Saturday morning, 7AM. Just slept almost 12 hours. Well except for when I awoke screaming with leg cramps.We did our first day’s ride yesterday. Started at National car rental in Key West where we returned our trustworthy van and set up our various bags on the bikes. Running late, we were heading for the southern most point monument when we got a call from Jim, the ECG guy who was organizing our send off.He gave us directions. Good thing, we were headed towards the wrong monument.Who knew there was an official East Coast Greenway marker?About a half a dozen folks were there, including a policewoman on a bike.They had breakfast and some fruit for us to take along (I’m developing an appreciation for bananas) and a photographer.
After the official send off, we rode further south (as in the wrong direction) to the other monument and took photos of ourselves.A friendly family stopped by and offered to take our picture together. Nice.Then we “really” started the journey.Between these various side trips and getting to the house that we’re staying at, we added six miles to the anticipated thirty mile ride for the day.
We rode into a vicious headwind all day.It was so strong that we couldn’t even coast down the other side of bridges.We pedaled ALL the way!.Didn’t arrive home until 5PM.I guess we started at about 9AM.We took a 30 minute break in a little gazebo that provided some of the only shade we found (sunny and HOT most of the way, am now swimming in aloe sunburn gel), and a lunch break in a wonderful restaurant (that’s really how we do our rides) called “The Square Grouper”.
On arriving at Big Pine Key, we phoned Ty, another ECG member. We were going to meet him that evening to get a package mailed to us.He asked how the ride went. I told him were we were and asked about the amazing head winds.He was amazed at how far we had ridden. Thought that we would make it to a point only 18 of the 30 miles north.He chuckled as he said “local knowledge” about the trade winds.“trade winds? I thought they were something somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic?”well, it looks like we’re in for them all the way up the Keys.Groan.
We leave Jacksonville before the sun comes up.My brother-in-law was up and puttering about the house before 5. I don’t tend to sleep soundly so I was up as well.I wanted to be on the road early anyway.Peter and I arrive in Key West at our friend’s house around 5 p.m., a good time to call it a day, though we don't quite call it a day. There are emails to send and receive, emails to read, phone calls to make, bags and bikes to unload, showers to take, well, one shower to take, me, and it feels great since I haven’t taken a shower since Monday afternoon.There is dinner out which is more of a challenge than we expected.But, finally, we are settled in and quite tired. We’ll be asleep by ten for sure. The trip down was pretty quick, made quicker probably by a hearty disagreement between Peter and myself.Three days in the car together has exhausted us both, and I have been on edge since we left the house.My daughter, Chris, would probably say it’s been the past couple of months.Depending on what kind of a mood you catch her in, she is liable to say I have been on edge forever.But, I have definitely been on edge since we left Connecticut.Technical problems with my Cingular wireless service and their anti-customer treatment have added to my frustration,so imagine how well prepared I was for the narrow shoulders of the bridges in the Keys that Peter and I will be biking over. There are some extraordinary sections of the drive through the Florida Keys, pure paradise geography with blue-green water, white sand, and well-maintained, wide, beautiful, safe bike paths to travel on. There are also a lot of tawdry, run-down, and abandoned buildings and other man-made objects that are in stark contrast to the geographical beauty of the Keys. We expected some of that, but not as much as we found. From a cycling perspective, however, I find myself focused primarily on and anxious about the part of the ride up the keys that will be on narrow shoulders over bridges and other confining roadways. Yes, it makes me nervous.It makes us both nervous.
During our drive down, we notice how many older cars there are in Florida that are in great shape, which we figure is because they don’t have any salt damage from the winters we deal with up north.Also, there are very few foreign cars in Florida, hmmmmm. We have an opinion about that, but we will spare you.
When Peter and I go out for dinner around 7, I wear long pants, (I will wear long pants for the next three months, I have worn long pants all my adult life (I do not wear shorts, ever, and it has been years since I have worn a dress), and I wear a long sleeve shirt though I am not apposed to wearing a sleeveless shirt but I wanted something loose and I have mostly fitted cycling clothes with me (I don’t shave and my progressive modern-day adult children find my wearing a sleeveless shirt unacceptable, tsh tsh, though I was a toe-head as a child and there isn't much hair to shave anyway, so I don't bother).The waitress at the first restaurant where there was a half hour wait and we decide not to wait, takes a long look at my outfit, she in her tank top and shorts and sandles (you wouldn't see this in Connecticut), as if I am somehow out of place here.And I suppose I am.But, aren’t we all?
Tomorrow, Peter and I will visit the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory. I doubt it will matter how I am dressed, nor will it matter how the waitress is dressed.And if I hear my name resonating amid the hum of wings, should I answer?
This is my favorite quote. It is by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, a book I highly recommend. It will show up on my recommended reading list at some point. But, I digress. As much as I love that quote, I like to have a choke hold on everything, and going with the flow isn't a natural state of being. So we change our plans at the last minute and stay over my sister's house in Jacksonville, Florida. Read on......
We leave Fredericksburg, VA for Key West, another thirteen hundred miles to go.By 9 a.m., we argue about the p.c., disagree about locking the car or not locking the car between trips back and forth to the hotel room for more of our stuff, and we misplace Peter’s phone which turns out to be my fault, and not because Peter likes to make things my fault, which he does, but it is, in fact, my fault.After a return trip to the hotel and a search of the car, Peter finds the phone.I’m too focused on "me" to have any sympathy or remorse and the incident passes quickly into history.
Driving through Virginia, we encounter a highway work crew of inmates with an armed guard keeping watch over them.I never see this in Connecticut or anywhere in New England.Did we step back in time somehow?I have lived in the south on and off over the years, that experience, outdated as it may be, plus my liberalism (knee-jerk liberalism if you listen to Peter's take on it) demands that I be appalled.Not that my evaluation is adequately informed nor does it make the slightest difference in things being as they are.I would love to stop and talk to them, the inmates that is, but I am sure we would be looking at the open end of that rifle and told impatiently to move along.And the guard’s impatience with us would only be exacerbated by the fact that we are Yankees, though I am about as southern born as someone can be in the United. And worse, we are liberal Yankees.
We stop around noon for a bathroom break somewhere in North Carolina, 600 miles into a 1600 mile drive.I am not in the stall a second when I hear a loud screaming and the bathroom door open and slam shut and then a lot of banging and hammering.I think it was a man’s voice, but it happened too fast, and then the banging and hammering and I’m sure it must be a man in the bathroom and I have to pee, so be it.I now realize the handyman or plumber was intending to get a response as to whether someone was in the bathroom.At least a McDonald’s stall is typically very private, full doors. I made enough noise to let it be known I was in there and he didn’t leave, and neither did I.When I came out of the stall and went to wash my hands, there he was, handymanning away in the first of three stalls.I washed my hands and left, he was still there working when I left the bathroom and it did not bother him a bit.Me neither (that’s pretty big for me).
After several more hours on the phone with Cingular as we travel through the Carolinas, the wireless connection problem is eventually resolved, or appears to be, but one of the tech support guys I had been dealing with since yesterday, Don, feels obliged to get huffy with me about circumventing the normal procedures even though the normal call procedures did not help me with my problem and it was the first line support that sent me to them, them being the supposedly more knowledgable technical support.What am I missing here?I am the customer, as I recall. It took them three days to solve the problem, but Don, I did not get his last name, is going to read me my rights or lack of rights. I question my decision to try and bring all this technology on the trip?I wonder, did I really think it would be a cool thing to do?Did I really think it was possible and even practical?Peter informs me, making me feel even more trapped by Cingular than I already feel, that they are the only one offering this service, period.I didn’t do the research so I don’t know, but I would have thought there would be more than one service provider that would allow me to access the net from my portable p.c. using a wireless card that taps into cell phone services.Maybe that is why Cingular feels it can provide such inept and lousy customer service and technical support, what do they care, they have the corner on the market.This is like being told I have to have a flu shot, it will hurt like hell, it will make me a little sick, maybe a lot sick, but the benefits supposedly outweigh the pain.I had the flu shot once, and that was the last time I had the flu shot.
In South Carolina, we pass a two car caravan with Jersey plates and one car has a cart attached to the back.Between the two cars and the cart, they have stuffed every corner with personal belongings, looks like a move South is in the making.In the back window of the second car is an orange tabby, an unhappy orange tabby.When I was 20, I left Connecticutand moved back to the Jacksonville, Florida area.I lived in Atlantic Beach for nearly 6 years as a teenager.At 20, I brought my possessions including an old Chevy I was driving, and a pure white female pregnant cat.She made the trip fine, but the first night there I stayed with an old friend, Phillip, in a wooded area of Jacksonville.The cat got loose and we looked for days but never found her.She was young, pregnant, in an unfamiliar terrain, and I imagine she did not survive.I feel responsible, of course.An unfamiliar car ride, an unfamiliar house, an unfamiliar yard, she was porbably somewhat traumatized, or it was time, maybe it was just time, and she went off to have her kittens so they could be eaten by Florida wildlife, something she didn’t even know existed, and I imagine she died trying to save her babies (okay, okay, there I go on the dramatic bent again). It would be nice to think someone took her in, but who takes in a pregnant cat?We put signs up in the neighborhood, but to no avail.
When Peter and I moved into our current house in 1991, we had two cats.One was grey and white blotches called Burberry, as in the brand name for a British line of men’s clothing.We had acquired the cat from Peter’s ex-wife a year earlier.The house we bought was less than a mile from the house we had been leasing for a year.Burberry kept going back to the old house.The neighbor would call us to come get him.We would, then we would keep him inside for weeks, but the minute he was out, he would go back to the old house where the new owner lived and he was a dog lover.The old neighbor stopped calling us.We searched for the cat on a number of occasions, but finally gave up after several months.We saw him once, or at least we think we did, the following spring on Lake Road omewhere near the old house which was on Dinglebrook Lane(I am not making this up).We like to think someone took him in, that it was him we saw that spring in 1992 in the woods at the far end of Lake Road (though he would not come when we called him).We want to believe that the winter weather and raccoons and neighborhood dogs did not get him.
Driving through South Carolina and Georgia, we hit rain which at times is torrential and I am thinking about riding a bike in this which we won’t do if we have a choice, but we may get caught in rain like this and we will have to seek shelter as best as we can.I cannot imagine keeping the bike upright in high winds or keeping our stuff adequately dry in a class ten downpour.Peter and I debate for awhile about driving through to Key West or stopping in Jacksonville.Less than an hour from my sister’s house, I call her to ask if we can sleep on the floor.Her and Lester agree to take us in for a night, which wasn’t in the plans, but turned out to be a wonderful stay-over. They took us in the way I want to believe someone took in my cats, they made us feel at home and on no real notice, well, about an hour's notice. We had dinner at a local restaurant, visited for several hours, and got a good 6 hours of sleep.Sometimes the best laid plans are not the best plans.
maybe more, maybe less, maybe a lot less, though I refuse to believe that could happen.Not that I am not a practical person and haven’t already considered how much could happen in just under 15 weeks, a revolution even cutting Peter and I off from our children and grandchildren.With our current government, anything is possible.Okay, so a temporary blip is possible, a heart attack on the part of either of us, a broken arm, a broken leg, hit by a tracker trailer, a stolen bike.My mother is elderly and not in the best of health, what if one of the kids is in an accident, someone kidnaps one of the grandchildren, the house burns to the ground and yes, we will make the necessary airline reservations, calculate time away from the trip or walk away from it all together, leave the bikes and equipment, or ship them, and come home for good.But nothing is going to go wrong, I am sure of it. I don't feel like Dorothy, I am not in Kansas (I am in Virginia, actually), and I do need a pair of red slippers to click together and repeat "there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."
Last night, after the family cook-out that was more a go! go! get the hell out of here, already! than have a great trip Mom and Peter, I went through four more boxes of stuff.Today, on the way out of Newtown, we dropped another two packages and approximately 40 pieces of mail at the Hawleyville Post Office bringing our total postal items output to probably 400 pieces of mail over the past month.Peter says he thinks it is around 500, I think it was around 300, so I settle on 400.It was a lot.
Between last night and leaving the house at 4:19 p.m. today, there was recycling to do, legal papers to fax to Little Rock, Arkansas, four panniers to pack, two handlebar bags to pack, two trunk packs to pack (that is the cute square one that fit over the fender in the back of the bike), two day-packs to pack, there were showers, inventories to take, decisions about what to pack, yup, even decisions about what to pack, there were two meals, laundry, multiple phone conversations with Technical Support at Cingular ® , or what they pass off as technical support.I call it a lack of technical support!, perhaps even a lack of customer support!You can be sure, Peter and I will be leaving Cingular® when we return from this trip, if not sooner!
When we got up this morning, there were still twenty or so items on the various “do-by-Monday” lists. Chris and I watered plants, documented the type of plant, frequency of waterings, do they like to stay moist or get dry between waterings, I put the remaining boxes of untouched paper, unopened mail, and stuff safely away and out of sight until we return, Chris and I handled another half of a box of paper, created more mail to drop at the post office on the way out of town, Peter and I took photos for the web site, said goodbye to two of my children, loaded remaining software on my p.c., set up Peter’s email on my p.c., moved Peter’s p.c. upstairs to my office and loaded a printer driver off the Internet so Chris can use the p.c. while Peter and I are away and be able print to my printer, an hp Deskjet 5150 (and that last one ended up taking about 45 minutes to do , instead of the expected ten minutes). We are in our second of THREE days of battling with Cingular to get the wireless service working, which is taking hours of our time today. We handled emails, phone calls, put away three baskets of folded clothes, cleaned dishes, put dishes away, repaired a broken ceramic frog that I knocked off one of the plant pots while I was tending to the plants for the last time, at least until August for those that survive.
Last night, Peter took about fifteen bags of garbage, some paper only, to the bottom of the driveway for the weekly pickup.Then, there were the remaining things on the kitchen table to go through, the things on the dining room table, loading the car, and loading the car, and loading the car.We did manage to get about six hours of sleep last night.Even knowing it was our last night in that bed for the next 15 weeks, there was nothing dramatic about it, we were tired, we still had a lot to do, we needed a bit of sleep, just another night, no last meal sort of thing, some hysteria on my part, but I fell asleep in due course and Peter is nearly always snoring within minutes.Last night was no exception.
As we left the house today, it was raining lightly, and did so on and off for the next hour.The day has been crisp, a bit chilly, and threatening rain from the first.I don’t believe we are actually going, and I believe it too much.I can’t imagine the first time we hit Key West, and yet I am already there, already been there and been home , time circling in on itself, and all of this is just me on rewind so I can pay attention to the details this time around, so I can remember.
I don’t take one last look at the house, as I thought I would.I don’t take one last look at the neighborhood, it’s the same as it always is.People go about their business, their errands, they commute to school, to work, to the post office.Peter is driving as he usually does when we are together in the same car.I am usually doing some busy work, reading or editing or paperwork of some sort.This time, I look around trying to catch a world changing before my eyes, but it goes on as it does, nothing notable about the day, this moment, this place, it’s just a street, a town, a day in April, it’s just an etherial bridge between what is now moving away behind us and what lies ahead, but I don’t feel the bridge materialize as we move forward, I cannot see it taking shape, and I don’t know where it ends exactly, nor does it seem to matter, the ending that is.In the words of Helen Keller, life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.I don’t feel the daring adventure of it yet, but I suspect it will settle in eventually.Or perhaps this is just another bike ride.We have done lots of bike rides and this is just another bike ride, or another lot of bike rides strung together.
Eventually, I find nothing interesting about trying to be in the moment.By the end of the day, we will go 378.4 miles and pull into a hotel in
Fredericksburg
,
VA
just past .Two hotels in a row will be full on a Monday night, go figure.The hotel we stay at provides a bed, a shower, a TV, and place to drop all of our stuff.We have what we need though it will cost us a stunning $121.08, $20 of that will be for the dial-up phone call I make to post stuff because my outrageously expensive Cingular® wireless service ($75 a month) still isn’t working (and when it does start working, I will discover it doesn't work very well).I read their tag line, “raising the bar,” a hundred times over the two days of working with them and I am not amused. I will see their billboards as I drive south, and I will be even more not amused.
I use the bed, pass on the shower, though Peter takes one, and we never turn on the TV which is unusual for Peter who typically hits that power button before the hotel door slams shut.I am feeling that slump a mother feels after birth, after waiting nine months, I have been waiting four; that let down after the pushing and grunting for twenty hours (which it was for me for two of my children, twenty hours plus), and we have been pushing and grunting for days, weeks, wanting to deliver this project, hear it take its first real breath of air, this air, this out-of-the-womb (out of the house) fill your lungs and cry air, though I am too exhausted to cry.Where’s that bridge, where’s the view from on top, the panorama, the horizon I am walking towards, where is the awe for the world I have set myself the task of discovering.I know, intellectually, it isn’t somewhere out there and I know, intellectually, it is everywhere out there.Some theorize that the world and everything in it is nothing more than an interpretation, a sort of mirage, that it has no existance except in our naming it, sort of like the movie "The Matrix."
maybe more, maybe less, maybe a lot less, though I refuse to believe that could happen.Not that I am not a practical person and haven’t already considered how much could happen in just under 15 weeks, a revolution even cutting Peter and I off from our children and grandchildren.With our current government, anything is possible.Okay, so a temporary blip is possible, a heart attack on the part of either of us, a broken arm, a broken leg, hit by a tracker trailer, a stolen bike.My mother is elderly and not in the best of health, what if one of the kids is in an accident, someone kidnaps one of the grandchildren, the house burns to the ground and yes, we will make the necessary airline reservations, calculate time away from the trip or walk away from it all together, leave the bikes and equipment, or ship them, and come home for good.But nothing is going to go wrong, I am sure of it. I don't feel like Dorothy, I am not in Kansas (I am in Virginia, actually), and I do need a pair of red slippers to click together and repeat "there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."
Last night, after the family cook-out that was more a go! go! get the hell out of here, already! than have a great trip Mom and Peter, I went through four more boxes of stuff.Today, on the way out of Newtown, we dropped another two packages and approximately 40 pieces of mail at the Hawleyville Post Office bringing our total postal items output to probably 400 pieces of mail over the past month.Peter says he thinks it is around 500, I think it was around 300, so I settle on 400.It was a lot.
Between last night and leaving the house at 4:19 p.m. today, there was recycling to do, legal papers to fax to Little Rock, Arkansas, four panniers to pack, two handlebar bags to pack, two trunk packs to pack (that is the cute square one that fit over the fender in the back of the bike), two day-packs to pack, there were showers, inventories to take, decisions about what to pack, yup, even decisions about what to pack, there were two meals, laundry, multiple phone conversations with Technical Support at Cingular ® , or what they pass off as technical support.I call it a lack of technical support!, perhaps even a lack of customer support!You can be sure, Peter and I will be leaving Cingular® when we return from this trip, if not sooner!
When we got up this morning, there were still twenty or so items on the various “do-by-Monday” lists. Chris and I watered plants, documented the type of plant, frequency of waterings, do they like to stay moist or get dry between waterings, I put the remaining boxes of untouched paper, unopened mail, and stuff safely away and out of sight until we return, Chris and I handled another half of a box of paper, created more mail to drop at the post office on the way out of town, Peter and I took photos for the web site, said goodbye to two of my children, loaded remaining software on my p.c., set up Peter’s email on my p.c., moved Peter’s p.c. upstairs to my office and loaded a printer driver off the Internet so Chris can use the p.c. while Peter and I are away and be able print to my printer, an hp Deskjet 5150 (and that last one ended up taking about 45 minutes to do , instead of the expected ten minutes). We are in our second of THREE days of battling with Cingular to get the wireless service working, which is taking hours of our time today. We handled emails, phone calls, put away three baskets of folded clothes, cleaned dishes, put dishes away, repaired a broken ceramic frog that I knocked off one of the plant pots while I was tending to the plants for the last time, at least until August for those that survive.
Last night, Peter took about fifteen bags of garbage, some paper only, to the bottom of the driveway for the weekly pickup.Then, there were the remaining things on the kitchen table to go through, the things on the dining room table, loading the car, and loading the car, and loading the car.We did manage to get about six hours of sleep last night.Even knowing it was our last night in that bed for the next 15 weeks, there was nothing dramatic about it, we were tired, we still had a lot to do, we needed a bit of sleep, just another night, no last meal sort of thing, some hysteria on my part, but I fell asleep in due course and Peter is nearly always snoring within minutes.Last night was no exception.
As we left the house today, it was raining lightly, and did so on and off for the next hour.The day has been crisp, a bit chilly, and threatening rain from the first.I don’t believe we are actually going, and I believe it too much.I can’t imagine the first time we hit Key West, and yet I am already there, already been there and been home , time circling in on itself, and all of this is just me on rewind so I can pay attention to the details this time around, so I can remember.
I don’t take one last look at the house, as I thought I would.I don’t take one last look at the neighborhood, it’s the same as it always is.People go about their business, their errands, they commute to school, to work, to the post office.Peter is driving as he usually does when we are together in the same car.I am usually doing some busy work, reading or editing or paperwork of some sort.This time, I look around trying to catch a world changing before my eyes, but it goes on as it does, nothing notable about the day, this moment, this place, it’s just a street, a town, a day in April, it’s just an etherial bridge between what is now moving away behind us and what lies ahead, but I don’t feel the bridge materialize as we move forward, I cannot see it taking shape, and I don’t know where it ends exactly, nor does it seem to matter, the ending that is.In the words of Helen Keller, life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.I don’t feel the daring adventure of it yet, but I suspect it will settle in eventually.Or perhaps this is just another bike ride.We have done lots of bike rides and this is just another bike ride, or another lot of bike rides strung together.
Eventually, I find nothing interesting about trying to be in the moment.By the end of the day, we will go 378.4 miles and pull into a hotel in
Fredericksburg
,
VA
just past .Two hotels in a row will be full on a Monday night, go figure.The hotel we stay at provides a bed, a shower, a TV, and place to drop all of our stuff.We have what we need though it will cost us a stunning $121.08, $20 of that will be for the dial-up phone call I make to post stuff because my outrageously expensive Cingular® wireless service ($75 a month) still isn’t working (and when it does start working, I will discover it doesn't work very well).I read their tag line, “raising the bar,” a hundred times over the two days of working with them and I am not amused. I will see their billboards as I drive south, and I will be even more not amused.
I use the bed, pass on the shower, though Peter takes one, and we never turn on the TV which is unusual for Peter who typically hits that power button before the hotel door slams shut.I am feeling that slump a mother feels after birth, after waiting nine months, I have been waiting four; that let down after the pushing and grunting for twenty hours (which it was for me for two of my children, twenty hours plus), and we have been pushing and grunting for days, weeks, wanting to deliver this project, hear it take its first real breath of air, this air, this out-of-the-womb (out of the house) fill your lungs and cry air, though I am too exhausted to cry.Where’s that bridge, where’s the view from on top, the panorama, the horizon I am walking towards, where is the awe for the world I have set myself the task of discovering.I know, intellectually, it isn’t somewhere out there and I know, intellectually, it is everywhere out there.Some theorize that the world and everything in it is nothing more than an interpretation, a sort of mirage, that it has no existance except in our naming it, sort of like in the movie "The Matrix."
Chuang Tzu,the most significant of China's early interpreters of Taoism, 389-286 BC, mused "I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?" I will gladly be either.
See you on the road .....
"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"
"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"
She thinks we're going to get what done in the next 48 hours?
The funny thing is - we will get most of it done...
and I wonder how long it will take my back to heal from the whip lashes.
Damn! It's starting to look like dueling blogs are in our future; or "So, Peter how did you make up your 'to do' list?"
"Easy, I just printed it off the blog."
BTW, getting things done with less drama than my better half... that's the easiest part of the job. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an opera. You know, at the part where the woman wears chain mail and a horned hat and pounds her spear on the ground while she sings very loudly?
And as far as all these meetings and computer work, it looks like our bed is going to be very crowded with people and pc's for the next two (our last two at home) nights, 'cause I don't know when she'll find other time to do them.
I fear (along with all my other trepediations regarding this so appropriately named trip) is that this sort of banter may escalate.
Stay tuned as the heat rises during final preparations.
I have always worked better, or I should say more productively, when backed into a corner. Peter typically shuts down when backed into a corner, but he has been producing a few miracles of his own the last few days, and with a lot less drama than me......
Still left to do (and somewhere in there, get some sleep)....
Sign the final papers in front of a notary to close out my brother's estate.
Delete the old blog, the one at blogger.com that I set up before I moved to typepad.com
Set up Peter's email account on the p.c. we will take with us.
Shut down his email on his home p.c.
Set up an email account for Chris who is living here while we are gone and managing the house, mail, plants, cats, on and on.
Meet with David, who freelances for Hanover Press, and turn over three book projects to him to work on while I am away (I run a small press - David will work on the last issue of The Underwood Review, the Depot Anthology, and a book of poetry by John Basinger.
Set up STARK project with Alice-Anne to continue while I am away (another Hanover Press project that is way behind schedule, the story of my life).
Add Aaron's cell phone number to my cell phone (one of my sons).
Pack for the trip (remember a phone cord, tissues, Tums, tweezers, and so forth and so on).
Go through the remaining boxes in the living room (7 or so)
Make brownies for the party today.
Go to the party tonight.
Have a good time (lol).
Complete and mail our partnership agreement to ECG.
Call my Uncle Paul in Baltimore who just turned 80 to say we would like to visit on our way down to Key West.
Learn to burn a CD so I can back things up to CD on the road.
Back up my p.c. before I leave.
Bring llc finances current and send Joan a check. (Joan and I have a partnership called Creative Beginnings, llc to teach writing programs).
Return two memoirs to Robin (I just don't know where I put them).
Review and complete the bike trip inventory so we know what we are packing and so we can update the inventory on the web site.
Load the wireless anywhere software on my p.c.
Load Streets and Maps software on my p.c.
Laundry (lol)
Load Sony digital camera software on my p.c. (I think I can do this in the car on the way down if I get desparate).
Help Peter plant last year's Solstice tree (it is a pine tree with a root ball and I am afraid if we don't plant it, it won't make it through the summer).
Organize remaining papers and items for the safe deposit box which we will put there on our way out of Connecticut Monday morning, the same time I will have the estate documents notarized.
Get the rental van (a 90 minute drive each way, it was the only option he could find for a one way rental)
Pick up food and such for going away party tonight at the gallery
Plant the tree
Fix the screen in the sun room
Take photos for the web site
Work on Wayne's estate inventory with Faith.
Work on trip inventory with Faith.
Food shopping (twice).
Post Office run (another 100 letters go out today, part of cleaning up my office).
Various last minute bank deposits.
Pack for the trip.
Organize papers and pens and such for safe deposit box for Monday visit to the bank.
Quick pass at remaining boxes in his office (this would take a real miracle - about another 15 boxes in his office).
Handle the water run off at the bottom of the driveway, that means clean out the surface drain so the water isn't running off into the front yard and is running into the storm drain where it belongs.
Take the grill to Aaron's house, he is borrowing it for the summer and we are using it for our Sunday family get together tomorrow.
Get propane for the grill
There are plenty of little things in there too, like take a shower. I did not take one yesterday, who has time for a shower and I am training for those days on the road when a shower isn't available.
See you on the road, and I will have a smile on my face because cycling for three months will be a vacation compared to the past months of preparation.
Friends send us loving well wishes, it is enough to make the heart burst. Here are two recent emails that I just have to share.
First, from our friend Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Dear Peter and Faith,
Best of luck on your grand adventure!
Just as you read Bill Bryson's book, William Butler Yeats read Walden. And he was inspired, just as you were. And so he wrote an immortal poem about how he would go into the woods and, "a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made." I don't believe he ever did build that cabin, even though the poem became quite famous. Maybe it was because he had no idea of how to build a cabin out of wattles, and maybe he had no idea even what a wattle was. I surely don't. (One meaning of wattles is those flaps of skin that hang off the necks of turkeys, but I can't imagine how you could build a cabin out of them. You'd need a lot!) Or maybe he didn't ever build that cabin because he just couldn't break out of the humdrum rut he was in: writing poems, founding a national theater, freeing Ireland. Or maybe he just came to the same frame of mind that one time Harvard President, James Bryant Conant, summed up much later by saying "Whenever I get the urge for vigorous exercise, I lie down until it passes." Maybe Yeats just decided it was better to write that poem and then another one than to get his hands all blistered and dirty handling those damn wattles.
Not to discourage you, but writing The Lake Isle of Innisfree instead of building a wattle-cabin may have been a decision that worked out pretty well for Yeats. Sometimes the internal adventures can do the trick. Of course, bicycling 3 million miles doesn't preclude having internal adventures as well.
So enjoy pedaling your wattles off! Here's the poem I wrote for you, and – for good measure – the one by Yeats also.
With love and admiration,
Mark
Fortune For Peter and Faith 4/20/05
Too weary and restless to fuss with supper, one evening Faith and Peter decide to go for Chinese. Just one of those days, they both agree. Too many of those days, lately. And they talk of life's ruts, and eggrolls, and fried rice. And they talk about their worries over wonton. They mumble and grumble over Moo Goo Gai Pan. They speak dreams and adventures over sweet and sour with pineapples and peppers. And they open a fortune cookie, and it says "You will jump track and find a new path." and Peter says, "So, we'll jump." and they open another and it says "You will take a long journey." and they ask for some more and the next three all say the same thing: You will take a long journey.
Peter: "Where?" Faith: "My roots are in Florida." Peter: "But that's a long walk." Faith: "So, we'll ride bikes." Peter: "OK." Faith: "Cleanse souls."
And though some say it is utter folly, they swap their cars for two good bikes and sell their house and buy a map and some comfortable undies. And their friends sit in folding chairs and watch them go with concern, and envy, and admiration, waiting for a sign to change our own lives, waiting for word from a fortune cookie.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Just in case you are reading these in chronological order, you may be curious as to the nature of this "windfall". Well my mom left us 15 years ago, and my dad 5. They had lived in a very rent stabilized apartment in Queens, only 3 train stops from Manhattan. When dad went into a nursing home, we had to dispose of everything in the apartment quickly, with the landlord breathing down our necks (more like drooling on our necks) as he contemplated the huge rent increase he would be charging the next tennents. So some things were sold, some discarded and some packed into cartons and stored in our garage until this recent mania (what cleaning a garage has to do with taking a bike trip is beyond me, but as all of you husbands may have discovered, there is real power in the phrase "yes, dear").
We cleaned and cleaned and just had a few boxes left a week later. Going through them we found 5 insurance policies on mom with dad as beneficiary. He had never cashed them! Now before you get too excited, understand that these were the kind of polices where the agent used to come around once a week and collect 10 or 25 cents, or even 5 cents in one case. The total face value was under $2,000. However, there's interest, dividends, and stock. Everyone (the insurance co., NYS unclaimed funds) is being very closed mouthed as to the actual amounts. I have to leap over tall buildings, have my signature notarized many times, produce "official" death certificates, etc. etc. etc. before they will consider me a valid claimant and let the amounts be known. Who knows how long that will be! In fact, the insurance company wanted me to designate beneficiaries so that if I die before it's been paid to me, my heirs will get the remaining money. Not a good sign.
I guess that some day, we'll have some unexpected money come in. I just hope we'll still be able to enjoy it!!
We continue to go through boxes and order last minute items (like clothing... don't even, I already know what ever it is you might consider saying), nothing like waiting till the last minute, it's just that we are so so so so so so busy. Four more days, it isn't possible.
This past weekend, we inventoried our jewelry and delivered it to the safe deposit box. That meant everything we had on us, like wedding rings, a necklace I have worn for 15 years, etc. I feel so bare, no rings (I was wearing 7, one of which took some doing to get off), no bracelets, no watch, no necklace, all of it in a safe deposit box, and if you have ever read the agreements for a safe deposit box, you know that the stuff you put in there is not guaranteed, no coverage if something happens to it. Oh my goodness. Neither of us ever owned a safe deposit box before. Our wills and the deed to our house will go in there before we leave, probably the last two years of taxes, definately our Nikons and lenses, and who knows what else we will decide on in the next few days.
One of the things we uncovered as a result of this manic effort to clear out the stacks and boxes of paper in our house will, to our astonishment, provide some much needed cash to support us on our trip. A hidden treasure we never would have found, and I don't think we ever would have. It would have been destroyed in a move or something along that line. We are still quite stunned and thrilled at the same time. All this cleaning and uncovering things and organizing our house and our belongings is not what I thought about when I wanted to do this trip, they just came along for the ride (get it, lol, came along for the ride, lol, alright, alright, don't throw anything)..... But all this cleaning and throwing away and giving away things we don't need, all this simplifying our life has been a great (though very very very stressful) part of preparing for the trip. It won't all get done, but there is a saying which I will paraphrase as best as I can -- shoot for the moon, if you miss it, you will at least land somewhere among the stars -- not a bad place to be. Peter still insists we should have spent more time training. We will train on the road! We won't have any excuse then.
Tomorrow, Mar is coming over to record me for a CD compilation that our performance troupe is doing, so when I get back from the trip there may actually be a commercial CD of the poetry troupe I belong to - 6 woman of which I am one, and Mar is another.
I need to repot a bunch of plants, probably tonight, that cannot wait until I get back, which includes potting gobs of cuttings. I would love to open a nursery, but there are too many of them around here and I don't really want to work that hard.
One of the big things that has been nagging at me of late, and quite unexpectedly, is a feeling of success, success around the house, success in doing the web site for the trip and the blog, success in making life work so we could do this trip for three months, success in having much needed funds miraculously show up to make this trip a little more practical financially, or if not practical, at least the money is a stop gap to financial suicide, there is the success in planning the trip at all, and a feeling of success in that I know for certain we will complete the trip and it will be beyond awesome. I have spent much of my life being uncomfortable with success. In fact, I am a master at undermining myself for various reasons, one is that I don't like having more than someone else, having more success, having more money, having more toys, having more fun, I'm real good at that last one -- not having more fun than someone else. (you wouldn't know it from this trip) I am an expert at keeping myself down, and some of the unexpected amazing magical things that have been happening to support Peter and I doing this trip are waging bigtime warfare with that part of me who often feels thwarted, that part of me that abandons more projects than I finish, that part of me that often feels guilty about having more of something than someone else, that side of me who wants everyone to have the same abundance as I, the same comforts, the same happiness, the same awe for life, the same opportunities, the same freedoms, the same sense of safety (I am, like so many, distraught over the war in Iraq and many other similarly horrific events in the world and those close to home). I want everyone to have at least the same quality of life as I have (not that I could not do better in all of the above categories). I am generally comfortable with people having more than me, but rarely comfortable with people have less than me. I don't like people being successful at any level when that person is a scrooge, a mean spirited self centered, step on you as soon as look at you selfish, bullish, black hearted scurge of a human being. But generally, I am fine with people having blessed lives. I am a good cheerleader and happy for other people's good fortune. But this is not someone else's good fortune, this is mine, and I am feeling humbled (in a good way) and embarrassed by it at the same time.
So, yesterday morning in the shower, I look down and notice the ankle bracelet, the one thing I forgot, the one thing no one ever sees because I never wear dresses or skirts. I look down and there it is, simple, something that would remain hidden under socks unless I go sockless, which I rarely do, but who knows what might happen on a trip like this. I think, how perfect. It is a very simple gold ankle bracelet, custom made years ago to fit my large ankle, and very few people have ever seen it. It so well represents this trip for me, stripping down my life, my belongings, to a few simple things, a few things that matter, maybe not a life and death matter, but matter somehow even it is just to remind me that there is a luster underneath all the having and the not having, that a simple life can be a grand life, that I am always carrying something hidden that I rarely let anyone see and why is it that I do that, why does anyone do that, and maybe even that I can find a reason to keep looking forward instead of stare shell shocked at the pavement when there is so much oppression in the world. It's just a simple thing, a simple ankle braceless, a simple reminder that somewhere in the midst of all the choas and atrocities some simple beauty awaits me if I just look. Not that beauty is ever enough to balance out the terrible things that happen to friends and family, to people I don't even know, to whole nations, but I am reminded that there is hope. In the end, that is all that matters really, that there is hope, legitimate hope. I decide to keep the ankle bracelet on during the trip. It is true that all that glitters is not gold, but it isn't the gold that has won me over, it is the hidden away treasure, the hidden away treasure I will wear around my ankle, the hidden away treasure that is me, the hidden away treasure that is each of us. I keep opening up treasure upon treasure, things that have always been there but I have forgotten about them, including myself.
I hope to see you on the roadways.......... and discover hidden treasure(s), yours, mine, and everyone in between.
I took the day off so I could work on the web site, go through more paper, more boxes of stuff, clean the house, load the wireless anywhere software to my p.c., set up the pay pal account for donations, find a birthday present for my dear friend Joan, and on and on and on. At least at work, I would ignore it all, pretend it wasn't here waiting for me, then I could come home and decide it was too much to tackle, go to bed with a headache (well, not really a headache, more like a spirit ache). (I still have a sense of humor somewhere around here, if I could just find it in the midst of all this junk (which includes all sorts of biking stuff stacked here and there that has been arriving last minute by mail and UPS)).
If you see smoke towering towards the sky in western Connecticut, it's just me burning boxes of stuff, boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff, got a match?
