Wanderlust

Sunday I rolled out of New Haven around noon, passing by the Quaker Friends Meeting House on the way to meet up with Paul Hammer, the future President of the Conecticut Bicycle Coalition who rode with me along the Connecticut Coast. The beginning of the ride was beautiful – swooping along the cliffs of the Long Island Sound fantasizing about living on the small spears of rock that dotted the bays. There were actually houses on some of them, so it wasn’t that farfetched. Paul is very connected in the New Haven area – we took an old trolley through some of the salt marsh (with our bikes, which lifting Rhonda up stairs is not something I want to do again, thank you very much) and stopped by the Puppet House, where they produce puppet shows based on old classics and contemporary events.

We walked backstage and in the filtered afternoon light there were ranks upon ranks of puppets and puppet parts – fully dressed Renaissance puppets with calculating eyes and disembodied puppet heads lolling from long black cords. The puppets are Sicilian, and the puppeteers are trained in the Sicilian puppeting techniques. More on the puppet house is on their website.  Also, if I write puppet enough times it starts sounding really wierd. More non-puppet related stories after the jump!

On Sunday I was trying to get at least halfway to Providence, because I had a meeting at 4:30 with the Brown Femsex facilitators, but because we got a late start and stopped a lot, by 4 PM I had only ridden 20 miles.  Paul and I parted ways and I rocked it onto Highway 1, which got me almost all the way to New London, CT, and to a state park that looked like a likely place to stop for the evening.  I avoided the information kiosk on the off chance that someone was working at it, since I wasn’t trying to pay an entrance fee, so as a consequence I had no idea what I would find in the park. I was looking for a place to sleep, but I wasn’t sure if there would be any good places.

As I rode down into the park, I realized that to my right was a positively enormous campground, which solved that problem.  I rode over the bumpy ground that separated the road from the camground and spent a while meandering around the campground looking for the perfect campsite. I found one in a grove of evergreen trees, although I realized that I had probably misjudged the slant of the ground when I woke up in the middle of the night drowning in mucus. I managed to come down with a cold around Friday, and on Sunday night it felt like my whole head was filled with fluid. I spent a while lying there trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to switch directions.

In the morning, my eyes were so puffy I could barely open them – this happens to me a lot when I’m camping, but I have no idea why. Something about sleeping outside? Sleeping slanted the wrong direction? Anyone have any ideas?

I hit the road early on Monday after a brief stop at the Old Clamtrapper, and rode 70 gorgeous miles with tailwinds pretty much the whole way. Katie Grover, who I stayed with in Greenwich, gave me the Ms. Foundation Annual Report, which opens with an Audre Lorde quote:

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I’m afraid.

I was thinking about this as I was riding, and it occurred to me that I am literally using my strength in the service of my vision, and how it’s becoming easier and easier to ride unafraid into the world. Because I am on my own, I am totally and completely self-reliant, and that’s a pretty amazing feeling. There’s something very empowering about knowing that at any moment I could literally ride anywhere and have everything I need (and a whole lot more).

I got into Providence early, which was exciting, and immediately devoured a giant iced tea, a double scoop of gelato, and a bag of chips.  Then I sat down with Anne Jonas, a current Femsex facilator at Brown, Vanessa Adams, a former student, and Megan Andelloux, who runs the brand new resource room at Miko, a feminist sex store in Providence that has lots of amazing programming. We talked about a huge range of issues, from Pleasure Parties to changing the culture of health care providers. 

Megan has worked as a Sex Educator at various Planned Parenthood affiliates for years, and she shares my frustration with the lack of integration of advocacy and education. She had some truly horrifying stories about the backlash she experienced when she tried to incorporate sex-positive information and conversations about pleasure into her Sex Ed curricula at schools. When at one point she asked 9-11th graders she was working with to write down some ways to make it fun to incorporate safer sex techniques, it set off a huge firestorm of controversy and led to the loss of grant funding for her work. Although this is horrifying, it seems like an all too common story – it’s okay when sex education focuses on the dangers of sex and all the horrible things it can lead to, but when educators try to talk about pleasure and positive sexuality, they get shut down. There was an article I read recently, but can’t find, about what happens when you google the word "pleasure" – there was more to it, because I just tried and the first results seemed to be pretty sex positive, but if anyone knows what I’m talking about, pass it on, please!

I was interested to find out that because of Federal Abstinence-Only Education guidelines, sex educators go to "high-risk" youth centers to do workshops.  It seems terribly unfair that young people only get sex education once they’ve already been identified as high risk. One theme that’s been emerging in my conversations with people is how little education we get in communication skills and setting boundaries. While those skills are certainly most relevant when it comes to sexuality issues, they’re useful in every aspect of life.

There is much, much more – Micheal Leahy’s Porn Nation, which I’m sure people have already thoroughly lambasted, meeting with Boston Femsex, and more, but now I’m off to go observe Sex Education classes!