Wanderlust

Life just keeps on coming, no matter what

June 10, 2007 at 5:05 am gvblog 6 comments

What a strange few days I’ve had. Actually, when I think about it, they haven’t been that strange. The thing is that yesterday I was riding back to Jacquie and M’lissa’s from downtown Madison and had a pannier full of stuff on my back rack, including my cell phone, wallet, and bike flag. Somewhere between downtown and their house, the pannier bounced off, and when I went back to look for it it was gone.  Now, this was clearly my own damn fault, since I had known that the pannier wasn’t securely attached to my bike. The elastic strap that hooks under the bottom piece of the rack had broken in New Jersey, so I sewed another one, only I didn’t do a very good job.  The elastic had been progressively decaying and on Thursday it broke completely. 

I could have done a lot of things to prevent the unfortunate loss of stuff that was important to me, but I didn’t. And you know what? That’s okay with me. Because it’s just stuff. And not only is it just stuff, it was mostly just replaceable stuff. I did lose my notes from my interviews from the past two weeks (but not all of them, since a lot of them were in a different notebook) and my bike flag that was made of patches from  my friends. But a lot of my notes are now blog entries, and my friends are still my friends, regardless of whether or not I have a flag that says so.

So I guess I feel strange mostly because I’m not more upset, that I’ve been able to continue with my trip without qualms or compunction. Part of it is that I’m consistently reminded that the world can be a fantastic wonderful place, even when you least expect it. I rode today from Viroqua, where Jacquie, Elizabeth and M’lissa dropped me off this morning. Luckily I have my checkbook with me, so I was able to write them checks and they withdrew money for me. I thought about trying to get by on no money at all, firedancing for my food, but I lost my white gas in my pannier also and no one seems to have kerosene around here.  Last night after some fruitless bush searching and "lost bike bag" sign posting, we drove out to rural Wisconsin near La Farge where Kristin was having a ladies lawn party.  I’ll post pictures soon, but suffice it to say that there was both a mint julep fountain and croquet. I also got to wear one of Jacquie’s amazing dresses (as did Elizabeth) and my hot pink boa that was a gift from Family Planning Advocates of New York State. (thanks guys!) I figured that if I’m carrying a boa around with me, I might as well wear it every once in a while.

Saying goodbye this morning was hard, mostly because I wasn’t sure what this next leg of the trip would be like, wasn’t sure what kind of people I’d connect with and how it would be traveling by myself again after a fantastic week of riding with Elizabeth.  The first ten miles dragged on, and I listened to depressing songs on my ipod and cursed the wind. It’s hard to stay sad riding through bucolic Wisconsin cornfields, especially when you know the Mississippi is right around the next bend.

Tonight I had planned on finally paying for lodging, since I didn’t know anyone in Decorah, Iowa, and I REALLY wanted to take a shower.  But as it turned out, I asked the perfect people for directions to the campground, so I am sitting this very moment in my very own personal apartment that is James’ guest accomodations, having just enjoyed an evening of conversation and enlightenment, especially about demolition derby. I had heard of demolition derby, of course, but I guess I’d never thought about what it actually is.  It turns out that the idea behind demolition derby is to get really old cars and smash into each other until only one car is left running. Erm, this is not the kind of entertainment I grew up with. Quite frankly, I feel deprived.

Meeting James and Laurel reminds me again how many interesting, engaging, entertaining people there are in the world, and that I’ve only met a small fraction of them. It makes it very exciting to be me, to realize that.

I’m thinking about a new flag – right now I just have the dinky orange flag that came with the flagpole, which is pretty boring.  The new flag needs to be lightweight, colorful, and creatable with the materials at hand. Submissions are welcome!  Who’s got ideas?

On a somewhat related note, since I lost my phone I also lost all my phone numbers. Right now it’s sort of a moot point because I don’t really talk on the phone to anyone except my sister (Hi Katie!) (She’ll call the police if I don’t call her every day) but eventually I will probably want to talk to people on the phone. Send me your phone numbers, and I will love them, cherish them, and enter them into my new phone when I get it.

Entry filed under: On the Road. Tags: .