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May 01, 2006
"I Hate These Place"
Spent the entire day at Ikea. The entire day. When I walked in, there was daylight. When I walked out, there was only darkness, and I was made of easily-assembled pressboard panels.
Everybody always writes a typical Ikea-hell story. It's trite, so I won't do that. Not that I avoid trite...just Ikea-trite.
Except for this: I found two forlorn messages in two different places in the store, both scribbled in pencil with the same handwriting. One was written across a section of pine slats demonstrating the half-dozen Swedish-style stains you could apply to unfinished pine furniture: I hate these place. The other was discreetly tucked away on a vertical piece of display hardware: These stinks.
Customer? Or...employee?
We may never know.
I only hope he made it out alive.
May 03, 2006
Dieses Ist Was Wir Im Psychiatrischen Geschäfts anruf "Das Heeblie Jeeblies"
 A tiring day. With no trikeage involved. Which doth indeed suck upon the mighty mule shaft, Saints! This picture is included strictly for morale-boosting purposes.
In keeping with my poor judgement regarding the size of things into which other things should fit, today I moved my stuff from my rented 5' by 10' storage unit to a shiny new 5' by 15' unit. That's 25 extra square feet! Oh yes. That meant driving in small circles from one unit to the other with carloads of book boxes, book shelves, and bicycles. That's after emptying Pea's 5' by 5' unit earlier this afternoon and bringing it all back to the house so the movers can take it to her new whatever' by whatever' apartment on Saturday.
Then, there will be a few days while I bounce around the house alone...packing some, riding some, driving to the self-storage, and generally getting down with the whole radical transition thing.
And on May 13: Departure Day.
(yowza!)
May 04, 2006
The Word Is "Mrrrgh"
Full-on body tired. From moving boxes, not from triking.
Thus: thirteen words only.
Eighteen, if you count these.
May 06, 2006
This Is The Real Weepy And Like Tragic Part Of The Story
O my brothers and only friends!
Spang! Thus goes the big medicine ball deep in my gut. Today was Pea's Moving Day, and so I am now alone in the house with my stuff, Julep the Catlet, and the plummeting sensation that accompanies the emergence of potential change into actuality. Somehow today I have to focus myself and build the black box. My time here grows short.
Really, I can't dwell on this page for too long, or I'll start keening or something equally embarrassing.
LATER:
The build is going well...the new enclosure is easy to work with, and I'm more than halfway done. In other news: cats hate the Dremel tool. I haven't seen Julep all day, which is unfortunate. She's about as disrupted as I am right now, and would be good furry company.
What she doesn't know is that she'll have a whole new place to make her own when all this is over. Me...I'll have a whole country! (Tee-hee)
May 08, 2006
Busy Busy Busy Argh Mrgle *Hork*
Posting will be even lighter than usual. Making a round trip to New York this evening...just one among eight billion other things that need doing.
May 09, 2006
Waaaarrrgghhh!
 And so forth. This is the part where wackiness descends upon me like a dumpster-load of small, Koosh-like wacky things which together aggregate into the dreaded Big Wacky On My Head.
Nevertheless: the Black Box is done. Whatcher lookin' at here is:
(1) Cellular phone amplifier.
(2) Output switches and output jacks. Five of the switches control whether the jacks draw their power from the battery or the solar panels. The output jacks are threaded to keep the plugs firmly in place. The sixth switch controls where the cellular amp draws its power.
(3) DC-DC converter bus. Draws power from the panels through the converter.
(4) Battery bus. Draws power from the battery.
(5) Battery. Two six-volt eight amp-hour Hawker Cyclon sealed lead acid cells, wired in series to provide 12 volts.
(6) DC-DC converter. Takes power from the solar panels and converts the output to a steady 13.8 volts with variable amperage depending on the panels' output.
(7) Charge controller. Manages the charging of the batteries from the solar panels.
(8) Input switches and input jacks. I have two solar panels, and each panel's power can be routed indepently to the charge controller or to the DC-DC converter.
 When closed, it looks like this. The switches and jacks aren't as aligned as I'd like them to be, but everything fits, everything works, and we'll see if it can stand up to 5,000 miles on the back of a trike. I still have to solder the input and output cables for the panels and various devices.
And, you know, do everything else...pack life into 5' by 15' box, clean up house, sell house...(warg)...
May 12, 2006
The Best Laid Plans...
 ...apparently don't give a flying fondue pot for my petty, unloved plans.
Long dramatic story short: me no close on house, me no leave on trip tomorrow. Departure date has been pushed off to next Saturday, because it is apparently impossible to get a group of more than four professional adults together and have them do what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it.
I have moved beyond enraged and to the other side, where it is acceptable - and, indeed, good form - to add a rider to the Contract of Sale that allows me to punch everyone involved once in the face before signing the deed over.
LATER:
OK, not everyone involved.
But I still get to do some punching.
That's just fair, is all.
May 16, 2006
Man, I Been Limboized
The title for this post popped all friendly-like into my noggin, and I was going to throw down with the Big Big Rhymes all ending with "-ized" and so on, but I am so damn beat-down dead sack of meat tired all I could come up with was "syncretized," and as I do not feel in the least bit heterogeneous I gave it up as a bad job.
A brief summarization of my little world right now: the house is now empty, all of my non-Journey related stuff is in storage, and I'm crashing at Pea's new place in an Undisclosed Secure Location with my trike, my trailer, and 8,000 cubic inches of gear. I'm exhausted, floating in the tractless space between transitions, waiting for some nut-thumping cubicle troll to do their goddamn job and push their stinking papers around so that a transaction well-desired by both seller and buyer can take place, while the trike sits on its side in the corner amidst unpacked boxes and wonders why the hell it ever left Australia. ("See the States, have a few laughs!" they said. Feh.)
May 18, 2006
How Low Can You Go?
 As I descend further into limbo, I am overcome with a preternatural calm.
This contrasts somewhat with the recent states of murderous rage that I and several unfortunate random passers-by have recently experienced.
But, it does permit me to concern myself with the finer points of managing transitions, and I've decided that it's better to leave after all of this house-related buffoonery is concluded. Both for a proper movement from one style of living into another, and to avoid leaving Pea in the midst of what has become, in our eyes, the biggest real estate clusterfuck since the Algonquins got a box of shiny stuff, some skins, and smallpox in exchange for Manhattan.
I had some concern about the timing of all this - you can only reliably cross the Rockies at certain times of the year, but even a June 1 departure date won't be a problem, if it comes to that. The last portion of my journey (the Oregon and California portion of the Pacific Coast Route) is actually better ridden in September-October, because all the tourists have gone. Traffic is definitely a consideration when you're riding a trike that's eight inches off the road.
So, it will work out, I think. I have an animation project that I can finish here, instead of on the road, and that will put some much-needed cash in the Astonished Head coffers. (Coffer, actually...I can only afford one)
And now: dinner. Some Lester Young. Maybe an Asahi.
It's...OK.
Which, given the circumstances, is saying quite a lot.
LATER:
Pea remains unconvinced.
Fortunately, all the guns are in storage.
May 20, 2006
Let's See...What Do I Really Need Before I Pedal 5,000 Miles?
 Hmmm. Wait, I know this one: blisters! On my feet!
Turns out my Keens aren't as keen as they ought to be. Or maybe I'm not supposed to wear them with thicker socks. But, see, I wasn't planning on being stuck in New York for two damn weeks, and I only brought clothes for a couple of days plus what I'm going to be riding in. So I've been tromping around the city in my camp sandals and boring holes into my feet. A dime-size blister on the ball of my left foot, a smaller one just below the base of my third toe on the right plus a nice deep one under a layer of callus on the big toe. It's podiatry p0rn!
Wonderful. Hell, while I'm at it, why not leprosy? Yeah! Who needs toes anyway?
Hopefully, they'll be healed up by the time I leave (possibly) on Wednesday.
Or maybe some time in 2016, if everything goes just right.
May 22, 2006
Shhh!
(Rumor hasn't that something...y'know, big...and...southward-heading...might be happening Wednesday morning.
I don't want to say anything too loudly, because that just invites the big thumb in the eye from Bog.
And that always sucks.)
May 24, 2006
On My Way...?
Yeah, mostly. I'm currently sitting in the passenger seat of the Honda somewhere in New Jersey, with the trike strapped helplessly to the roof, the trailer crammed into the trunk, and a pocketful of dreams.
*barf*
The plan is to get to Maryland tonight, return said Honda to Pea's dad, pick up a rented minivan, throw trike and gear inside it, and speed on down to the Yorktown Victory Monument in Virginia, where I will commence pedaling west.
Ironically: to avoid the bolus of traffic on 295, we apparently need to be going east. Not west.
Which means that we should've just stayed in the bolus.
This is because all of the forces of heaven, earth, and suckassery are arrayed against me.
May 25, 2006
Well...Here I Am
 See, you think you’ll know what to say when you chuck everything up into the air and tell everyone that they’ll be able to read all about it on your website, but then the moment comes and it’s: what’s there to say? Or, more accurately, there’s plenty to say, but which selected bits best lend themselves to the chosen medium?
The wrenching chaos of the past month prevented me from giving much thought to how I’d structure my tale and how I’d restructure the existing site to serve as its venue. Would there be a Road Kill Tally (Today: one Large snake, extra-squished)? A selection of “What the hell was I thinking?” and “Why the hell not?” moments? (That was Katy’s idea - not that Kate, this one – and today both moments were the same: leaving). A daily mileage bulletin (22.5, very light day). Minutiae? (Didn’t put enough water into the dehydrated peas, so they were crunchy). Maximae? (Uh…haven’t had any maximal experiences just yet).
You see my problem.
At the moment, I’m in Jamestown, Virginia, with five bars on the cell phone and 200 kBps throughput on the EVDO modem. I’m camped at the back end of a mostly-empty private campground, trying to look unthreatening but not too friendly when the occasional car or SUV full of campers and camperettes cruises past my little patch of dirt looking for their own spot. I’ve met two other cyclists who’ve been on the road for eleven days. They tossed me a Rolling Rock and set up camp a few dozen yards away.
It’s the first night of a long trek and I’m feeling like a babe in the woods, with all my maximalist gear and my rusty tent-pitching skills and my ample belly fat. I don’t know how far I’ll go tomorrow or where I’ll sleep or whether I’ll get rained on or not. It’s crazy and wonderful and terrifying and stupid and lovely all at once, and I could explode into a soaring fireball or collapse to neutron density at any moment.
But before that happens, I think I’ll find my two cycling acquaintances and offer them some chocolate.
May 26, 2006
A Strand Of Spidersilk In My Coffee
 I found Simon and Mike later on in the evening (they were off playing miniature golf with teenyboppers), and we shared chocolate, beer, and stove fuel. They’re on a short, 12-day random tour of the Eastern seaboard. Yesterday was their last night, and my first, so in the spirit of travel and the cycle-addled state of significance, they presented me with gifts: a small bulb of garlic and a grease-wipe for cleaning my hands after I’ve worked on my chain. I expect that at some point during the next 5,000 miles I will bless their names and do a small jig in their honor.
At the moment I’m sipping me some coffee (made in the Titanium French Press O’ Caffeinated Tomfoolery) and pondering what, exactly, I’m going to do today.
I suspect it will involve pedaling my tricycle from this place to another place, but that could just be wild conjecture on my part.
I’m still reeling: yesterday Pea and Katy dropped me off at the Yorktown Victory Monument (commemorating the kicked asses of the British in 1781), and I just…rode off.
 OK, OK…I didn’t just ride off. There were pictures and some tears and a great deal of appreciation on my part for both Pea and Katie, although I doubt I showed it sufficiently because I can be a jerk that way. It was much better than, say, renting a one-way Hertz minivan and seeing my sorry self off all by my lonesome.
After I said farewell and rolled away from the monument I discovered the York River, so I stopped, took off my shoes, socks, and my right trailer wheel, walked down to the water and did the Ceremonial Dipping Of The Wheel. This will be accompanied a similar Dipping of the front wheel into the waters off Astoria in Oregon.
And that was yesterday. Today it’s supposed to be 89 degrees, muggy, with a possibility of some rain, and at the moment I still don’t know where my bed’s going to be tonight.
So I’ll have me some more bewebbed coffee, and think on that a spell.
May 27, 2006
Argh.
Yes, I found a place to sleep. More on that later.
Now, having spent the morning arguing with the apes at Verizon, I'm late. So I have to get ready and bug outta here.
Roughing It At Betty Crocker's House
 The sun was still far above the horizon, but - being the savvy outdoorsman that I am - I suspected that it wouldn't stay that way. I had overestimated the strength of my Day Two legs, and underestimated the importance of full-assed route planning. Campgrounds aren't thick on the ground in this part of Virginia, and every decent patch of forest is well-posted with NO TRESSPASSIN' THIS IS MINE ALL MINE BOY I'LL SHOOT YA signs, so I wasn't going to be able to follow Ken Kifer's wise "unfenced and unposted" rule for diving in and setting up a clandestine campsite.
Instead, I followed the advice of the folks at Adventure Cycling: the police are your friends. A friendly State Trooper stopped his car for a couple of minutes to chat about my trike, and then pulled into the driveway of what turned out to be the Sheriff's office of Charles City, VA. I decided to stop in and inquire about places to pitch my tent.
The Sheriff's office was a small room with thick bulletproof glass panels on two sides, behind one of which sat a young dispatcher. She, unfortunately, wasn't familiar enough with the surrounding area to help me out, which I thought was a bit odd, for a police dispatcher. I bought a Coke from the machine that took up most of the room and waited while she tried to summon someone else from the hidden depths of the office, but he hadn't appeared by the time I finished my soda. I thanked the dispatcher and left.
The sky outside had turned dark and threatening, with rumbles of thunder bouncing around the valley. I wanted it to rain - it had been a moisture-sucking 89-degrees for most of the day, with full sun, which is great for solar panels but not so good for pedaling humans. As the first fat drops spattered the fairing, someone ran out of the Sheriff's office to roll up their SUV windows. "Do you need to seek shelter?" she called to me. I said I was OK, thanks, but did she know of a motel, hotel or campground in the area? She said there was a B&B about four miles up the road, and further on, a restaurant that would certainly know more about such places. Very friendly, she was, with the soft accent that you don't hear much in movies because it's not a broad, full-on twangfest.
Ah! At this point, I learned the Lesson Of Planning with even greater depth: the B&B was noted on my map with the little icon man sleeping in an icon bed beneath an icon roof, but not on the GPS. Its phone number was on the back of the map, so I gave them a call on my cell phone. No answer, but no matter - they were on Route 5, which was my road for the next couple of days.
Eventually, I pedaled past the place: it looked inviting and promised showers (which are truly gifts of the gods of Plumbing and Fire)...but there were no cars in the driveway and no answer at the door. So, I brought forth the map once more. No more little icon men sleeping in icon beds beneath icon roofs, and no little icon tents - but wait! There was a little icon tent! It belonged to a church in Glendale, which was quite a bit further along my route...maybe too far. But I called anyway, and left a message on the pastor's machine.
I pedaled onward, reflecting on the virtues of the footloose and fancy-free style of doing things versus the knowing where the hell you're spending the night style of doing things. I decided that if the sun threatened to abandon me, I would have to dive in regardless of signage. Then: the Indian Fields Tavern appeared on my right. The parking lot looked empty at first, but there were a few cars around back, so I dismounted, roughed my sweaty hair into something that I hoped didn't look all homeless and crazy, and went in.
 Success! There was another B&B about four miles up the road, the maître d' told me, called Edgewood. So I was off with renewed energy in my legs, looking for a white house on a hill. I found one, after about two miles, not four, and it was the Red Hill B&B, not Edgewood. I didn't care much, so I pulled into the pebbled driveway, walked up to the door, and asked for lodging. They had a room! And the proprietress’s name was Betty Crocker.
 I got the pink room, and it was lovely because it had a) a bed b) a shower and c) a ceiling fan. I showered, changed into my unstinky socializin' clothes, and chatted with Betty in the living room over tall glasses of dark brown iced tea. After awhile her husband Emmett came home (she called him "Crocker"), and we talked about my route, his trips out West and, eventually, food. I realized as I was toweling off earlier that I probably shouldn't fire up the camp stove in the pink room, and had resigned myself to Clif bars and whatever dehydrated desert items I could make with unboiled water. Emmett had a better idea: he'd drop me off at the Indian Valley Tavern. Blessed Emmett!
 So, we piled into his pickup and I listened to Hank Williams tunes on the XM Satellite radio while Emmett told me about farming. There are roughly twenty farmers in the Charles City area, controlling anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 acres. They grow corn, wheat, oats, and soy...the spring wheat and oats were already in the fields, about 14 inches high and newly green, but the corn was shorter than it ought to be because of the dry April. The rain that spattered me in the Sheriff's office parking lot never developed into a full-blown shower, although it did cut the heat a bit, and the bulk of the storm stayed on the other side of the river.
I saw the maître d' once more, this time a bit more presentable and a lot less sweat-drenched. He apologetically told me they only had seating available on the porch, as though that wasn't exactly where I wanted to sit. I drank my first glass of ice water by pouring it on my head and absorbing it into my skin, and it was quickly refilled by young waitress Jessie, pretty and blonde with a voice and manner that suggested self-esteem issues and, probably, a string of dopey South'ren boyfriends. But she was tending to the other table on the porch; my meal was handled tag-tem by a tall waiter-fellow named Karl and the maître d', who set off my gaydar in a bit of a Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil sort of way, only without the Savannahn weirdness.
In the spirit of having finally closed on the house, I ordered an appetizer of smoked Surrey sausages with black-eyed pea relish, and an entree of duck confit over grits with a blackberry sauce and collards prepared Southern-style (that is, with bacon and lots of lemon). There was fresh-baked yellow bread in the basket, and a glass of locally produced straw-colored wine. I hadn't thought to bring my laptop or my paperback, but I was content to sit on the screened-in porch at the end of my first full day of riding, sipping cold wine, looking out across the fields of new wheat, and watching the swallows swoop through the trees.
After dinner I chatted a bit with the maître d' on the porch - he's a transplanted New Yorker, and a few minutes of conversation confirmed my gaydar reading. We talked about my trip and the restaurant's cats - one friendly, with a curiously folded-over ear and a preoccupation with invisible insects, and one unfriendly, that sat under a rocking chair on the porch and glowered balefully at the world.
While I waited for Emmett, I watched more dark clouds gather in the sky, including one cotton-ball cloud that grew swollen, fat and towering as it hit the moist air over the James River, about five miles distant. But, true to Emmett's prediction, the clouds and the needed rain stayed on the other side of it. He has butter and snap beans in his garden that haven't come up yet because it's been so dry, and it looked like it was going to stay that way.
 Back at the B&B, he told me about the storms that had come through back in '98 and took down a dozen or more of the trees on the property - cypress, dogwoods, gum trees. That winter, there was an ice storm that took down a couple more, and turned the pine grove across the road into a battlefield, with the creaking and groaning ice echoing like cannonfire.
Later that night I did bathtub laundry, although I'm sure Betty would've let me run a load through their washer if I had asked. I hung the cloths on the shower bar to dry, and was about to open the bathroom window to get some air moving when I saw that the space between the window and the screen was swarming with roughly eight billion different kinds of light-seeking insects. I backed away slowly, and shortly thereafter encountered a half-inch cockroach, staring at me with beady little eyes from the windowsill in the bedroom.
Now, this is not in any way a slight against Betty Crocker's housekeeping - the first thing she did when she showed me the room was bend down and pick a tiny bit of fuzz off the carpet. I've heard of these Southern roaches - travel journalist Joy Williams wrote,
Palmetto bugs, the southern cockroach, are very big, and shiny, too. You'll see them in the best of places as well as in the wilds. At a pool party at an elegant home, a guest was heard to exclaim, "Oh, look at the little turtles!" as a family of these creepies lumbered across the patio. If you crush them, there is a terrible smell of almonds.
I didn't get to smell that terrible smell, though...my movement towards the thing with a wad of tissue caused it to spiral down off the windowsill with an alarming buzz of wings and disappear under the bed. I decided not to worry about it, and soon slept the sleep of Those Who Pedal Much.
The experience was tainted a bit when I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon Wireless this morning being a belligerent customer. They cocked-up my electronic payment and shut off my phone again, which immediately threw me back into the crazed state of Thursday morning that was so much fun for me and everyone else. It's an anger based on fear, I think...fear that they'll never fix it, and that it will end my trip or harm me in some way, which is ridiculous. I ended up leaving Red Hill feeling agitated and petty, which I don't really need in my life. I can't control customer service foul-ups, but I can control how I react to them, so I'll pay a bit more attention to that.
Today's journey: 35 miles to the Holiday Inn Express in Mechanicsville. Until my legs shape up and campgrounds (or campable areas) become more plentiful, I'm probably going to be spending more time sleeping in buildings than in forests.
As Pea e-mailed when I told her about lodging at Betty Crocker's house: nothing wrong with eeeasing into things.
May 28, 2006
Three Small Things I Have Learned
One: leave early.
Two: pack up the night before.
Three: when Schering-Plough HealthCare Products put the words "Won't clog pores or cause breakouts" on tubes of their Coppertone Oil Free SPF 45 Sunblock Lotion, they were lying.
Tomorrow will be a very light riding day - just fifteen miles to an Americamps campground in Ashland. I really can't afford to stay in hotels like this...more than half of the house proceeds are going to pay off other debt, so I need to start economizing immediately.
I've still got work to do on my animation and tech writing projects, but I just couldn't focus today as my body recovered from the first three days of riding and built some new leg muscle from the protein I paid too much for at local restaurants. It seems like the best thing to do now is make a short run to the campground, arriving early enough in the day to set up the laptop and solar panels so that I'll have enough battery juice left to work after dark if I need to.
So I'll enjoy my last night in the big fluffy bed, and tomorrow morning I'll scarf up a bunch of free, carbo-laden Continental Breakfast before I head out.
May 29, 2006
Fog?!
EAST WINDS HAVE BROUGHT IN A MOIST...MARINE LAYER OVERNIGHT...WITH
WIDESPREAD FOG MAINLY FROM I 95 ON EAST. ALONG THE WESTERN EXTENT
OF THE FOG...VISIBILITIES ARE REPORTED TO BE LESS THAN ONE QUARTER
OF A MILE IN PLACES...MAINLY ALONG THE I 95 CORRIDOR...INCLUDING ASHLAND...
RICHMOND...PETERSBURG...EMPORIA...AND ROANOKE RAPIDS.
Well. This is certainly unexpected.
Anyway: I'm off!
Welcome To My Office
 After a short and pleasant ride, I arrived at the Americamps campgrounds, the owner of which is an enlightened being who knows that bicycles (and tricycles) are not the same as cars, and therefore charges for tent sites accordingly: eight dollars. Heaps of blessings on that man.
I'm getting better at this. I arrivedand set up my tent and office in about twenty minutes. My office has:
-Natural carpeting
-Excellent ventilation
-65 watts of off-the-grid solar powery goodness
-A 398/117 kpbs download/upload Internet connection
-Snacks
Of course, as I was writing this, the DC-DC converter decided to misbehave, which gave me several "What do I do now?" moments, but it seems to be working again. I'll have to contact the folks at CT Solar and see if it's got some kind of thermister in that shuts it down when it gets too hot - it seemed to perk up after I moved the Black Box into the shade under the picnic table.
That said: the power meter on the laptop battery is still decreasing, which means I'm pulling juice out of it faster than the panels can put it back in, so I've got to sign off and get to work while I still can.
Solar Mechanics
 Getting solar panels to efficiently do what they’re supposed to is a matter of angles. Right angles, to be precise. You want the panels to be at 90 degrees in relation to incoming solar photons. So, when it’s noon and the sun is directly overhead, your panels can be flat on the ground, like mine are here. But when the sun is lower in the sky, to the east or west, you have to angle the panels up to catch more of the photonic goodness and make it into electricity to run your blender so you can make margaritas.
All of which I recalled at about 3:30 this afternoon, after stewing over the fact that even with 65 rated watts of capacity, I still couldn’t run the laptop off the panels without draining its battery. So, I decided to make piles out of the abundant drifts of pine needles around the campsite, and angle the panels that way. But as the sun sank lower in the sky, the shadows of the trees advanced on my little solar array, and each time I moved it I had to drag the panels east a bit, taking care not to yank any important wires out of the Black Box, then make new pine needle piles and find a way to shade the Box and the laptop so that they wouldn’t burst into flames.
If only I had some sort of wheeled device, maybe with some swing arms on it. That way I could angle the panels, and wheel the whole contraption around when shadows encroached.
The solution was, of course, the 40,000-pound trailer I’ve been dragging around with me. I unhitched it from the trike, deployed the PVC-pipe swing arms I had grafted onto its luggage rack, and made cunning use of bungie cords. I discovered that the aluminum luggage rack had another set of notches in it, so I could angle that even farther upwards. The trailer itself provided ample shade for the Black Box and the laptop, and I caught rays until around five thirty, charging the battery to 99% of capacity.
Folks around here wave a lot. If they’re driving by and they catch your eye, they’ll wave. The campsite is right next to a road, separated by a split-rail fence, so all afternoon people were seeing my solar rig by the side of the road, then me at the picnic table, and waving hello. Not the most back-to-nature place (I can see distant traffic on I-95 through my tent’s front screen), but it’s cheap, it has clean shower stalls with doors and benches to sit on, and I got some honest-to-god work done sitting at the picnic table until dusk.
The headlights that occasionally shine into the tent might get annoying…but probably not. I sleep well these days.
Earlier this afternoon, after I had set up camp but before I put the tarp over the trike, a pair of young boys wandered over to check it out. The younger of the two, who had some sort of makeshift upper arm tattoo-thing going on, was enthusiastic about it, pointing out the pedals and making the cool-style noises that kids make. The older boy wasn’t so sure. “So do you just travel around?” he wanted to know. I told him I was headed for California. “On a bicycle?” he blurted, sounding incredulous. It’s a trike, I thought, but I just said yep. “See ya,” he shot back, sounding almost angry, as though I thought he was a dumb kid and I was trying to put one over on him.
Yeah, kid. I’m really riding this thing to California.
 And right now, I’m blogging from inside my tent. I said I’d do that, too, and now I’m doing it.
How very, very odd…and yet, in any given moment, it’s often utterly unremarkable. This morning I had Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends on the television at the hotel. Less than six hours later I was trundling a cobbled-together solar array around on a bed of fallen pine needles, chasing the sun’s dying rays with the omnipresent rush of interstate highway noise filling the air. Just solving a problem, that’s all.
Within its own context, it makes all kinds of sense; it’s only when I remember that less than a week ago I was almost physically, not to mention mentally, ill with real-estate induced stress that it becomes odd. And when I recall that a month before that I lived in a house, with a girlfriend, a bedroom painted Whimsical Blue, and two cats, it becomes bizarre and nonsensical. When I unrolled my pack-towel in the shower this evening, a small cascade of sawdust burst from it…because it used to be in the garage, where my power saws were, and that sawdust was probably from wood that I cut to replace the rotted frame of the living room window.
It’s been 98.5 miles since Yorktown, but those miles seem arbitrary compared to the various distances growing between myself, right now, and where I used to be. I haven’t used my iPod yet because the thought of music…an intense soundtrack to accompany my rapidly changing states of mind and soul…is almost too much to bear.
This afternoon, though, I whistled as I rode: Just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing/Ring ting tingle-ing too/Come on, it's lovely weather/For a sleigh ride together with you. I swear it cooled me off a bit.
It's almost time for bed. Big day tomorrow, a nearly fifty mile push to Mineral, there to (hopefully) camp for free on the grounds of the local volunteer fire department house.
I will leave you with this: a pinecone at sunset. In the background, you can see the mountains of needles I piled up to angle my solar panels.
May 30, 2006
Thank God For The Volunteer Fire Department Of Mineral, Virginia
40 miles in 93-degree heat means a Head that is not so much Astonished as burnt to a crisp and exhausted. But I am in a place with space for a tent and a shower, which is pretty much heaven.
More later. Now: route planning, then sleep.
May 31, 2006
In All Its...Her...? Whatever! Glory...
 Over at Vanx's place, I noted some sort of-requests for better pictures of the GTO trike.
Maybe this one will suffice. Click the thumbnail for big 1046x856 258.28K picturey goodness of the trike rigged for on-the-road solar charging.
Due to yet another day of scorching sun and bad planning, I've landed in yet another B&B, which ordinarily would be cause for much rejoicing, except that I'm supposed to be in a cheap campground tonight. More on that later.
Right now I've got to chill out. I've been out of the sun for two hours, and I still feel it on my crispy skin...
So Anyway...
 ...yesterday I was on the road for eight hours in 93+ heat, dig? I was only riding for about five and a half of those hours, the rest of the time I spent trying not to die. I have not yet achieved true knowledge of the Way of Leaving Early. It took me longer than I expected or wanted to leave the Ashland campground, and by the time the sun had completed its transformation from yellow-faced giver of life to white-hot destroyer of all I was well into what turned out to be a very, very tough day on the road. I had 70 ounces of water in the CamelBak, another 6 liters in the big red Dromlite, and a full water bottle. But by 11:30AM, I had sweated out too much salt and other electrolyte-style chemicals...I needed Gatorade, or some equivalent, but there were no general stores to be found.
At one point, I came across the Coatesville Baptist church, a low brick building with a small graveyard and what looked to be a barbecue pit, pavilion, and outbuilding behind it. I pulled in, fearing that I wasn't carrying enough water to get through the day. Success! There was a well spigot out back. I turned it on full blast, filled up the Dromlite, and dumped it all over my head. The delicious shock of that is difficult to describe...a quick, condensed burst, like shivering from long exposure to cold, all at once. "God that's better than sex!" I said out loud to no one. Then I did it again.
Back on the road and once again feeling the red edge of Too Much Sun, I remembered that I had a small shaker of salt with me: three salty palm-licks later, I was in better shape. Then I had to stop fifteen minutes later and boil up a bag of beef stew so I'd have something to run on, because I had burned off my breakfast in just over two hours.
Did I mention it was hot?
I passed by an abandoned general store, with twin Coca-Cola logos faded to bleached pink and flaked white on its signage. Which made me want a big cold bottle of the bubbly stuff...I peered into the store's windows as I passed, hoping that it only looked abandoned, or that there would be a single forgotten Coke machine in the dusty sunbeams, still plugged in and full of chilled glass bottles for a nickel apiece, with Rod Serling hiding behind it.
 Then: up the next hill and around the corner, its sign rising towards the boiling heavens like a beacon of not-Coke, I saw it! Verbeeck's Country Store! Run by one John Verbeeck, who keeps a journal for cyclists passing through to sign, dating back two years. All I could manage to write was "Hot. Coke is good. www.astonishedhead.com, Ian Wood." Despite the sign, there was cold Coke, plus Powerade, a box of graham crackers, and a brown banana that was near-mush but delightful anyway. I chatted with John for a bit, he admired the trike, with its shiny solar panels in full deployment, and I headed back out into the haze.
By the time I was within five miles of Mineral, I had nothing left. I was hydrated well enough, but out of muscle fuel. The map indicated free camping on the grounds of the Volunteer Fire Department, and I found the building easily enough - Mineral is literally a one-stoplight town - but I couldn't think properly anymore. There was the building, but no obvious signage. It didn't look like anyone was there, so I sort of drifted onto a side street and made a U-turn, at which point a guy in a PT Cruiser stopped on the other side of the street to get a closer look at the trike. We got to talking back and forth across the road, and he pulled his car around and came over to chat. Our conversation was interrupted as he waved or shouted greetings to every third car that drove past. At one point, someone else pulled over into a nearby parking lot to give him some sort of fundraising letter for their church. There were introductions all around, summarizations of my journey, and an offer to pray for me (which is always welcome...can't hurt).
There was talk of a campground about five miles up the road...I was steeling myself for another five miles that I just did not have in me when the fellow suddenly let out a piercing whistle, summoning a pickup truck that was pulling out onto the road a block or two down.
In the pickup was Hank. Hank is a Volunteer Fireman, and he is like a god to me.
He showed me the grounds behind the firehouse. He took me into said firehouse, which was full of fire trucks and, most importantly, a blessedly air-conditioned hallway that led to the holiest of holies: a shower.
So, I essentially rolled into Mineral out of my mind from the sun, and by staying in one place for a few minutes I attracted curiosity, then assistance, stumbling into a place to sleep and shower through sheer, random hospitality. I even made it to the Almost Heaven Bar-B-Que half an hour before it closed, feeding my salt-starved cells with a pulled-pork sandwich and onion rings.
Today was a bit better, but only a bit - a high of 87 which, by the time I reached Palmyra, didn't feel too much different from 93. No one was answering the phone at the campground I was thinking about using, about five miles away on Lake Monticello. The B&B I was going to use as backup was - surprise! - no longer in business, which led to the Fourth Small Thing I Have Learned: always check the Adventure Cycling website for recent map updates.
But after another phone call, I ended up renting a small cottage at the 1831 Inn and Restaurant - the Innkeeper knocked 10% of the normal rate. Still more than I wanted to spend, but I'm done for the day, and here I am, so I'm not going to fret too terribly much about it. The Restaurant part is only open Thursday through Sundays, so I boiled me up a bag of Spaghetti with Meatsauce, using my camp stove on the brick hearth of the fireplace.
Tomorrow: just 26 miles to Charlottesville, where I'll hole up for a couple of days to recuperate, do some work, and wait out the thunderstorms that are going to blow through here on Friday.
Now I must sleep, having maybe ironed out half of the lumps in the preceding lumpy narrative.
"Ironed out the lumps"?
Definitely time for bed.
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