I've been asked why I'd consider riding a bike across the country. I suppose it's important for me to investigate this question, because it's not all that obvious to everyone.
The answer is multifaceted. It has the obvious aspect of seeing the country and places I've never been. It has the dubiously attractive aspect of fleeing everything I know for weeks and months on end. It is reckless in the way that anyone would recognize, as I live hand to mouth with my chosen family as it is, and it would mean upheaval of almost everything and I would likely lose my very decent job. It is a dream that I fear I will fail at seeing through, despite the support of the people I love and my slow but steady collection of information on touring.
It's all I think about these days. If I'm not reading blogs and articles on bicycle touring, I'm scouring Craigslist for a good, cheap touring bike. I spend a lot of time wondering how much it'll cost to buy all I need without settling for crap gear.
The hooping aspiration isn't just for the love of hooping. It is, but it isn't. I'm also imagining my collapsible hoop bungeed to the back of my bike, at the ready to entertain. I want to be someone that other people want to meet, and maybe someone that people will want to take care of if it comes down to that. Like as if I were a stray, people will feed me if they want me to stick around. But like I said, it is also about my love for hooping and the beauty of the talent. My friend Annie is an excellent hoop dancer, has a fire hoop and performs for people who adore her for it.
I've always had a fair amount of envy for people who were able to just get up and leave. Not just able monetarily, but that it's an allowance in their life at all. That they can and that they do. Granted, this is going to take a lot of planning, budgeting and a lot of money that I know I won't have; also, it's not like I'm going to wander off into the Catskills and make a home of a hemlock stump, but still.
As a child, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George resonated with me. Before reading that, I remember packing things up to take off to the forest preserve when I was probably younger than ten, planning on making my way in what I had perceived to be the wilderness. Later, I built lean-tos out of fallen limbs in the woods surrounding my family's cottage in northern Wisconsin. Related, but different; I remember at about eighteen years old, the first time I decided to go on a (car) road trip on my own to meet my online boyfriend in Ohio. I was driving, drunk with the exhilaration of being out, alone and doing my own thing.
So, the idea of striking out on my own to do something so significant appeals to me. It appeals to the core of who I am and who I've always been. The camping and surviving I'll need to do is something I feel like I've been hungry for all my life.
Just a few months ago, I had decided that I was going to actively try to have a baby. I was charting my fertility and the whole nine yards. Maybe all the baby talk is part of why I feel so desperately that I need to do something like my bike tour. Maybe I just need to get more done.
I love adventure. I collect experiences. I once participated in a research study in which I had to have four brain MRIs in a month, only in part because of the $400 I was paid for it. I just had never had an MRI before.
People treat me well for whichever reason. Maybe it's because I'm friendly. Maybe it's because I smile all the time. But it's true, people tend to treat me well more often than not. I don't rely on it, it just happens. This isn't an example of motivation to go, but maybe a reason I'm not so afraid to.
Because people treat me well, I think I've been spoiled. I would welcome being wrong about the kindness of strangers as a learning opportunity. I would welcome the opportunity to solve my own problems all by myself in the middle of nowhere.
I'm afraid of having nothing interesting to say. When I'm old, I want to be able to tell stories that people would want to hear over and over.
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