Wanderlust

Wild Pumas and Snow in April

April 21, 2007 at 3:25 pm gvblog 4 comments

It’s the beginning of Day 4, and I’m looking out the window of Katie Grover’s amazing house in Greenwich, Connecticut, at the trees that are on the cusp of bursting into Spring. These last three days have been incredible. I left Nan and John’s on Thursday morning STRAIGHT up a giant hill. I’ve been using mapquest for directions, since they have a feature that allows you to avoid highways. Sometimes it works better than others.  I was trying to get to Harriman State Park, so I stopped in Oakland, New Jersey, at Pedal Sports, where Rob, the owner, found out what I was doing and immediately offered to give me some energy bars.  When I allowed as to how what I really needed was some Chamois butter (also known as butt butter…) he immediately handed me a GIANT tube along with some energy bars. Thanks Rob!! If you’re ever in NJ near Oakland, go visit him and buy stuff! After the jump - snow in April and wild Pumas.

As I walked out of Pedal Sports, there was a group of boys on bikes surrounding Rhonda checking her out. Naturally, I asked them if they wanted to ride with me to California.  They were pretty floored, and asked lots and lots of questions.  We talked for a while and they recommended Wilkes deli to me when I asked them where I should go for lunch. I was sitting at the counter when two girls came rushing in all out of breath. They said to me "Are you the girl who’s riding her bike across the country?" Apparently the boys had told them about me, and they wanted to meet me live and in person. I gave them my cards, which they asked me to autograph. We also took lots of pictures, handing my batteries back and forth between our cameras because her batteries were dead.

Then they asked me if I wanted to see it snow. Well, naturally, I did, so they ran outside and started spraying each other with flocking. You know, the stuff they use on Christmas trees?  It was pretty entertaining. 

 

 

I continued up the road and hit my first state line. I was worried it was going to be anticlimatic, so I was gratified when I saw the enormous green sign that said "welcome to New York!" At basically the exact moment i crossed into NY, the sun came out for the first time on my trip. It was pretty spectacular. I headed up into Harriman state park, where I was planning on camping. I got to the first campground and it had a giant sign that said "Campground opens April 20th!" It was April 19th. 

I ended up camping by the side of a beautiful little stream. I used my new stove for the first time, and came relatively clsoe to starting a forest fire. I didn’t though. After dinner I started scoping out a place to sleep, and realized that the ground, which had looked relatively flat from above, was actually pretty sloped.  I found the flattest part I could and set up my tent.  After blowing up my thermarest and climbing in my sleeping bag I lay down, and immediately slid to the bottom of my tent.  Erm. I finally worked out a solution in which I wedged myself in between my panniers with one supporting my feet and one supporting my butt, and managed to sleep in relative comfort. 

On Friday I woke with the birds and watched the sun creep through the trees until my campsite was in full sun. I climbed back on Rhonda and rode back through the park, heading to the Hudson and into Connecticut.  It was then, in the early morning stillness, that I saw the rare and elusive wild puma.

I rode much farther than I anticipated yesterday- my directions said it was 40 miles from where I was to Greenwich, and I ended up pushing 70 for the day. I was at 69.8 when I rolled into my destination – I considered riding around for another two tenths of a mile, but decided against it.

Katie Grover welcomed me into her home and cooked a delicious meal of swordfish, potatoes, and broccoli. And I mean really delicious. I ate every bite.  We lingered at the table after dinner takling about politics, sex, and culture. (Imagine that.) She is the President of the Board of the Ms. Foundation, and had lots of really interesting things to say about the current state of affairs and the work she does, particularly what it’s like to raise children and figure out how to talk to them about sexuality.  One thing that came up during our conversations was the idea that things haven’t changed a whole lot since she was growing up in terms of cultural expectations around sexuality, but that her generation got sex ed in schools, as biased and imperfect as it was, and that there’s a misperception among many parents that their children are getting the same kind of education, even though they’re not. 

We also talked a lot about the lack of conversations with young people about emotional intelligence – how in sexuality education, the emphasis is often on physical well-being and how to avoid getting pregnant or contracting an STD. While sex educators certainly discuss setting boundaries and communication skills, it’s not something that’s taught in schools outside the context of sex ed. (and even those classes tend to be just a few days once every few years, if they’re allowed at all.) That makes me wonder if teachers feel like they’re teaching about boundary setting and emotional intelligence in the context of their classrooms, and whether that’s explicit or implicit. I certainly don’t remember anyone talking to me about setting boundaries and thinking clearly about what things were okay with me and not okay with me, but I could just be not remembering. 

In talking abuot sexuality and how to talk to teens, we talked about the need to seperate out physical intimacy and emotional intimacy -that there is a tendency when people are first experimenting sexually to conflate the two, and that can lead to trouble when your physical comfort level and your emotional comfort level don’t match.

There was more, and I’ll write more on it later, but now I’m eager to hit the road and head out to New Haven.    

Entry filed under: On the Road. Tags: .