecticut River and making our silly moose signals whenever we saw a moose crossing sign. Once in a while, a chipmunk would make a mad dash across the road between our bikes, and I would laugh to myself as I imagined the cheering chipmunks on the other side, all of whom would have paid good money to see Chipmunk Knievel and his daring 'Tween-the-Cycles stunt.

***

We're back in New York today, all relaxed and spent after a wonderful few days away from the city. It's been a great week off from work, what with the little planning we've done and magnificent weather we've had, and we've certainly put quite a bit of mileage on our bikes.

How wonderful this time of year in New England. We'll certainly see you again soon.

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Labour Day has come and gone, its departure the symbolic end of another summer gone by. Today certainly seems to be a fitting welcome for autumn, what with its cool weather and constant misty drizzle lending a dampness to the trees and grass and cars everywhere. It was a shorts and sweatshirt day today, and marked one of life's small milestones. Today Greg's parents visited and met some of my family.

I haven't been writing much these days, my brain exhausted from a summer laden with stress and extreme fatigue. I seem to have lost much of the drive to do anything at all. My brain hurts sometimes. My body aches. I feel strange muscle strains here and there, and am constantly worried about the onset of all sorts of imagined ailments and maladies. I need a long rest.

I'm happy that this summer is over, actually. It's been an exhausting few months, and certainly not one of the better summers I've ever had. I'm looking forward to autumn. I need a long, long rest. Goodbye, summer. I'm not happy to say it, but I really won't miss you at all.

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