I probably won't talk about how I retrained after working in an empty park, recalling my happy tricycle childhood. It's an interesting story, but more for me than for others. But one day I got brave and rode from one end to the other without stopping, across all the bridges and steep paths along the riverbank, and it felt like the world was now open to me. After that, I was like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I practiced riding and turning around rosehip bushes, preparing for big flights on US highways. Seriously, though, I didn't hope for much: I was afraid of breaking rules I never knew. For example, I didn't have a helmet, and my worst nightmare was meeting a police car with an uncovered head.

But riding only in the park was getting boring. I was already quite good at cycling, and on top of that, I was driven by intense curiosity that I couldn't satisfy on foot. Then I got brave a second time, and one fine day the bike just crossed the park boundary and rolled onto the sidewalk. Oh, where I ended up that first day, I don't even remember. But it was very far. I just couldn't stop; I memorized every bit of what I saw and never ceased to be amazed at what a beautiful city I live in. Yes, I was sure that now I knew Yarmouth.

But that turned out to be nowhere near the truth. From every trip, I returned shocked again, because all it took was one new turn, turning onto an unfamiliar street, and another unknown side of the city would open up. It's impossible to describe or even capture in photos how much and exactly what insanely beautiful things I encountered, although it is on the road that ideas and drafts of texts come to me. (Which are then successfully forgotten.) The road is pure inspiration. If you ride for a long time, then by the laws of nature, the day will eventually end. Darkness will fall over the city, and a silence that you don't expect from America at all. That's how stereotypes and (sorry) pretenses in our heads created it, with all the Broadways and advertising, with tamed electricity and a herd of yellow taxis, and nightlife. Maybe you can say that about a metropolis, or about our dreams of it, but not about the whole country.

You ride through an evening town and realize that it's not like that at all. America—the one that is mine and, in my opinion, the real one—is family-oriented and cozy. And yes, one-story, watching TV in its transparent box-houses. American houses have many windows that are often not curtained, allowing you to see right through the house; as if they don't make a secret of their home life. And so I quietly roll my bike, listening to the tires rustling on the sidewalk, and see glowing screens behind the windows and people sitting in front of them on the sofa.