Wanderlust

Our last morning of Wanderlust 2008!

Erin here- Kathleen is singing Toni Braxton (oh yes, she’s magically tonedeaf!) and we’re all sitting around the breakfast table musing on what these final hours of the tour feel like. Kathleen’s friend Mona (our fabulous SheBeast volunteer van driver for the day, i.e we all want to bike into NYC together) asked if we think we’re in the best shape of our lives. A whole slew of answers is given- not just a resounding yes. ( I would say my thighs have never been so girth-y and phat -a significant fact from a soccer player of 23 years). So yes on my last morning I’m musing on how strong (physically and emotionally) I feel and being reminded of how I’ve changed. At the start of the tour I rode fast!, pounding along the route. But by this point i’ve slowed my pace way down. strolling and dancing on bike (yesterday we enjoyed mad nineties tunes through philly- our Sound Can is fixed and restrapped to the back of Nora’s bike Rhonda- thanks again Petri!), trying to take it all in. i feel powerful, full, confident and able to stand back and pause thanks to Wanderlust. This makes me stronger as a leader, a group member,  an artist, as a community organizer,  a critical voice, and as a woman committed to anti-racist work . I feel more competent and find myself looking at experiences in a comprehensive manner- I’ve been forced to accept the glory and the flawed nature of something large, complex and ultimately satisfying b/c of the inherent beauty in the dialectic. My heart and head have been trained to work together in a whole new way. Yes! I return to another world and have decided the only way to re-enter is to ride into New York in the Amphibian suit!!!

It’s Nora, bringing you, once again, some morning group blogging, this time from (k)notsquat, the fabulous collective that has been our home in Philly. We’re just two days of riding and less than 100 miles from New York City, and it feels strange and unexpected, to me anyway, to be so close to the end of Wanderlust. We had our last meeting in Philadelphia last night, and it was incredibly inspiring to meet the activists and educators who came out to talk with us. The meetings were an experiment - both in whether or not we’d be able to organize meetings in cities we weren’t from, in places we’d never been to, and an experiment in creating space. It always felt to me like I spent so much time working with people that I never got a chance to talk to them about why they were there. I don’t know what kinds of connections or realizations will come out of the conversations we’ve had, but I do know that I come out of every conversation feeling like there is a movement, a network of people working together to create a world in which women have the resources they need to make healthy decisions about their bodies and their lives.

Mel here, *drafting* off Nora’s thoughts (see bike nerds, I AM learning some lingo). Someone at last night’s meeting said they were feeling depressed by the state of affairs in Philly and they wanted me to tell them an inspirational story from somewhere with a “stronger” movement than Philly. I responded that the inspirational thing for me was not a particular place per se but the fact that people came out in each place we passed thro and opened themselves to meaningful exchanges. In every single meeting, people came to talk about their struggles to promote healthier bodies and lives for women, and they came open and willing to connect with each other as well as with perfect strangers from out-of-town (who on top of it all probly didn’t smell very good). In almost every place, people expressed a sense of isolation. I tried to explain to the group I was talking with last night the kind of feeling it gives me when I move thro community after community expressing the same sense of isolation and yet there are all these people at all these meetings, and they’re doing and thinking and going against the grain of their community’s espoused values. That’s the heart of it, for me anyways, and I look forward to spending more time thinking about Wanderlust and all the ways that it has inspired me.

Kathleen here!–I’m almost home to New York….its so close its as if I can taste it! The ride into Philly was really long….a 70 mile plus day of up and down hills IN THE RAIN and without food for the first 6 hours of it. I was soooo tired at the end of the day. I was a bit skeptical when I got to this place we are staying but then I warmed up to it once I found out more about what this house is about….Yesterday I spent part of the day checking emails and relaxing!!! I later biked thru Philly and visited a medical museum that was pretty cool….but overpriced. I then went shopping for a new outfit (all my clothes are so nasty…plus I needed an outfit for our New York welcome back party). Our meeting that night was jam packed with interested people from the Philly area who are interested in what we are doing. One of my mom’s friends, Ruth, came and it really meant a lot to me. Later we went to a bar and the chef gave the pizza to us to for free! That was really nice We were all giddy and I got up and started dancing and as Erin was spinning me I fell FLAT on my face and almost hit a table. Everyone at the bar stopped. Good thing I wasn’t hurt too bad. Only my pride was bruised a little, lol…. My knee hurts, I have like rug burn now! We met some cool girls from Drexel last night at the bar, and they danced with us and got caught up in all of the craziness of us wanderlusties. Wow…..I’m really sad…

More to come, from the rest of the crew, but now we’re off to Princeton!