Interlude

This has nothing to do with our tour, and nothing to do with bicycles. It's a rest day, and Raven's comment about the dress (undress?) code at the Grand Hotel made me think about my never-to-be-forgotten encounter with the same dress code.

If you didn't know Granny, here's a little key to what follows. She was the sweetest person imaginable. She adored children and may have been the best possible grandmother and, eventually, great-grandmother a young child could imagine. But in spite of having grown up in Omaha in an Irish family with a very formal, conventional background, she had no feeling for conventions. I always think of her and Grandad as my personal Burns & Allen: he had the dry, straight man sense of humor, she had no sense of humor at all but never stopped being funny. And never understood why we were laughing.

I was about 16. Granny, my mother's mother, took Rosemary (my sister, about 14 at the time) and me out to dinner at the Shirt Tail Restaurant. I was, as usual, in my school uniform, a wool skirt with a white shirt. Rosemary was wearing what she called her "convict pants" which she had bought very thoroughly used at some army surplus store.

When we walked in and asked for a table, the maitre d' said apologetically that the restaurant required that ladies wear skirts or dresses. I edged towards the door, Rosemary waited, Granny said in a surprised voice, "Why, those are party pants she's wearing!"

I edged still closer to the door.

The maitre d' politely held his ground. He was very sorry, but he simply could not seat us. The two of them went gently but determinedly back and forth for what, to my hypersensitive adolescent mind, felt like forever. Finally, Granny turned to Rosemary. "It's all right, dear. I am wearing two skirts. Come with me to the ladies room and I'll give you one!"

I slunk out to the car.

A little later, Rosemary came out to tell me I had to come in; I was spoiling Granny's dinner. Soon after I arrived, the maitre d' seated a woman in an elegant lace pants suit. Thank goodness Granny let it go after one fairly audible comment.

It makes a hundred mile day feel easy.