Shower Nostalgia
Every so often, the most mundane things will send me back several weeks, to a time when I rode from place to place, carrying everything I needed with me. This morning, the mundane thing was standing on the drain in the shower stall in my mother's bathroom. I must've used over a hundred diffferent shower stalls of varying quality as I crossed the country, so one shower became much like another. When I closed my eyes this morning's spray, I could catch fleeting sensations of On The Roadness, as though, when I stepped out of the pleasing warmth and towelled off, I'd put on a set of triking clothes, settle down into the cockpit, and pedal away.
In reality, the trike is in the space between the house and the shed under a tarp, its rear end propped up on an empty plastic kitty litter bucket, because it doesn't have its rear wheel on. I'm actually quite disappointed about that...the plan was to Keep On Riding here in Santa Barbara. I've got maps of bike routes all around the city, even a couple of big 50-milers with real hills in them that take you through wine country (as seen in the movie Sideways, but not by me).
The new wheel's going to take awhile, because Jerome has to acquire the bearings to do the crowded ball conversion, so I'm hoping it'll be here by next Friday. I was planning to head back to San Francisco on Saturday, but I think I'll wait a few days after the wheel arrives, so I can get on the trike and ride it around here before I have to steel myself for triking in and around San Francisco.
Yes, that's right: the trike will be my San Francisco transportation. After riding it into and out of the city, it the idea became more realistic, especially now that I've got twin six-foot flags, to which I've added two very brightly-colored 13x13 flags. So I'm not really any more worried than I was riding an upright in New York. In San Francisco, they rent these little bright yellow gas-powered three-wheeled cars to people, and they're not much bigger than the trike.
Plus: hills are fun when you're not toting a heavily-laden trailer.
