Wanderlust

More Notes and Errata

May 12, 2007 at 3:43 am gvblog 1 comment

Hi ho, I’m in Binghamton, and it’s lovely here.  I’m staying with the parents of the people I stayed with last night – sometimes I feel like I’m being handed down a ladder of caring, of community, that extends all the way down the road. 

In Boston, I met Megara, who teaches sex education, and had dinner with her and her family, including her partner Brian.  Brian is also a long distance cyclist, so he emailed his friend Sarah to see if she might be able to find me places to stay as I journeyed through upstate New York.  Sarah emailed Jessica, who lives at the Bread and Roses collective in Syracuse, who said I could stay there. While I was in Syracuse, I met Lindsay, who used to live in Ithaca, and she connected me to Don, who said I could stay with him when I passed through town. In Ithaca I met Don’s housemate Ari, who, when he heard I needed a place to stay in Binghamton, said I could stay with his parents, Mark and Debbie. So now I’m here having just finished a delicious dinner, ruminating on how absolutely lucky I feel mostly all of the time these days.

Living on the road is interesting – I’ve never done it before, and it’s very different from being stationary.  Why?  

For one thing, I am constantly negotiating new relationships, explaining myself to people I’ve never met.  For the most part, I really enjoy meeting new people, but I can foresee a day when it could get tiring doing this constantly. 

Being on the road also forces me to constantly evaluate and examine the premises I operate under. Because I’m moving from place to place and constantly experiencing new things, I don’t have the same habits and rhythms to fall back on.  In San Francisco, I could pretty safely predict what my week would be like – I didn’t know exactly what I’d do or with who, but the range was always pretty much the same. Out on the road I can do literally anything each day, so I have to decide what I want to do, and why. For instance, last weekend I was riding along the Erie Canal and didn’t have specific places I was planning to stay on Saturday or Sunday nights.  That meant that I had three days to cover 180 miles, but literally no restrictions within that.  Traveling forces me to think about each decision I make and why I’m making it in a way that being in one place doesn’t.

I went into a bike shop today to get a map of the area, which are apparently free to residents of New York. I didn’t know that when the bike shop guy asked me if I lived in New York.  My mind clicked through the possible answers.  I don’t actually live in New York, but I don’t really actually live anywhere else, either. What does it mean to live somewhere? I knew I was sleeping in New York tonight – was that enough? I told him that I lived in New York as much as I lived anywhere else, which seemed to satisfy him. After I left the store, though, I opened the map and read "this map to be distributed free of charge" so I’m not sure if that guy was bullshitting me about having to be a NY resident or what.

Road errata:

Total miles so far: 974 (breaking 1K tomorrow, kids!)

Miles I will be from my starting point on Tuesday: 30

Percentage of days on which I see ice cream stands all day EXCEPT when I want ice cream: 100

Day on which official New York lawn mowing season started: today, apparently. Seriously, shouldn’t all these people be at work or something?  Also, as a side note, I think it’s pretty atrocious that people mow their lawns.  I’m riding along, enjoying these beautiful meadows full of violets, forget me nots, dandelions, and other flowers I don’t know the names of, when all of the sudden I hear the road of yet ANOTHER riding lawn mower manicuring the lawn into a pristine field of green, obliterating all the flowers. Why? 

But on a happier note, I get a total kick out of the jumping deer signs. You know these signs, right, that have a picture of a jumping deer on them and on the bottom it says something like "next two miles"? Well, did you ever think about how they decide how far down the road the deer extend? Is someone out there measuring deer range?  I saw a sign probably three miles outside Ithaca that said "jumping deer next seven miles".  (It didn’t actually say jumping deer, but you know what I mean).  Who is in charge of these things?  I imagine the Transportation Department employees pulling off the road and flipping through their stack of deer signs…"Hey Stan, how many miles downna road you think there’re deer for?"

"Dunno…four?"

"Cool."

Sometimes when I’m on the road I think it’s a good thing I’m self-entertaining. Tomorrow morning I’m headed down the Delaware River, more or less, eventually to Philadelphia. I won’t be back near electricity for days if all goes according to plan, so I’ll catch you on the flipside.

 

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