（06年圣诞节发表的小文一篇，共享！英文原文是第一次贡献出来，是手打的！）
原文链接：
逍遥游
[美]佩姬·纽兰德·格兹 彭嵩嵩 编译
《环球时报》 ( 2006-12-25 第14版 )
1956年的夏天，我妈妈让所有人目瞪口呆。她辞掉了中学老师的工作，告别了朋友们，取消了结婚计划，决定骑自行车横穿美国。她说服了一个女童子军时代的老朋友和她同行，她们要从纽约骑到加利福尼亚去冲浪。
一路上，妈妈和她的朋友会请沿途村镇上的牧师帮忙解决食宿。实在没有地方，她们就在院子里的草地上宿营。进入西部，人烟稀少，妈妈干脆睡在旷野里，哼着小调儿。她们路过科罗拉多州，当地人还请妈妈上台唱歌。照片上的她在话筒前傻笑着，头上戴着一顶观众给她遮阳的牛仔帽。一位老太太还塞给妈妈一美元，让她在路上买杯冰茶喝。她们终于抵达了加州。妈妈一时心血来潮，大胆地去参加了一次鹊桥相亲会。她一眼就爱上了一个穿着皮裤、英俊潇洒的小伙子，嫁给了他。那个小伙子后来就成了我的爸爸。
这段故事我从小就听妈妈讲过无数次，直到某一天我才突然开始想象我自己在那条路上的情景。我大学毕业后遇见了布瑞恩，嫁给了他。他一点也不认为骑自行车周游美国是一件疯狂的事。他也不在乎我们是否会把信用卡里的钱花光，以及旅行回来是否还能有工作。他非常赞成我的想法，于是我们上路了。
当我和布瑞恩在40年后重走妈妈的路线时，妈妈正在弗吉尼亚海滩的家里。听到这个消息，妈妈气坏了，因为她也想加入我们的旅行！在路上，我每天晚上都会打电话给她。妈妈不厌其烦地详细询问着一路的各种情况。她始终看不惯我们专挑舒服的旅行方式。妈妈当年在农家的后院里宿营，我们却住在汽车旅馆里。妈妈当年骑一辆50磅重的3挡自行车，我们骑的是24挡带减震器的赛车。她穿的是轻便鞋、沙滩短裤，我们则穿着紧身运动服，看上去像外星人。“你们干吗不宿营或者住在谷仓里呢？”妈妈问道。
“因为我们喜欢睡在床上。”我答道。
“你们干吗穿得那么古怪？像潜水员。我当年根本不需要那些玩意儿。”
“可现在流行这样穿，妈妈。”我在某个旅馆的房间里回答她。
她继续说：“24挡变速？我只有3挡。”
“我不打算像你一样骑3个月，我只需要55天。”
“我可是经常停车闻闻花香的。没有急吼吼骑车猛冲。”
“我要回去工作啊！”
“干吗不辞职？我当年不就炒了学校的鱿鱼？”
“我需要钱。”
“干吗不学我，在大峡谷打工赚点小费？”我俩你来我往地打着口水仗，但其实每天我都能感觉到电话那头传递过来的浓浓的母爱。一天晚上，她在电话里说：“我为你感到骄傲。”我真想立刻搂住她。
终于，我们到了加州的奥克兰。来到山顶的瞭望台上，我闭上眼睛品味这一刻：柏油路上的骄阳，科罗拉多州的雪，还有玉米田和海盐的味道。我骑车下山来到海边。在那里，妈妈和朋友们已经准备好了欢迎聚会。
当妈妈开心地拉着我的手踏上太平洋的海滩时，她手里还拿着当年用过的老式相机。我突然有种感觉，这不再是她的生活以及我的生活，而是我们共同生活的一个传奇。▲
《环球时报》 ( 2006-12-25 第14版 )
原文载于《一杯安慰送母女》A Cup of Comfort for Mothers & Daughters, 美国F&W
Publications 2003年出版，青岛出版社2006年1月引进英文原版。
（编译说明：编译时原文由于较长，删去了较多不重要的细节描写，比如母亲的行李，母亲和父亲的婚后生活，作者的成长，因为这些与本文的最大亮点母女同走一条路的关系不大，受篇幅限制就删去了，下面的原文为审稿方便也就不附上被删的部分了。）
原文：（英文）
The Bike Trip
by Peggy Newland Goetz
During the summer of 1956, my mother nearly gave her friends, her fiancé, and her boss heart attacks. She decided to quit her job as a schoolteacher, leave her friends, and cancel her wedding plans so that she could ride a three-speed Schwinn across the country. She was bored and poor and not in the mood to get married and settle down. No more talk about wedding gowns, no more lesson plans, and no more midnight
kisses with her fiancé, Charley the Chest, who wanted to own a gas station and pave America. She was going to see the country, get to California and surf—or at least find the surfers. She convinced an old friend from Girl Scouts to come along. They trained by riding around the streets of Brooklyn, New York, exactly twice. Life was an adventure. What more could she need than to follow the sun to the Pacific?
Along the way, Mom and her friend would go to the preachers in the small towns they rode through and ask where they might sleep and eat that night. If the ministers's families didn't have room in their homes, they would let the girls camp on their lawn or find another place for them to stay. These kind strangers always provided a free meal and filled their bicycle bags with leftovers, too.
Out West, Mom slept under the wide-open skies and practiced cowboy songs. Good thing, too, because once she was asked to sing with the house band before a crowd at a Colorado Springs hoedown. I've seen the picture in her scrapbook of her onstage in front of the microphone with a big giggling smile, wearing her patched-up shorts and two-toned shoes. One of the men in the audience came up and gave her his cow-boy hat to "shield her from that hot western sun." As she finished and
walked away from the stage, an elderly woman handed her a folded-up dollar " for a cold ice tea or something else along the way."
When she finally arrived in California, she went on a blind date on a whim and a date, fell in love, and married a man who looked great in tan pants and who later became my father. …………
Mom told and retold her bicycle story to scores of church folks, neighbors, and people in line at the grocery store, and one day I really began listening to her and imagining myself on that trip, smiling hard at the cameras that always seemed to follow her………… I realized that my mother was a celebrity, and here I was living in the shadow of adventure………… ………… in 1996, after many jobs, many ruined relationships, many wrong turns past the exit ramps of life, I met and married Brian, who thought I wasn't a bit crazy for wanting to ride my bike across the country. He didn't care if we maxed out our credit cards of if we
didn't have jobs when we returned from the trip. He went along with it, and we rode.
Mom was at home in Virginia Beach when Brian and I followed her route forty years later. And it drove her crazy, because she wanted to be with us. When we talked each night on the phone,she wanted to know every crack in the road,………… It got to be somewhat of a nightmare as her questions concerns, and suggestions focused on why we were taking the easy way out. My mother camped in farmer's backyards; we stayed in
Motel 6s. She rode a fifty-pound three-speed; we rode
twenty-four-speeds with shocks. She ate rib-eye steaks and drank Manhattans; we did Taco Bell and bought six packs. She wore saddle shoes and Bermuda shorts; we looked like space aliens in our polypropylene.
"Why aren't you camping?" she'd ask.
"Because we like beds," I'd say.
"Are people letting you sleep in their barns?"
"We don't want to sleep in barns."
"Why are you wearing all that fancy gear? You look like scuba
divers. I didn't need all that crap."
"It's the way of the world now, Ma," I'd answer from some motel room. …….
Then she'd add, " Twenty-four speeds? I only had three."
"I'm not riding for three months, like you did. Just fifty-five days."
"Well, I stopped and smelled the flowers. Didn't rush around." Her
words were quick and filled with pepper.
"I have a job to get back to,"……
"Why didn't you quit?"…… "I did."……
"I need the money."
"So get a job in the Grand Canyon, like I did. Be a chambermaid and
earn some tips. "
We were throwing the punches of mother at daughter and daughter right back at mother, yet the love behind our lively thrusts managed to soak into me each night over the phone.
"I'm just so proud of you," she finally said one night, …… I wanted to see her face, hold it gently in my hands.
The days seemed to shorten as we went west, ………… But the day came, and as we stopped at a lookout above the mountains of Oakland, California, I closed my eyes and held the moment. It had a taste of cornfields, of sea salt, of hot sun on asphalt, of Colorado snow. I swallowed it whole as we rode down to the ocean, where my mother, father, brother, and friends had formed a welcoming party.
…………when I hit that Pacific beach with Mom trailing me, as she loves to do, with her old 110 camera minus a battery, I felt a dynasty falling. It was no longer her life and my life, but a shared storytelling of our lives together. ……………..▲
标签： 游山西村原文及翻译
