Rest Day
More of a Not Triking day, actually...I ran, or rather walked, some errands: a fruitless trip to a bike shop (1 mile), which turned out to be a trendy pseudo shop with nothing I needed and overpriced Clif bars, and then a more successful trip (.75 mile) to a local mall, there to raid Sears for two matching crescent wrenches, boxers, and a T-shirt.
The crescent wrenches were needed to cope with what I consider to be something of a poor design in the trike's steering/fender attachment system, the result of which was the left fender loosening and rotating clockwise into the tire while I descended a vibratory chipseal road at thirty-five miles per hour. Very bad to have to hold the fender in place with your thumb while steering and covering the brakes, especially because braking too hard with one brake can cause the trike to pull rather abruptly to one side.
The boxers and tee-shirts were needed to cope with what I consider to be a bit of poor planning in my laundry/clothing system: two boxers and two tees means I have nothing to wear while doing laundry. So three of each is the optimal number, one to wear, two to wash, and I can wear my rain pants while washing my camp pants. When I got the stuff back to the motel, I discovered that I've already gone down a size: the boxers, in my usual size, were too big. But I'm keeping them anyway, because I am not walking to that mall again.
The stretch of Route 29 that I had to walk along and ultimately cross four lanes of to get to the mall is loud, polluted, and utterly anonymous. Like the mall, it could be anywhere...a stretch of minor highway in New Jersey, or California, or Texas. On the walk back from the mall, the skies opened up and poured loud thunderous rain on me, and I - being on a Rest Day, which means a certain level of fatigue and muddle-headedness - hadn't brought my Gore-Tex. So I was soaked to the skin, feeling very small and pebble-like in the great river of the world.
Once back at the motel, sleep overwhelmed me and I sacked out from 3:30 to 6:00 while my body tried to restore itself. I had already made the decision to spend another night here, and this just confirmed that as a good idea. I wasn't going to be ready to leave Saturday morning.
All part of the learning experience, I suppose, although the lessons of the body seem to be more readily absorbed than those of the mind or spirit...today was, all in all, a very low day. With no immediate task to focus on, such as putting one pedal in front of the other or plotting my path from one shady spot to the next as I inch up a hill, there was plenty of time to dwell on my rootlessness, my foolishness, and whatever other -ness my tired mind cared to dredge up.
That is, of course, part of what I signed up for: time to think, time to be alone, and so on. As always, it's one thing to have an idea in your mind about what a situation will be like, and quite another when the idea leaves your skull and becomes hard reality. Part of it, I'm sure, has to do with the steep learning curve, and my failure to realize the true importance of the Way of Leaving Early in a time of hot weather...it made the first week much more challenging. But most of it has to do with the actual weight hidden within the glib phrase: selling my house, putting my stuff in storage, triking across the country. That weight is much more evident in a motel room than in my tent or on the trike.
NEXT MORNING:
On the other hand, I am staying at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park tomorrow, so things are looking up.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON:
New Lesson: be not so trusting of GPS waypoint labels. I am now not staying at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park tomorrow, I am staying at the Misty Mountains Camp Resort in Greenwood.
Which is good, because that's what is actually located at the point indicated by the little tent icon.
