January 02, 2006

Kate sends this CNN article by Calvin Woodward, who biked across the country last year using part of the TransAmerica route:

Over three months on roads less traveled, I didn't hear America singing, as poet Walt Whitman did in his exuberant 1855 tribute to a rising nation and its confident workers.

I didn't hear it whining, either, as cynics do today.

I saw America going about its business without fuss.

It waved from front porches, fixed up houses, talked about the day and the times in little coffeehouses.

Grew fields of soybeans and sunflowers, saw the sun come up and go down in the same sky each time, ran trains that thundered and wailed.

Downloaded gospel songs.

Dreamed.

One of the reasons I quit drinking (as opposed to just having a drink), is that a deep drunk pulls the serotonin rug out from beneath my brain for days afterwards, and leaves me a quivering mass, full of dread. That's about where I am at the moment...the house is a mess, there are eight billion things that need doing before it goes on the market, Pea's away in the city so it's quiet and empty, I still haven't got work, and I woke up at 2:30PM covered with dark thoughts, what the hell am I thinking?

So, instead of taking the CNN article as another experience to study in advance of my own, I'm immediately bursting with negatives: Great, CNN's picked TransAmerica up now everybody will do it/nobody will want to publish a book about it/blah blah blah.

Once upon a time, my usual response to this state of gelatinous neurochemical constipation was to go out and get more booze, immediately, and partake of said booze as soon as possible, if not sooner. Today, I'll go to physical therapy instead, get my heart rate up a bit, and be around people.

I just heard back from Paul, the production manager at Greenspeed in Australia - he estimates that I'll probably have my trike at the end of January. Which is good and bad. Good, because I'll have my trike!, and it's always good to have a new set of wheels, especially when there's three of them. Bad, because back when I ordered it, the production delay was going to be a bit longer. I would (hopefully) have some work by the time it arrived, so that I wouldn't have to put the remaining purchase balance on a credit card in advance of getting the proceeds from the house sale. I'll do my usual 0% balance transfer shell game, but I'll still be piling up more debt.

Someday, I will be entirely out of debt. And on that day there will be much rejoicing, and the eating of fattened bankers, and the best portions of the banker's fatty flanks will be retained for the gods.

In the waning week of 2005, reader Carrie e-mailed:

I think a trip like this is by nature transformative. If the object is self-knowledge. And feeling powerful as Zeus (I imagine that will come at the end of the trip, as when changing the same tire repeatedly in goathead country, you will likely be the one railing to the gods) probably also a perk, once you get some distance into it. No wusses on this trip. Something amazing, by definition, will come of it.

On days like today, when I can feel the very organ of my brain in my skull as though it's outlined in camphor, the object of the trip seems to be escape, as thought there's nothing left to do but what I'm doing: minimize, put the head down, and barrel off into the wilderness. Think of all the things I won't have to do next: find an apartment, move, find a car, get new work that's pretty much exactly like the old work, etc. Through the prism of a somewhat wobbly psyche the journey seems more like an easy way out than anything else.

Fortunately, I have some small grasp of that prism's nature, and I know that this will pass. The journey will again seem like a Journey, and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to use the very thought of it as motivation for all the practical tasks that must be done. It's starting already - a kind of half-assed positive feeling!

Calvin Woodward took three months off to bike across the U.S.; then he had to go back to Washington and keep doing whatever it was he did there before he left.

Me? I won't be "due back" anywhere.

Which is reassuring, in a terrifying sort of way.