In Spouse’s Absence, She Pedals at Own Speed

I have been married since Father Serra was a boy, so the aplomb and maturity with which I’m handling my husband’s two-week bicycle tour of the Swiss Alps, while I stay home and dust, should not be surprising.

These words, after all, come from the pen of a member in good standing of the AARP.

Truth be told, my idea of the trip of a lifetime does not include pedaling 100 miles a day past picturesque yodelers at 7,000 feet with a bunch of other bicycle geeks. In fact, had I gone with him, I’d still be stuck at the bottom of my first Alp, trying to figure out how to strap on a bike helmet without ruining my hairdo.

I was enough of a grown-up not to stand in the way while he pursued his lifelong dream.

So I was as surprised as anyone when, after dropping him off at the airport bus, the first thing I did on returning home was to draw a mustache on the front cover of his September issue of “Modern Maturity.�

“Kilroy was here,� I wrote underneath.

Then I spotted the remote control, grabbed it and put it in the little zipper makeup bag at the bottom of my purse. Mine.

Now, any two people together for many years assume certain roles. At our house, I play the profligate to his practical. Oscar to his Felix. He turns off the lights that I have left on. He replaces my 100-watt bulbs with 60 watters, and turns the thermostat down when I’m not looking. (Which I turn up when he’s not looking.)

He flips off every button and switch on the decoder box at day’s end. That means that every night, you can’t just turn on the TV for the news, you have to program it first. The first night he was gone, I left everything attached to the decoder box in the “on� position.

I did not turn off the computer either, which my husband worries will burn a permanent image into the screen if left on indefinitely.

This was fun. I was starting to feel like MacCaulay Culkin: home alone. And feeling just about his age, too.

I drove down to the video store and rented “Norma Rae,� “Coal Miner’s Daughter� and “Thelma and Louise.� “On Golden Pond� was out, so I chose a Merchant-Ivory movie instead.

After not parking the car in the garage but leaving it in the driveway, I piled five pillows on the hump in the middle of the bed, inserted the first of my videos, and climbed in with a fresh can of Pringles and a pint of chocolate milk. The life. A chick flick film festival.

The next day began pretty much as a repeat of the first. At dawn, I put my “Three Tenors� CD on at full volume and sang along with gusto to “Return to Sorrento.� For unfathomable reasons, my husband goes to the garage to do a task every time I play “The Three Tenors.�

But out in the driveway, I noticed the car had collected an astounding amount of unsightly bird poop overnight. Huumph. Maybe I’d put it in the garage tonight.

Inside the house, I sensed a low, almost inaudible hum from every room. I looked around--something electric was switched on everywhere I looked, either a fluorescent bulb, a computer or a decoder box. After I’d turned everything off, it sounded surprisingly quiet.

I felt like maybe I’d just worked through something. Puberty, perhaps?

But I still had a week and six days to go, and Saturday night was looming. I wanted an adventure, too, just not one that required a bike helmet or 15 bike gears.

Which is why, at 8 on Saturday morning, I boarded an Island Packers boat in Ventura Harbor for an overnight camping trip to Santa Cruz Island.

I was alone, but not really. Dozens of other campers were aboard, headed for campgrounds that the National Park Service runs on the island. It seemed like a safe way for a lone woman to sleep out under the stars, not just away from home, but away from the continental United States, sort of.

But I hoped not too safe. I fancied the idea of triumphing over an element or two. Maybe I’d even be stalked by one of those cute little endangered island foxes while I roasted my lone marshmallow. In which case, I decided, we would share.

After settling into campsite No. 5 with my sleeping bag and cooler, I sat at the picnic table, feeling a bit wistful. I thought of that famous picture of Princess Diana sitting prettily and pointedly alone on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal.

Di had looked wistful, too. Of course, gaggles of paparazzi were recording her wistful expression, which I expect can help.

My paparazzi, however, was a gaggle of 100 cawing crows perched above my campsite in a huge old live oak. They seemed to like me. Or was it my tuna fish sandwiches?

When the crows quieted down, the silence at campsite No. 5 was deafening. No low hum of modems or decoder boxes or far-off sirens filtered out the softest bird’s chirp or leaf’s rustle.

I surveyed the low, yellow hills surrounding the campground. Except for an occasional native live oak, this was what coastal California looked and sounded like 100 years ago, before we brought in imported water and vegetation. I took out the novel I’d brought.

My camp-over turned out to be on the loveliest weekend of the year on Santa Cruz. I slept atop my sleeping bag, and woke occasionally to look at stars and feel the sea breeze. The next day, I read that the rest of the county had set new heights in Fahrenheit.

On a dawn hike after waking, I came on a Park Service information sheet that warned about the abundance of scorpions on the island. I may have shared my sleeping bag with a scorpion or two the night before, for all I knew.

But I didn’t panic. One has to be grown-up about these things.