Wanderlust

New Haven Femsexiness

April 22, 2007 at 3:28 pm gvblog 5 comments

I got to New Haven laaaate last night – I didn’t end up leaving Greenwich until almost 1 PM, due to a variety of circumstances, so I was pretty nervous about getting to New Haven before it got dark. It was a fascinating ride yesterday – along the Long Island Sound almost the whole way, but you’ll have to wait for pictures because I didn’t bring my picture magic cord.  (I’m in a computer lab at Yale…)

I rode 62 mostly flat miles, which was a welcome relief after the hellish hills of two days ago. One of the funniest things about being on the road is how totally detached I get from days and times.  I have to stop and think pretty hard to remember what day of the week it is.  Flags, femsex, and french toast after the jump… 

As I ride, I see a lot of two things – flags and dead animals. My animal count so far – squirrels (lots), deer, fox, cat, birds, possums, and several unidentified squished things.  Roads are pretty dangerous for animals, it turns out.

I also see a lot of flags, and all week I would say 90% of the flags have been at half staff. Which leads me to wonder, why? The Virginia Tech killings? Who decides when flags should be flown at half staff? Is there an official "flags at half staff" memo that goes out to all the flagpole owners? If so, who sends it out? What about the people who aren’t flying their flags at half-staff? Are they heartless bastards or just not paying attention? Are there half-staff flag standards somewhere? 

These are the things I think about as I’m riding. Which speaking of, I got this "iRide Bicycle Stereo" which is a speaker system for my bike.  For the past three days it’s been acting all wonky. For the first twenty minutes or so it plays fine, but then it starts sounding like the speakers are blown. But I think to myself "if the speakers were actually blown, they would sound bad the whole time, right?" It’s highly irritating, because I like listening to music when I ride. My ipod and I are on this song shuffle wavelength – I think "I’d really like to listen to some Pine Box Boys right now" and voila! Pine Box Boys.  It’s spooky, really. 

But seriously, if anyone can shed some light on what the heck is going on with my speakers, I’d highly appreciate it.

While I’m thinking about it, if you were wondering why your comments weren’t showing up, it’s because they were going to the junk folder in the system. I fixed it, and if you’ve commented once, you’re now a trusted commenter. That means I don’t have to approve your comments anymore. Be nice!

I had breakfast this morning with Caity, a student at Yale who is interested in starting Female Sexuality at Yale.  (If you want to know more about Femsex, visit femsex.net or check out the "about" section of this website). It seems like Yale is a pretty disempowering place to be a woman – she told me that several of her female friends have commented on the lack of support structures, especially for freshman, and the Women’s Center here gets a lot of grief.  The campus seems to be relatively close-minded – apparently there have been some pretty overtly racist things printed recently in a campus paper, and during Pride week, which was last week, a banner was defaced and ripped up. yuck.  One of my long-term pipe dreams is spreading femsex (or at least the creation of community spaces where women can talk honestly in a supportive environment, which is what femsex is…) across the nation, so I’m excited to see if I can help Caity get it off the ground at Yale.

Today I head up the coast to Providence, which I’m not necessarily looking forward to, judging from the headwinds I hit yesterday every time I headed Northeast. Providence, of course, being almost directly Northeast from New Haven.

I’ll be camping tonight and rolling into Providence tomorrow, Monday, so more updates then!  

Entry filed under: On the Road. Tags: .