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June 08, 2006
Yowza, Yowza, Yow...Zzzzz....
 OK, here's another small thing I have learned: when you have an opportunity to eat pasta, do so.
Yesterday's amazing ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway was followed up by a slog today, no doubt the result of not taking advantage of the aforementioned pasta last night and my legs having used up most of their go-juice getting to Vesuvius.
Right now I am ensconced in the KOA Kampground, too close to the sort of people who apparently cannot grasp the idea that no one else wants to hear their goddamned music. Some people just need to be beaten, that's all there is to it. If I weren't so tired I'd take care of it myself, but right now my fatigue levels are high.
As soon as I got here I needed to fight off a fat and bold squirrel (there were casualties), and now I'm needing to fight off sleep just to get this meager post out. I have a lot of photos and some video to process, and if I can manage to get two or three brain cells to fire in sequence I might take care of some of that later tonight.
And if I don't: I have work to do tomorrow, which means that posting here will prove to be an irresistable distraction.
June 09, 2006
Cookie Lady Post
In order to keep things in vaguely chronological order, the new Cookie Lady post is up in the June 6 section. Scroll down to read it, or just click here. I also have to post the Blue Ridge Parkway stuff, and it'll be the same deal: back-dated to the actual day of the tale, with a pointer post telling you where it is.
Meanwhile: I've decided that "Rest Days" are to be re-named "non-Triking Days," because I seem to spend most of them doing everything but pedaling.
Tomorrow will be a 33-mile day, to a town park in Troutville, VA. The day after that will be a big, 50-mile push to an Econo Lodge in Christiansburg, at which point (if I make it) I will have finished the first of the 12 maps I'm using to navigate.
June 10, 2006
Mornings Are Tough
When he was my age, my friend and mentor Gary spent a year and a half traveling the world, celebrating his 34th birthday in Katmandu. It was a "time no object, money no object" sort of travelling, a more or less unfettered wandering through places and situations exotic and banal. But, he told me, about two months in, he crashed hard: is this what I want to be doing? Just one experience after another? Depressed and lost, he ended up at a Buddhist monastery somewhere in Southeast Asia, there to recover his direction and renew himself.
Virginia is a bit short on Buddhist monasteries, which may or may not be unfortunate...I'm not entirely sure how much I'd benefit from sitting still, when it seems to be in my nature to vibrate at a high rate of speed. But I'm quite certain I would benefit from the resultant "letting go," because the farther I get in time and space from my life that was, the more I can feel the cords that connect me to that life stretching and pulling, becoming painful.
This is about more than just my relationship with Pea...the pain I'm talking about is a kind of clinging-by-the-fingertips to the old comforts, the old ways of doing things, the security that came with a roof over my head, a regular income, a shower with multiple bars of soap, a grocery store within driving distance, a couch in front of the television, blankets, and on and on. The more I hang on to all of the things that I have chosen to separate myself from, the worse the yearning and discomfort becomes.
Foolish, yes?
But I've never claimed I wasn't a fool. Or, I might've adopted a certain...attitude, from time to time, but there is a certain measure of foolish lunacy to this endeavor that can't be denied. Then again, that lunacy is defined by the same criteria which make my hanging on to the comfortable things of the past a perfectly rational response...but when the "rational response" results in unhappiness, how "rational" can it actually be? Does it make any sense at all to seek out unhappiness?
Of course not, and that's not why I'm out here. I'm thinking, now, that this anxious sense of strained attachment, this long, bungie-like webbing that is now nearly 1,000 miles and three weeks long, is of a piece with the same sticky anxiety that has plagued me, it seems, throughout my entire life. A refusal to allow what is in the past to remain there, so that there is a constant tugging on my heart and soul that causes my chest to fill with heavy dread, a fluttering, nervous pulse that could only temporarily be salved with alcohol, drugs, or some other distraction.
Thus: I am always restrained, bound, tied to the past. My progress through life becomes slow and tortured, rather than a movement of ease and grace.
Over the last two or three months, as the final sale of the house became more of a reality - demonstrated by the packing of things into boxes, and the increasing number of "last time I'll do this" experiences - I would awake in the mornings in a near-panic. My eyes would flash open, and my heart would pound, and I would think, "Oh God, I'm awake again," as the escape of sleep fled and receded.
That still happens...I awake and stare at the white nylon of my tent roof and breathe in the chilly morning air, thinking, "What am I doing?"
But I suspect that I do know what I'm doing: I'm forcing the issue. The part of me that listens for the voices in the wind has managed to put me in a place where I can hear more clearly, if I will allow it.
Now, it's time to pack up and pedal away from this place, to another place.
...And Afternoons Are Sweet
 [Note: many of the photos in posts are now clickable, and open biggified versions of themselves.]
Soon, hopefully, I will shake the big fear that haunts my mornings, as I gain more knowledge of what it is I can do in a day.
Natural Bridge is a rock formation etched by the action of water, and was purchased by Thomas Jefferson from King George for 20 shillings. These days, it's a touristy place that I was briefly tempted to visit, along with the accompanying wax museum (rock formation, wax museum...a perfect match, yes?). But there was a longish hill to climb. And besides: if I stopped to see the rock with the hole in it, I wouldn't have time to visit Foamhenge. That's right: a henge made of giant foam blocks. Feast your eyes.
I finally got to ride what I consider to be "rolling hills": steep hills that are spaced so that you can fly down one and most of the way up the other without pedaling. Once you get up the first hill, it's like a little roller coaster.  There were four or five of them in a row (swoop!) and then a steep descent into a valley where I spent most of the day enjoying the first truly flat terrain of the entire trip, riding along a narrow, low-traffic road that ran between a stream and railroad tracks. The temperature was a breezy 77 degrees, and there were just enough high clouds in the sky to keep the worst of the sun at bay.
But what truly made the day was the iPod. By picking carefully and choosing music that wasn't terribly fraught with memory, I was able to create a sweet soundtrack for the ride. When I came out of the valley on the approach to Troutville, Jamie Cullum's Catching Tales made the climbs fly by.  Despite the work, the sweat, and my twingy knee, I was positively bouyant. Music has always had a tremendous capacity to transport me, which is one of the reasons why I've been reluctant to use the iPod until now: I needed to focus on the trike and the trailer, to feel how they worked together, through my hands on the steering bars, my feet on the pedals, and my butt in the seat mesh. That way, if something mechanical gets out of whack, I don't necessarily have to hear it to know about it. Plus, I needed to attain a general comfort level with being on unfamiliar roads before I began to rely more on my mirrors and less on my ears. Now, though...the music just adds so much to the ride.
I reached the town park in Troutville by 1:30, where I saw: lots of kids on playground equipment; a chain link fence surrounding the park with a gate too narrow to easily admit the trike; a loud, long train passing by about thirty feet from where I'd have my tent; and a sign saying No Bicycles, Roller Blades, Skateboards, blah blah blah. Not feeling the love, I busted out the paper map and discovered four or five motel choices not three miles away. And I am now sitting on a bed in the Daleville Econo Lodge. I left a message on the Troutville Town Hall's answering machine, explaining that I had pressed on.
I know, I know: motels bad, can do that anywhere, and so on. I really do like my tent, you know. But I must confess that the shower with its scrubby washcloth and free soap was most welcome. And I feel good, here, unlike the motel in Charlottesville, where I was tired, fried, huddled in bed watching cartoons, and feeling nauseated. Yeah, I'm on a bed now, and there are cartoons, but I'm writing to you fine folks and actually looking forward to tomorrow's ride, instead of steeling myself for it. That's a first.
June 11, 2006
Rain Delay
 It's one thing to get rained on when you're already underway...quite another to leave when it's already raining.
The NOAA weather reports for this area are a bit of a crapshoot. Everywhere I've been in Virginia, people have said how much they need the rain...it's dry in the valleys, with fire hazard warnings everywhere. Generally, the weathermasters have put the odds of rain at somewhere between 30% and 50%, and it hasn't rained on me yet.
This morning, though, it's actually raining, with a chance of thunderstorms later this afternoon. Thunderstorms around here are brief, intense showers that dramatically reduce visibility. And they hurt: big, pelty drops that sting. Tomorrow, it will also rain, but the worst of it will be happen before 8AM and it will clear up by the afternoon.
I was planning to stay in Christiansburg for a couple of days anyway, so if I stay another day here in Daleville instead, when I leave tomorrow I'll at least know that the weather system is moving off and I won't have to spend all 48 miles in the rain. Also, it'll be safer to ride into town at the end of the day when the weather's cleared a bit and visibility is better.
That's the thing about motels: they tend to create inertia.
Not that staying in a warm dry room with cartoons when it's raining out is a particularly hard decision...
Blue Ridge Parkway Post...
...is up in the June 7 section. Scroll down, or just click here.
June 12, 2006
Misty Mountain Hop
I left Daleville bound for Christiansburg at about 8AM, under thick gray skies. There was some rain, mostly just mist and some light drizzle - the first test of the fairing. It did a fine job of keeping my feet, legs, and lap dry, but had an unfortunate tendency to throw the water beaded on its surface into my face if I hit a hard bump at speed. All in all, though, it proved its worth, especially on the downhills, where it kept chilly air off my damp chest. I was able to stay comfortable most of the morning wearing just my Gore-Tex jacket, and the sun began to peek through the cloud layer a little before noon.
Riding along Gravelly Ridge was an atmospheric experience, with North Mountain to my distant right and Catawba Mountain closer on my left. The clouds were so low that they caught on the trees, turning into mist that curled and crawled its way down into the low places of the mountainside.
By the time the first shreds of blue sky were showing overhead, I was well into a 15-mile long mostly downhill run, which I was able to ride at a high average speed due to my discovery of a particular set of gears that allowed me to run up rolling grades at more than twice my usual pokey pace. My leg strength has improved so much that I can pedal in gear ratios that I haven't really been able to use before. So I sailed up and down the ridgeline, listening to Al DiMeola's speedy fingers on my iPod and ignoring the inevitable bill that would come due when the downhill ended.
Still, it kept going, and going, and going...nice and straight, for the most part, with some curves that were easily navigable with a touch on the brakes and a good lean. I paid for it when I reached Ellett: a stiff climb to get over the mountain northeast of Christiansburg, particularly tough as the climb came at the tail end of a long day's ride.
My total mileage for the day was 49, which is the most I've done in a day and about what I'm aiming for as a daily average. I did it with six hours, seven minutes of pedaling and two hours, twenty minutes of rest. The GPS tells me these things. It also tells me that my maximum speed was 54.7 miles per hour, but I'm pretty sure it's lying...a couple of days ago I watched it tell me that I was traveling at over a thousand miles per hour while standing in a field near my campsite. Usually it's accurate, but sometimes it can get confused about figuring miles per hour if it can't find all its satellite buddies.
I was downright giddy when I finally got into my room here in Christiansburg: I was tired, but not wiped out; my knees were complaining, but not screaming. I've further increased my knowledge of what it is possible for me to do in a day.
That said: I am tired. Christiansburg marks the end of the first of twelve maps that cover my trip from Virginia to Oregon. I have pedaled 384 miles, give or take a few. I'm probably going to spend the next couple of days here, and push to get my work done so that I don't have to be bothered with it anymore. I'm also going to work on an annotated Google map so that you folks can see where I've been.
June 14, 2006
Where Am I?
Working, that's where I am.
I've started to more fully realize that this journey is a lifestyle, rather than a vacation or a trip with a specified endpoint. This was the plan from the beginning...otherwise, I wouldn't be carrying all the gear I need to make working from the road viable. But it's taken me awhile to figure out what that actually entails: work - being the activity that makes me a bit of money and thus keeps body, soul, and trike together - is something I need to be making room for as I travel, instead of squeezing it in here and there.
That means that stopping here in Christiansburg for a several days, instead of just one or two, is an appropriate action, rather than a delay or an interruption. For the next several months, this is what I do: pedal from place to place, work on my small projects, post to the website. I don't have a pre-defined end date, just a destination. If I've got work to do, I find a place with three-prong sockets and a desk and I do the work.
Having decided that makes it easier for me to focus on the tasks at hand, instead of being distracted by the expense of a motel room and the feeling that I really should be on the trike pedaling and sweating.
As always, I'm fascinated, if I do say so myself, by the "technology" of the mind: a deliberate and willful shift in perspective reduces anxiety, promotes productivity, and generally makes me more comfortable. (Up in the sky! It's: Captain Obvious!!!) This perspective shift will come in handy when it's time to start writing articles for magazines and so forth.
Now: back to work.
The Astonished Headmap
You can now see where I've been by clicking the On The Road: The Map link on the left (or just click here now).
It might take a while to load, but once it's done, you can zoom in, and click on the markers for names and dates. At some point I'll add links to posts that relate to the location markers.
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