Saturday, August 27, 2016

So you got caught with a flat

Well, how 'bout that?

Flop, flop, flop

That would be the sound of a flat tire. I was just entering the town of Lake Providence, Louisiana, thinking "I could keep going". My break line my tire found had other plans.
I looked around to see if I was near anything besides corn and cotton, to see the Cotton Museum about twenty yards away.
One of their picnic tables was conveniently shaded from the brutal August sun. I had pulled my tire off, and was pressing the patch on when a voice called over to me. "We've got a tour goin' honey, if you want to join at the end of the line." I looked down at my blackened hands, noting I need to clean my chain soon.
The Cotton Museum has old buildings taken off of local plantations, including a church, Gin, and shacks used as homes and stores. I was looking at an old iron when someone besides me said "you're probably too young to remember one of these." There were about 25 retired couples all wearing red vests and matching Louisiana state shaped bola ties with their names on them. As the tour progressed and more people asked what I was doing, they asked if I could stay after to share my journey with them.
While looking at the repainted cotton gin, one lady came up and requested that I join them for lunch. "My name is Janece" she said, and I sputtered back my surprise as I spelt my name to her, not hiding my excitement about meeting someone else with my name.
Lunch was at a restaurant called The Dock, where we ate local seafood and they took turns asking me the usual questions I get from kind strangers. Most of the group headed 25 miles west to their campground. Janece and Louie, her husband, drove me back to the museum with another couple from their group. After some help getting my tire back on, we exchanged numbers and hugs, and my heart was blessed a few times.
I went in the office to ask about camping, and spent a few hours out of the hot sun talking with Barbara and Katherine about the town. Barbara is about four foot ten and full of laughter. "When you get this age, you don't care all too much about being sophisticated no more."
She called all around town asking if anyone might have two trees I could use, since this 80 mile stretch of trail has all but nothing. "This town ain't all that safe" Katherine told me as Barbara called the preacher, priest, and sheriff's detective "and lots of us is old people who are well set in our ways". Katherine's laugh could fill a room, and I left with stomach pains from how contagious it was. Barbara got an old of a woman named Geneva, who let me stay in her RV campground in Transylvania, 6 miles south.

In the morning I stopped at the gas station, and filled my tire back up to 85 psi, which I've been at for the past 2 months. I refilled my water where Olivia, the owner of the quaint little Farm House Store, traded me a sausage patty for some stories. I was aiming to get on the road as early as possible to beat the heat, but couldn't get away from the surprised people that wanted to get my number and hear more from me.
I was out at my bike and pulling away when the familiar flopping noise came again from my tire. As the music from Rocky Horror Picture Show looped in my head, I pulled off the inner tube to find an inch long split. I pulled out my already-patched-twice spare and worked it on, only to find it wouldn't hold air.
The hole ended up being right next to the valve stem, a pretty impossible spot to fix. As I talked with the firestone employees, Percy took it upon himself to be the hero for the day.
"I will fix this tire" he repeated, after the 4th patch didn't work. He ended up pulling a tube off his bike, when Olivia's husband offered to drive out of town to pick up a new tube for me.
In writing this, I'm still in Transylvania, awaiting the tube from the kind stranger that wants to help a traveler. I hope to make it to Vicksburg tonight, where I'll have to take tomorrow off. I have a package at the post office, and I'll be aiming to get it early Monday, in hopes for an early start.

Things don't always go exactly as planned, but it always works itself out in the end. Let's see where today takes us.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Sonder

We don't always get to see every detail. The world isn't full of vague background characters, and continuous shots of breathtaking views.
We are all flawed human beings, and that's what I love most about us. Maybe we won't experience the movie dramatized version of perfection, or the complete happiness we felt as children. We as people work so hard to achieve so little, and for a long time, I hated that. I fought with the fact that love isn't always the storybook you read countless times. Love comes in so many different forms, and can't be shared like a picture. Trying to explain how I feel about one person won't be understood fully, because they have such a different view.
Families aren't perfect, and I am aware I'm not the only one to tell you that. Siblings grow up, parents divorce, and so many tiny things can happen to pull people and change them.
My parents divorced when I was 12. My brother was 10 and my sister 14, if my memory serves correctly. Each of us felt confusion and grief, but it wasn't the same form shared between us. Each of us took it differently; we grew and changed in our own ways.
We could sit and decipher who handled it how and why, but that's not the point I'm aiming to make. We were all sitting in that same living room, and we all cried. We grew up in the same house, with the same parent's, and we shared so much. We grew, and we dispersed, and we ran.Those few minutes the living room were just a small fraction of my life, but it is one of the moments that make me who I am today.
As I meet more people along this journey, I realize how many little moments make up each and every person. We are so complex, and we use such simple explanations for ourselves.
I want to forever feel this excitement when I hear about each person's moments. Some days I'm so tired, and I fall asleep before I hear the story. Some days, the people I meet don't want to share.
We have so much to offer and learn from one another, and it both terrifies and excites me. I hope I can always love these strangers, and accept the parts of us that make us who we are.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Losing and gaining

I can't tell you exactly where or when I misplaced my extra micro usb cable, sunglasses, or unused write in the rain journal. However, I can tell you how I did misplace two of the most used items I own.

I woke up on the pews of the baptist church in Tiptonville, TN. The rain had been coming down in a steady stream for the last few days. This southern storm doesn't look like it's dissipating anytime soon, and I'll only be riding deeper into it. After a prayer from the preachers wife for my safety, I started following the MRT book directions south.
The street signs that tell me where to go for the MRT have aged in Tennessee, and it's easy to miss their faded green arrows. I was in Ridgely when I looked down to see my tire find a groove in the poorly paved concrete- and before I knew it I was on my back cursing at the sky.
"Are you okay?" a feminine voice with a mid-south accent called to me. Besides my pride of not falling off my bike for 1500 miles, only my elbow was scraped and my thigh bruised. I was offered to dry off, but I felt it was a waste of a perfectly clean towel on an extremely wet day. After some quick maintenance on my front tire, I went to the Family Dollar and bought some AAA batteries for my headlamp. In leu of a light on my bike, I turn my headlamp to flash and strap it around my helmet for those speeding past me on grey days.
My ride down 181 was a mix of wet, bumpy, and humid. The rain kept on, and through my drop-speckled glasses I kept an eye on my mirror to wave and thank drivers who gave me as much room as they could.
Looking further south, there wasn't another town for over 40 miles. I had only gone 26 miles, but my shoes were full, my water-resistant pants and jacket had thrown in the towel, and my conscience was screaming at my pride to give up and ask for help already. I passed the I155 ramp, which I knew I wasn't legally allowed on (or insane enough to attempt on even the driest of days). I thought about waiting for a truck to stop and help me across to Missouri, where there were more towns heading south. A mile down the road, I gave in, and made my way back to the ramp.
I didn't count the amount of people that drove past my thumb and hopeful smile during those 20 minutes, but I was determined to win the help of strangers no matter how long it took. I was already soaked, what's another 5 minutes of rain going to do?
The pair that stopped for me were fumigators for the crop fields in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri. I asked for help across the 155 bridge to the next small town, so I could sit, rest, and decide the fate of my day. Watching them shove my bike in the back of their truck was stressful, so I took a breath and climbed in the cab.
"We're dropping you in Osceola" Larry's thick accent slurred at me while he changed lanes around the long-haul truck drivers. I usually put up a fight about pedaling every mile I can, but with the persistent storm, I took a deep breath and accepted the 60 mile ride.
"How many days are we saving you on time?" Devon asked with a smile. He was younger than Larry by at least 30 years, and had spent some time up in Seattle. "At least two." I responded, asking for a pen to mark my directions. "Maybe I can come back and make up those miles" I told Devon, who shook his head and told me to buy a motorcycle. I asked for them to excuse me as I peeled off my wet socks, ankle brace, and thoroughly soaked rain pants. My bike shorts were far from dry, but I had no choice but to keep them on until I was stopped for the night.
After about an hour of small talk, they pulled off the road and unpacked my rig from the truck. "Did you make sure you didn't forget anything?" Devon kindly asked. I had the blatant opportunity to check, but I smiled and told him I was sure.
As I tossed my shoes in the trailer, I searched for my ankle wrap. I closed my eyes hard as I remembered taking it off in the truck. I looked up to see no one around me, and no way to get ahold of the kind men that helped me jump further south. I shook my head as I added one more thing to my mental list of lost items.
As I was securing my helmet, I gasped and felt for the little beacon of light that I use to stay safe. My headlamp, which I use nightly, was safe and warm in the back seat of Larry's work truck. I felt my shoulders sink, but had no choice. I got back on my bike, and started pedaling forward towards the signs for 61 south.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Inspired by the Dubuque botanical gardens

We planted seeds with the words on our tongues
Our hands and knees in soil
We watered the small, but growing leaves
And dreamed of their blooming flowers.
Walking the garden day and night
We would stop to thin the weeds
Watching the bees and butterflies circle
Stems bending in the breeze.
Here you stand, bloomed at last
Your pedals open to the sun
But mine have fallen off and seeded
For the next autumn to come.
Different flowers, but still the same dirt
We shared and spread and grew
And the birds came in and picked us apart
Scattering what we knew.
How we grew apart is uncertain
We could sit and account all the reasons
We both found love for the sun and the earth
We just thrive in different seasons.

Monday, August 1, 2016

Written in Quincy, Illinois

Fresh cut grass sticks to my toes
as I wander through the grounds
Pumping the water from the well mostly used on those
Who have passed ten, twenty, one hundred years or more
I wonder if their stones are still visited by people who loved them well.
I lie in the grass and sing old songs
And wonder if they would care to hear
My tone deaf voice ringing through their long-decayed ears.
The ashes that you buried here don't stay untouched forever
The stones will weather, change color and shape.
All we turn into is mother, beloved, or brother
Some names and dates with a simple line
Hoping God will see we long to be divine.
But the tomb you built will crumble or sit alone and suffer
The same fate as you when blood was pumping through your veins
The phrase "not forgotten" covered in grass and stains.
But we all win the prize of the same exact fate
Whether were scattered, or buried, or shot into space
So don't let someone's poetry about our simple human ways
Bring you stress or worry when you are breathing still to this day.
Something I love about people is we're all so unique
While also connected though we may speak
About others in dark and dreary light
The thing about human compassion is it doesn't go down without a fight.
There's always somebody there to help you feel alive
To live the life you were given until the day you die
Because we don't know if it will be tomorrow or further down the line
If we're only living in fear of death, will we ever really thrive?
So walk through graveyards and write the thoughts that come to mind,
Or go to work but don't let your life be a damper
Because your time is precious like a baby's beating heart
So please, for your sake, pull life apart
At the seams and resew it in a fashion that will fit
So you can keep working through the dirt and the grit.