Mood:  hug me

I feel like such an alien!

For instance, the Don't Diet, Live-It Workbook I'm using as a tool to learn to deal with my "food, body, and weight issues" is really just a book of "Okay, you should have learned this in first grade, but since you didn't, it's okay that you're learning it now at whatever age you happen to be.  Let's begin: this emotion (yes, we know that's a big, scary word) is anger.  This is how you feel anger.  This is how you express anger in a less healthy way.  This is how you express anger in a more healthy way.  Okay, now you try!  See?  You can do it. Good for you!  Now continue on to the next chapter, where you'll learn how to say 'no' when you mean 'no.'"  I'm not knocking it, I think it's probably a really healthy and necessary tool.  I'm just saying it contributes to my feeling of being an alien.  Seriously, I need a book to teach me how to feel angry?  That's really very funny because I've learned just about everything from a book.  And, yes, apparently I do need the assistance of a book to help me get comfortable with feeling angry and with expressing it in an unhealthy way (As I've mentioned, I'm very good at expressing it in healthy ways when I actually face it and decide to express it.)

And I'm an alien even among my best friends.  I was a girl who didn't have much in common with girls when I was growing up.  My female friends always had another girl with whom they were closer friends and I was always the third wheel.  It was Chris & Stacey and, oh yeah, Kris or Kathy & Diane and, oh, there's Kris.  Luckily, I think?, I got adopted by a group of geek guys who at least talked about more interesting subjects and seemed to like having me around.  These guys are still my best friends.  Tad is my spiritual, philosophical, artistic soul mate.  Chad is my grounded in the real world but still interested in the bigger picture best friend (until his twins were born and now he's hubby, daddy, scientist who has little time to even think of anything else).  Scott is my alternative, fringe, ethereal in a grounded kind of way, Gen X hippie friend who lives off the beaten path not all that far from where I live and who helps me push my boundaries when they need to be pushed.  (He is an experience maker extraordinaire!)  There are other sweet men who have played various parts in my life (but you'll have to read my new novel to find out exactly what parts) and somehow these super smart, engaged, funny, nerdy guys have all managed to stay friends with each other and with me.  Most of them are married now and while the wives are mostly tolerant of the guys wanting to get together, none of them (except maybe Kristin?) really want to hang around with the group during those get-togethers.  I, however, still love to hang around.  Sort of. Individually, I know where I stand with all but a few of the guys and we get along great and we can talk for hours on the phone and I can say what I want and take emotional risks and know that if they laugh there is love behind it.  But, something happens when we're in a group.  Somehow I revert back to the shy high school girl who was afraid to say too much for fear the guys might figure out she wasn't as smart as she was made out to be.  I lose my center and get hyper-sensitive and nervous.  At least, I'm assuming that's still the case as that was my experience the last two times I saw them, although I was really only unhinged half of the time during my most recent visit.  (And since I am lucky to see them once every two years in person, it's not like I get a lot of practice being in their physical presence.)

And the same thing seems to happen on the Internet.  At the last gathering I attended two years ago, the guys agreed to include me on their private listserv and it's wonderful because now I feel like I'm still in the loop (after several years of being out of the loop; again, I refer you to the forthcoming novel). But it's only wonderful right up until the moment when I send an email to the group or reply to a message sent from someone else.  Then I become an alien again.  And it's AWFUL.  

I understand that what I'm feeling comes from me judging myself and putting thoughts into the guys' heads.  None of them has ever, in email or with one exception even in person, made fun of me in a mean way, questioned what I'm doing hanging around, or made me feel intellectually stupid.  And, yet, I anticipate them laughing at me and feel stupid and awkward the moment I hit the send button on the email.  And it haunts me, sometimes for weeks.  Because, even among my oldest and best friends, I am an alien.  They are guys.  Their brains are structurally and chemically different than mine.  They only respond to posts they find really interesting because they're guys and why would they spend time responding to a post they didn't find really interesting....  They don't respond to mine.  And apparently my humor doesn't play well electronically either.  I think Joe is the only one who has ever e-laughed at one of my jokes--bless you, Joe!!  So I send my not very interesting links and comments out into oblivion along with my not very funny jokes and I hear nothing in return.  And I remember that I am an alien.  Our differences may be in part due to the fact that one of their X chromosomes mutated to a Y very early in their development.  But then, why don't I have more in common with other XX's? 

In my favorite poem I've written, I make reference to the fact that marbles, no matter how tightly you squeeze them together in your hand, only touch each other at a single point at any given time.  It feels like so little, to touch at only one point when I want to psychologically and emotionally link up with another person along the length of a whole plane, and yet I am so grateful for those moments when I get that one point of contact for even the briefest of moments. 

It is so difficult knowing you are part of the continuum, part of the whole, a strand without whom the entire design would be flawed, part of all that lives and has ever lived and will ever live, while at the same time feeling like you are an alien who has come to Earth and is learning everything way too late and taking everything way too seriously and trying really, really hard to fit in and yet still missing that one thing that you can't quite put your finger on.  Does that one thing even exist?  And if it does and if you had it, then you wouldn't be you any more but would you really fit in?

Mitch Ditkoff argues that people blog to connect with themselves.  I can see his point that blogging is a way for people to slow down and figure out how they really feel or think about something--writing in any medium can serve this purpose.  But I think he might be wrong when it comes to blogging.  I think people blog at least in part as a means of shining a light into the night in the hopes that someone will signal back.  When we ping the search engines to let them know we've registered a new thought, we're pinging the Universe hoping intelligent life will ping in response.  Or am I alone on this point, too?

Posted by Kristine at 1:25 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, July 3, 2008 9:26 AM EDT

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Mood:  happy

I am definitely writing now.  I wake up nearly every day with a new idea for a short story and I've started having to stop in the middle of my day to write down a thought or observation that would work in the "novel" or in another story.  I am fully ON.  This is great! and scary....  If I just stick with the moment, do my writing, record my observations, all is well.  The scariness comes in when I remember that this state of constant engagement has come and gone in the past...meaning it could go again at any time.  What I'm trying to remind myself whenever I start to fear that the creative engagement switch may flip off is that those times when I let the writing get away from me, when I stopped even journaling or recording cool ideas, were times when I chose (consciously or not) to let my awareness fall.  I allowed myself to move too fully over to the thought-form physical reality part of the equation at the expense of the spirit part.  Just because I've done it before doesn't mean I will do it again.  And, if I do slip away from the Artist side of me, 1) it might be because some other part requires more energy and deserves more of my time for a stretch or 2) as I get used to living like this again and remember my choice each day to indulge in the writing and the awareness, the next time I slip away, I may come back quicker.  My periods of non-writing, non-awareness, and unconsciousness may shrink in duration as my ability to stay present increases.  It's a theory....

As far as the body goes, it appears I'm losing about a pound a week simply by becoming more aware of what I eat, how it tastes, how my body feels, and limiting the places in which I eat to the kitchen island or dining table.  I may have stumbled on another tool over the weekend.  For my birthday, my supervisor bought me a very generous gift card for a clothing store in the mall because she knew I was tired of all the "fat girl" stores only making skirts that come down well past the knee and end mid-calf--why would any woman of any size want a skirt that ends at the thickest part of her calf???  She insisted they had "all the sizes" and that I would be able to find clothes to fit.  When I went online and looked at their measurement chart, however, it seemed clear to me that their clothes would not come close to fitting me.  I've put off going for months, but then last weekend thought I'd stick my head in to see if they had any summer purses.  Turns out, they make clothes that fit me AND are flattering!  I went nuts and left the store with three skirts--all of which fit at or above the knee!--two blouses that emphasize cleavage (one of the benefits of being a big girl is that you can have cleavage naturally and now I have outfits to show it off!), and a dress.  The dress is going back today because Hans is concerned it makes me look pregnant--and he definitely doesn't want me to enjoy anyone asking "When are you due?"--but everything else is fab!  I wore the fuschia cleavage-enhancing blouse and a tan flippy skirt yesterday with new eyelet lace ballerina flats  and felt like such a GIRL!  Amazing concept.  I got to show off my legs--which I still love no matter how big the rest of me gets--and wear a demurely plunging neckline at my size and feel like a girl.  Maybe other people won't get how huge that is, but it's huge. 

What I realized is that wearing body-conscious clothes makes me conscious of my body.  Just as wearing spandex cycling shorts and sports bras ten years ago and being on a bike made me hyper aware of my body, wearing short skirts and clothes that give my body an actual silhouette makes it impossible to ignore that my brain is dragging a body around with it.  I was less hungry yesterday and when I thought of food it was mostly in a "I look great and I want to look better so maybe I won't eat that" kind of way.  I still had a Mountain Dew and a Reeses Peanut Butter cup, but I also walked six miles and thought nice thoughts about myself.  I am convinced that the thoughts I hold about my body make up at least half of my body's appearance.  When I am truly ready to be in my body, the weight goes away fairly easily.  When I am wanting to hide from the world and asking my body to shelter me, all the while resenting it for being large, it gets bigger and bigger, regardless of what I eat.

So, I'm a little torn.  If I can wear great feminine clothes and feel good about how I look, I can make mirrors my friend.  At the same time, when I was on the Big Ride ten years ago and losing five pounds a week, I did not have a scale to tell me I was losing weight nor did I have mirrors around to check myself in.  At the most, I saw my  salty, sunburned face in a small mirror as I was exiting a port-a-potty or occasionally saw my reflection in a glass store front.  In general, though, it was how my body felt and what it could do that kept me in touch with my physical self.  (I still often needed Zoi or Ron to recognize that I was having an asthma attack because my first reaction to diminished performance was always one that criticized my character.)  To help me fully get back in touch with my body, I'm considering covering my giant bathroom mirror for the remainder of the summer with large, neon flowers I will cut out of posterboard.  It will keep me from catching a glimpse of myself getting in or out of the shower and making an unconscious critical remark and might cause me to focus more on getting the daily workouts in, paying attention to what I eat, and noticing how clothes fit as indicators of whether I am making good choices.  I will still be able to see myself in Hans's bathroom mirror and in mirrors at work, but they aren't full length and I will be wearing clothes whenever I appear in front of them.  I don't know...the jury's still out on this one....

Overall, though, it has been a lovely, lovely week!  I don't know what god I need to thank but the humidity left North Carolina yesterday and we are having the most perfect summer weather.  I walked three miles this morning and am looking forward to getting a few more in this evening.

Be well, all!

K

Posted by Kristine at 11:24 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 11:46 AM EDT

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Mood:  flirty

Either I am too lame--or Tripod or my computer is--to actually be able to embed a YouTube video here, but please follow this link for Pamela Hammonds' right on recommendation for a fun, new song! 

Posted by Kristine at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 12:12 PM EDT

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I've thought about ways of explaining how I realized I brought my Big Ride Self home with me at the end of summer in 1998 when I thought I'd abandoned her or banished her somewhere between Washington, D.C. where the Big Ride ended and Hampton, Virginia where I spent several weeks in mourning over the Big Ride's end and Seattle when I finally returned home.

I think the best, though more chaotic way, is to just include here the journal entry from June 24, 2008 that brought the realization to me. Please forgive the fact that I begin by writing in the first person and quickly switch to second person--this is what I do when my "higher self" takes over and starts parenting.  Also, please forgive the all caps segments--these are not me yelling at you, the reader, but my higher self emphatically lecturing the real world me.  Let's see, anything else I need to apologize for before I begin?  Well, I guess I could also ask you to forgive the way it kind of trails off at the end....

Journal Entry June 24, 2008 

So Big Ride 1998, for me, was all about feeling at peace with myself, being okay with whatever choice I made in any situation, listening to and honoring my inner voice, letting go of rules and "shoulds" and just being in the moment.  This was me at my best for an extended period of time.

But maybe what I need to do to bring me at my best home is not to get rid of all the things that frustrate me, and not to create an artificially serene household for a few months, but to actually muck around in the things that frustrate me, to wallow in all my imperfections and put them on display (a little; maybe...), to get really frustrated, really bored, really angry - to fully feel all the extremes of emotion I try so hard to modulate and to fully face "this is my life now" - these are the choices I've made, these are the consequences, this is what my body looks like, this is what my professional life looks like,  this is what my financial life looks like.  It's okay to want to change as much of it as you want, but before you can change it, you have to face it, own it, accept it, praise or forgive yourself for it, and then take a deep breath and decide where to go next.

Recoiling from the messiness of life and the judgments of others and the financial realities of living in modern America after the Big Ride ended did not make any of the messiness or the jugdments or realities go away.  I will never live in a perfect world where I am my perfect self and always at peace no matter how thin I get, no matter how much money I make or the manner in which I earn it.  Getting a new life partner or simply getting rid of the one I have will not ensure that I will always feel loved, never feel lonely, or will always be free to do what I want to do at any given moment.  Having a baby will not complete me or my life any more than finding a man willing to share my life has and it would be completely irresponsible of me, as an adult, to place the burden of my happiness on a child who needs nurturing from me, not to be the nurturer.

Enlightenment is NOT FREEDOM from the uncertainties and volatility and responsibilities of daily life; it is not seeking safe haven and shutting oneself off from the world that "less evolved" souls inhabit.  It is Tad's stillpoint.  It is recognizing your anchor and trusting that you won't be blown away in the winds; it is finding joy and peace and love in any circumstance; it is remembering that all are one and that you are at once outside the turmoil and the turmoil itself.  You don't always get to choose your circumstances; you do always get to choose your response.

For ten years I've been trying to figure out how to engineer an environment - a career, a home, a body - in which I can be my best self, how to get rid of most of the bad or scary stuff so I can concentrate mostly on the good and exciting stuff.  I have been trying to change me and how I operate in the world - which may be nobler than focusing outside of myself - but the truth is that there is nothing to change.  Acceptance is all I can do.  Awareness is all I can do.  Forgiveness is all I can do.  And acceptance, awareness, forgiveness, and love can happen anywhere; they are meant to happen everywhere.

Yes, there are things you can want to change - keeping the house neater because it will make life easier and make Hans feel more comfortable, losing weight so you are taking care of the gift-vessel you inhabit and can enjoy yourself more fully - but THESE ARE NOT MORAL ISSUES. AS WITH FOOD, THERE IS NO GOOD OR BAD.  THERE IS EASIER AND THERE IS HARDER. THERE IS MORE AND LESS COMFORTABLE.  Solving any of these problems does not bring enlightenment.  Solving any of these problems does not insure happiness.  Solving any of these problems does not make you good or bad, does not get you into Heaven, does not ward off bad events or sad or scary or uncomfortable emotions.  NONE OF THESE THINGS WARD OFF DEATH.  Some may slow aging, retard decay, create more ease or peace, but you and everyone you love are all going to die.  You can either live your life or hide from it.  If you put restrictions on it - I only want this kind of life; Life is only important or meaningful when I'm on an adventure, wildly in love, or sticking to a strict schedule - then you are denying your life.  YOU ARE NOT LIVING YOUR LIFE IF YOU ARE SAYING NO.  YOUR ARE FULLY CAPABLE OF LIVING - OF FULL, JOYOUS, AWARE, CONSCIOUS, CONNECTED LIVING - EVERY MOMENT NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE, no matter how big your body is, no matter what you just ate or want to eat, no matter who you are with, no matter the circumstance, no matter the tone or range of emotions that are buffeting you.

To get the Big Ride "you" home, all you have to do is throw open your arms!!  All you have to do is accept yourself fully exactly as you are and accept her into your arms.  You have not LET her come home.  She did not get lost.  REAL LIFE DIDN'T FRIGHTEN HER AWAY.  You said, "No, I don't want to 'taint' her with all the REAL LIFE stuff" as though it were beneath her or would harm or debase her and YOU SHUT YOUR EYES AND HEART to her. 

The truth is, you are her and she did come home and she has been with you every moment of every day and sometimes you let yourself experience her and when you did not experience her it was because you made a judgment.  "No, not here."  "No, not this."  "No, not me in this moment."

You switched off the judgment switch for seven weeks in the summer of 1998.  You remember the moment you switched it off on top of a sun baked hill in Eastern Washington on Day Two.  You pleaded with Ron not to switch his on too soon; then, soon after him, you switched yours back on.  Do you remember when?  It was Day 48 and the Ride ended and you were understandably SAD - SAD IS LIFE! - but you mistook the Ride - the thought form - for some magical doorway that had opened and now had closed, excluding you once again from your true self, your best self, your non-judgmental self.  YES, some environments and experiences may make getting REAL, becoming AWARE easier, but it was your mistake, your judgment that closed the door.  You chose to dwell in sadness and depression - based on your mistaking the Ride for a portal - instead of surfing those emotions from the same rooted, aware, strong, capable center you had occupied for the seven weeks prior.

Your Big Ride SELF is YOU; she is right beside you; SHE IS YOUR CORE AND YOU HAVE INSTANTANEOUS ACCESS TO HER, TO YOUR HIGHER SELF, IN EVERY MOMENT, IN EVERY BREATH!  If you ever doubt this, pick up a pen!  Close your eyes and breathe in and out.

STOP JUDGING

Yourself

Your actions

Your feelings

Your job

Your love life

Your eating habits

Your organizational habits

Your wishes

Your longings

Your "flaws"

Your BODY

Your family

Your finances

Flip

the

switch

OFF

and

LEAVE

IT

OFF !!! 

Judgment comes from within!!

Only if I judge do others' judgments matter!!!

I was afraid of other people's judgments regarding how I'd spent my summer, but this was REALLY JUST ME JUDGING MYSELF, putting words in their mouths, being AFRAID.

IF I DON'T JUDGE MYSELF, I DO NOT FEAR YOUR JUDGMENTS.

IF I CHOOSE TO LOVE AND ACCEPT AND TRUST MYSELF IN EVERY MOMENT, YOUR JUDGMENTS CANNOT AND WILL NOT AFFECT ME.

FEAR FOLLOWS JUDGMENT. 

not this school

not these people

not this guy; not this guy now

not this job

not this way

not according to your rules

I know how to say "no" or "yes."  I have a hard time finding the healthy boundaries between the two. 

Posted by Kristine at 8:56 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, June 30, 2008 10:49 PM EDT

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Mood:  flirty

Okay, so Big Ride Me is home and the welcome mat is out--we're ready for visitors!

I took two days off from work last week for a teaching gig that fell through, but I decided I could still use a little time off so I stayed home and cleaned my house.  Someone called in the middle of the day and sent me into a little tailspin that became a monster existential crisis for a few hours.  I have been working really hard on not getting sucked into the ego and the "real world" structures of my life in the last few months and suddenly felt in a crisis over how to balance my spiritual ideals and the real life crap that falls into my life, how to balance spirit and body or spirit and form.  How to balance Being and doing.  I ended up hearing myself asking a question I haven't asked in a very long time, "Why am I here?"

In therapy, the words "perfectionism" and "all or nothing" have come up more than once.  (These words follow me around from therapist to therapist.)  And what I realized in the middle of my crisis on Thursday is that I have had an all or nothing mindset in how I view my purpose on Earth.  I am either all "spiritual" and trying to live up to my ideals or else I'm completely caught up in the drama of "real life."  When I get caught up in the ideals, I forget to take care of my physical world--my body, my house, and to the extent that I am able to ignore or resist them, my relationships and jobs.  When I get caught up in the drama, I get depressed and feel stuck and start making unrealistic demands on my physical world as a means of trying to alleviate some of the pain of being so incredibly mired in reality.  Either way, I'm unhealthy.

Danielle had mentioned Eckhart Tolle's new book, A New Earth, to the people at our table at a party a few months back, so I picked up a copy.  While waiting for a website to download the other day, I picked it up and started to read.  During my crisis last week, I skipped forward six chapters and continued reading.  I finally understand now that I am 50% spirit and 50% body; that I can't neglect "reality" because I chose this life, and my body and reality are the media through which my spirit works.  It's okay to have goals in real life and it's okay--and necessary!--to take care of my body because they are my tools for manifestation.  

The analogy I found for myself is that I am an actor who has been cast in a particular part in a particular play and in order to be successful in playing that part, I have to use all the tools at my disposal to flesh out the character and inhabit her fully so that I can bring forth this grander vision through her.   How she looks and moves and thinks and dresses and speaks and listens and responds--all the ways she interacts with others in the world--defines to a large degree how the character will be perceived and how "successful" I as the actress will be in fulfilling my obligation to play this role.  Of course, attention to each of these traits requires some forethought and choices--is this the way this character would really dress? would she really say that?--but once the play has begun, the actress must attend to small details in each moment and remain fully present to make the most of her interactions with other actors and the audience, to capitalize on tiny opportunities, to fully realize the true dimensions of her character within the physical constraints imposed by the rules of this particular play. 

It's crazy that it's so simple: 50% spirit, 50% body; attend to both. But I have been silly happy ever since coming to that understanding.  I went to Danielle's class on Friday and was so happy I had a hard time not disrupting the others with my laughter.  I gave Danielle a silly smile at the end of class when she was going around bowing to each of us and saying her "Namaste's" and caused her to break her own composure.

This isn't the whole of it--there was the writing I did earlier last week that caused me to realize that Big Ride Me was already home but that I had been neglecting her for years.  I'll write about that later tonight.  (Sorry that I don't do things in the correct order to make them easier on readers!  One of the inherent problems in blogging, for me, is that I blog about what I need to write about at any given moment and hope that anyone reading will hang in with me, when truly good writing would take its audience into account from the very beginning and would lay things out in an interesting, if not completely logical, way.  Sigh....)

Posted by Kristine at 11:29 AM EDT

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Mood:  celebratory

I considered skipping the chapter on our fourth day as it was a rest day, but then I realized that I haven't given any indication so far of what camp life on The Big Ride was like.  So here are two more chapters recounting the evening of Day 3 and Days 4 and 5. 

And on the Fourth Day, We Rested


The first sixty hours of the GTE Big Ride cost me nothing except tired  muscles, aching lungs, and a few dollars for antacid tablets and a new tube from the bike tech.  On the eve of our first rest day in Kennewick, Washington, that was about to change.  Up until now, I had been largely at the mercy of the ride organizers, staying on route, camping in my designated spot, eating the food provided, and running so far at the back of the pack that I didn't have time to stop to buy lunch.  Once my gear was located and my tent was set up on the grass of the Columbia River Park in Kennewick, however, I would be left to my own devices for the next thirty-six hours.  Comparatively, they would be expensive hours.

My spending spree began with June chatting in that charming, Maine accent of hers about her desire for a margarita.  Although I don't often drink, I do love Mexican food, and I was itching to get into town and see something other than plowed fields and Port-A-Potties.  Plus, I hadn't talked to Hans since my flat just outside Pit 1 on the first day and was on the hunt for a pay phone.  It didn't take long before June had persuaded me to skip dinner at the meal tent in favor of a hike into town.  Apparently it didn't take much for her to persuade Ron, either, and soon after we had established camp and showered, the three of us headed down a path along the river we somehow knew would lead to town.

We hadn't gone far when we found a bar that served margaritas and nachos--hardly a Mexican restaurant, but close enough to suit our needs.  After June was happily sucking down her drink and we had ordered dinner, I excused myself to call Hans.  He answered quickly.  It became clear early in the conversation that he was feeling left out and a little jealous, and that was why he had followed the ride as long as he did on the first day.  There was no anger in his voice, however, nor any sign of disappointment in me.  We were friends again.

I told him about the changes in weather and landscape and about my need to sag each day due to route closure, flat tires, or exhaustion, either mental or physical.  He said he was wearing the silver Big Ride dog tag I had given him around his neck, as he planned to do every day while I was on the road.  Several people at work had asked him about it and begun following the Big Ride's progress from the website that was updated daily with photos and information about our mileage, the weather, and vignettes about individual riders and their experiences on the road.  He said he was looking forward to calling family and friends to give them an update on how I was doing.  We ended the call by confirming our date to each see The X-Files Movie the following Wednesday, my next rest day off the bike, and I promised to call so we could compare notes.

I returned to my nachos and Sprite feeling much lighter than I had since Hans and I said good-bye three days earlier.  June, Ron and I talked about where we were from and which American Lung Association bike treks we had done previously--me being the only one for whom this was the first organized ride.

June and I also compared notes on our asthma. Hers appeared to be worse than mine, as she had already experienced several courses of oral steroids and owned her own nebulizer, a machine that released liquid albuterol in a mist form to break attacks that a normal inhaler wasn't strong enough to handle.  To date, I had never been hospitalized for asthma, nor had I ever used oral steroids. The previous winter I had needed my first doctor administered nebulizer treatment, but no mention had been made of me needing to own one.  Though a disease was the last thing I wanted to have in common with someone, it was reassuring to meet this woman who had more experience with asthma and with cycling.

The bar was nearly empty, but by the time we left, my throat was feeling scratchy.  I assumed it was from secondhand cigarette smoke.  It was an early warning sign, but I didn't take it very seriously, thinking it would be gone by morning.

It was twilight when we arrived back in camp.  Several riders were sitting along the edge of the Columbia River, watching the colors in the sky change.  The river was wide along the edge of the park and swift.  Typically, I am drawn to water.  That night, however, I found the Port-A-Potty, found my tent, and went straight to sleep.


Day Four, our "rest day," went by just as swiftly as the river I hardly noticed and was hardly restful.  I woke to a beautiful, sunny morning and ate breakfast under the Big Tent with Cynthia and Zoi, enjoying the Froot Loops so much I went back for a second bowl.  Cynthia, on the other hand, was using this ride to make a conscious attempt at weight-loss and was very careful about what she ate.  Zoi and I were concerned about her putting restrictions on her food intake as the miles we were putting in burned calories fast, but she wouldn't be swayed.

After breakfast, Cynthia, Richard--an experience cyclist from Seattle
whom I had come to know in pre-Ride meetings and who had advised me to buy the Rodriguez I was riding so I could be ensured a good fit--and I wandered into town.  We were in search of a bike shop.  We caught a bus into Kennewick from a stop not far from the bar where I had had dinner the night before and arrived at a cycle shop brimming over with Big Riders scavenging jerseys, well-padded shorts, tubes, mirrors, locks, lube, patch kits, and energy bars.  I was hoping to find a blue replacement lens for my Rudy Project glasses, but was out of luck as the shop didn't carry that brand.  I would have to wear them with the clear lenses I'd brought that offered no relief from the sun.  Nor was I able to find any tubes to fit my small tires.  For my only purchase, I chose a monster bike lock that I would soon discover was too heavy to be practical for everyday use.  Then the three of us crossed the street to a grocery store where I picked up a new hairbrush and a laundry bag to hold my dirty clothes.

The afternoon consisted of doing laundry at a small Laundromat next door to a physical therapist's office in a strip mall.  Behind the glass window that read, "Tri-Cities Physical Therapy" stood a coat rack with someone's colorful GTE Big Ride Tyvek jacket hanging from one of the hooks.  Something about that seemed humorous, and I stopped to take a picture.  I also took a picture of the calf of a rider who had tattooed the Big Ride's red, white, and blue bicycle logo there.

The Laundromat turned out to be the place to be if you were a Big Rider, and it was fun to talk to people I hadn't yet met.  I learned more about Richard, who as far as I could determine had been content to live a life always slightly outside the mainstream.  When we had met, his long, silver hair had been pulled back into a ponytail.  Before the ride, he had cut it much shorter into a traditional men's style, though there was something about his demeanor that still suggested "hippie."  At the very least, he seemed to typify the outdoorsy, well-educated, independent thinking Seattleite who had lived in the Pacific Northwest long before grunge music arrived on the national scene.  Throughout the day, and into the days to come, we discussed religions, morality issues, and lifestyle choices, as Richard found me receptive to certain topics he admitted he couldn't discuss with many people.  I was struck by his views, and by the depth of thought and research that had gone into shaping them, and found myself forming a new appreciation for this person with whom I had only a few weeks before determined I had little in common.

Cynthia, however, was friendly as always, but her open, smiling face stood in sharp contrast to the fierceness with which she guarded details about her life at home and about her personal views. All I learned was that she had young children and worked in a high-tech job in Ohio.  She obviously had a brain and knew how to use it, but what was going on inside it was anybody's guess.

When we had finished our laundry and eaten lunch at the take-out pizza counter a few doors down, we headed into town to see a showing of the newly released The Truman Show at Columbia Center Cinema.  Inside the theater, I had to keep reminding myself where I was.  In four days on the road, I hadn't yet learned how to anchor myself in a moment and in the particular place I happened to be.  Instead, my mind kept slipping away, trying to find some match in my memory with a movie theater I'd been in before, perhaps in Michigan or California, to tell me where I was.  In the air-conditioned darkness, Cynthia's exhaustion got the better of her.  She drifted off during the movie, and awakened startled and embarrassed.  Richard and I agreed the movie was a great start to the summer season, and made plans to see The X-Files Movie during our next day off.

During our rest days, OK's Cascade Company, the catering crew traveling with us, provided only breakfast, leaving us on our own for dinner.  The three of us were running low on energy, and were happy to find a Shari's restaurant just down the road.   We were even happier when the manager found out we were with the Big Ride and drove us back to camp after dinner.

I said good night to Cynthia and Richard as soon as we arrived, somewhat surprised by the little squeeze Richard gave my hand before heading in the direction of his own tent, and retired early to repack my clean clothes and organize my bag which had become disheveled in an amazingly short period of time.

Sometime later, I was awakened by Richard whispering outside my tent.  "Kristine, you need to get up and attach your rain fly." He moved down the row of tents in the dark awakening others, and we all drowsily emerged, fastened our rain flies to protect ourselves from the drizzle that had begun, and crawled back inside to sleep.  It was a good sleep, and, as I was learning would be the case most days on the Big Ride, morning--as did night--would come too soon.

A Change of Pace

I awoke the next morning to find the rain had turned camp into a maze of mud puddles.  Although the drops themselves had stopped, everything was wet, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.  It wouldn't be fair to say the morning had an ominous feel about it, but I certainly didn't feel as optimistic as I had on previous mornings.  It was impossible to completely dry my tent before folding it up and stuffing it back inside its sack and the Purple Monster.  All I could hope was that I finished the day's seventy-seven miles before the wetness from the tent soaked into my clothes and sleeping bag, a somewhat laughable goal given my track record so far.

Richard found me in bike parking and asked if it would be all right if he rode with me for awhile.  I was still nervous about my bike handling skills and my endurance level, and I welcomed the company of a more seasoned rider.  I hadn't even made it out of camp before I was able to benefit from his experience.  On the dirt road leading out of the park, I flatted my front tire and Richard changed the tube for me, taking the time to explain the steps he took in removing the tire and the tube, locating the hole in the tube, wiping the inside of the tire with a cotton ball to pick up any debris that might cause another puncture, sprinkling baby powder into the tire to reduce friction, partially inflating the new tube before inserting it into the tire rim, zipping the tire back on with my Speed Lever, and fully inflating the tube.

This was my fifth flat in as many days.  This was also the fifth flat I had had repaired by a kind male.  My feminist tendencies, stemming all the way back to fifth grade when I proudly wore a pink T-shirt that said "No Way, First Lady--I Wanna' Be President" in glitter and pledged to get a Ph.D. so people would have to refer to my husband and me as Mr. and Dr. Happily Ever After, had all but been obliterated by these first days of the Big Ride.  I had yet to miss them.  Out here, practicality seemed to be the name of the game, and if someone else was willing and able to do something better and faster than I was, I was grateful for the help and not shy about asking for it.

Thanks to Richard, we got on the road before camp closed, picking up Zoi on our way out.  She had bought handlebar extenders for her bike in Kennewick the day before.  They curved back over the original handlebar, giving her the ability now to alternate hand positions throughout the day and hopefully to rid her wrists and forearms of the pain she'd been suffering.  She also had followed the example of some of our more creative fellow riders and purchased hard-sided storage lockers for her gear to replace the duffel she had been using.  Her morning had started badly when the crew member in charge of the G/H gear truck refused to allow Zoi to deposit her lockers, arguing that the truck wouldn't be able to hold everyone's gear if every rider switched to this kind of storage container.  After much argument, Zoi had won, at least temporarily, but she was obviously still upset as she recounted the incident for me.

At the edge of camp, the route headed toward the wide Columbia River. In those first moments, my fear of bridges resurfaced.  Then, I had to submerge it again, pedaling with my eyes straight ahead and my legs maintaining an even, determined rhythm as we rode single file over the Blue Bridge, onto Highway 12 headed east, and over another bridge across the Snake River.

Just outside of Kennewick, we encountered long, rolling hills through yet more shrub steppe and alternated taking turns in the lead. The sky was brightening, but it was still a gray, hazy day.  In the pit of my stomach, I could feel my emotions roiling around with the breakfast my body was still attempting to digest.  It was as though all my hope, joy, and pride had been burned out during that long, hot, windy stretch through the Hanford Reservation two days before.  All that was left was a resignation to be on the bike and to face whatever happened to be around the next curve or over the next hill as I encountered it.  I climbed hills on the bike with determination, but derived little pleasure from Richard's compliments on my strength.  I stopped to rest without embarrassment.  We shared conversation as we rode which I appreciated, but I could not shake the feeling of apprehension that had settled in my body.

My companions informed me we were riding through the Columbia River Gorge as we neared Pit 1 at the eighteen-mile mark.  I had heard plenty about this region from my parents and sister after their first trip through here and from friends who traveled here for summer music concerts.  It was not as grand as I had expected and was quite industrial as the part we were pedaling through seemed to be used as a port for container ships.  In brighter sunshine or a brighter mood, I might have been able to find its beauty.  This morning, however, we just kept pedaling toward the pit stop in Madame Dorian Park.

At the entrance, our motorcycle safety coordinator was standing in the intersection, motioning to us it was safe to make the left turn across traffic into the parking lot.  We stopped only long enough to use the Port-A-Potties before walking our bikes out to the road.  Along the way, we encountered a man with a flat attempting to re-inflate his patched tube with a small hand pump.  I offered him the use of my Topeak Master Blaster, a nifty, full-size bike pump that attached to my bike's top tube when not in use and had a small pedal at the bottom that flipped down so it could be used as a floor pump.  The cyclist was impressed, as were his friends.  I admitted that my ownership of the pump was the result of having a husband who insisted on doing product research prior to purchasing almost anything.  I left out the part that in this instance I had ignored Hans's process and bought a hand pump first, which had caused me to bend the pin in my wheel, before I returned it and succumbed to doing my research.  As the pump got passed around from man to man, Richard offered to stay while the men used it, then catch up to us, if Zoi and I wanted to ride on alone.  So the two of us set out to tackle the next thirty miles to Pit 2 in Walla Walla.

Then the real misery set in.  As the morning turned to afternoon, the heat of the day increased, and the sun crept out from behind its cloud cover.  The road was mostly uphill, though on a gentle grade, and we were doing our best to maintain a steady pace.  Our legs for the most part were fine; other body parts in more intimate contact with the bike, however, were definitely not.  We complained that with all the money we had spent on our bikes and with all the technology that goes into bike and gear design, you'd think someone could come up with a comfortable saddle.  We had seen other riders, usually the older ones, with pillows strapped to their seats or overstuffed, leopard print fake fur covered saddles that they could sink into.  Although I knew those could not be the most efficient solutions to the problem, a large part of me wished to pass a pillow factory.  Instead, I was riding a very flat men's racing saddle shoved as far back from the handlebars as possible, because it was the only one R & E Cycles could find long enough to accommodate my apparently disproportionately long thighs. Every few minutes, I could see Zoi shift position on her saddle, reminding me how uncomfortable I was, and causing me to shift as well.  This constant attention to pain made the miles even longer.

We passed a few pairs of riders and were surprised to see that already by Day Five, several of the men had given up attempting to be discree and had taken to peeing mere feet from the pavement in plain view. Some of them even waved at us or said hello as we rode by, as thoug some Mr. Manners of the cycling world had instructed them that this was the polite thing to do in just such an instance.  I had to admit to being slightly envious that it was so simple for men, especially since I had yet to relax my muscles enough to pee successfully en route even when hidden from the road.  I regretted not buying the funnel and tube system I had seen advertised for women cyclists, because even though I would never have the dexterity to use it on the bike as it was intended, it would have been useful to have in the bushes!

We needed to be in and out of Pit 2 by 2:00 p.m., and were worried we weren't going to make it.  We were starving, but knew we couldn't afford to stop for lunch until we'd passed through the pit stop. This was the first time I'd experienced real hunger while cycling.  I might have found it more amusing or encouraging if it weren't for the fact that the hunger was mixed with nausea.  As we neared Walla Walla, we began pedaling through onion fields and the smell was horrible.  The onions were everywhere, lying by the side of the road and even on the blacktop, obviously dropped from the back of trucks during transportation.  Ever since the summer during college when I had worked the opening shift at a Taco Bell in Ann Arbor and had been forced daily to chop onions until they seeped through my skin and I could taste them on my tongue, I couldn't stand anything about an onion.  These large, sweet globes excited other riders, who peeled and ate them raw and whole by the side of the road, as though they were apples instead.

At last it seemed Zoi and I had stumbled across the solution to our time-crunched hunger.  Rising out of the onion fields was a convenience store and gas station!  We stopped long enough for Zoi to run in and buy a couple of candy bars.  As we straddled our bikes in the parking lot, racing to eat the chocolate before it melted all over us, Richard caught up to us and handed back the air pump. Chocolate truly is the panacea for all ills biking related, and my spirits were buoyed as the three of us reentered the roadway.

We pushed toward the pit with a good pace and had nearly arrived when the recumbent bicycle Richard had built himself got a flat tire.  We stopped in front of a take-out burger stand where several other Big Riders were enjoying lunch while Richard rolled the ailing bike to the curb and told us he didn't have what he needed to fix it.  He would have to flag down a SAG vehicle.  Before Zoi and I pushed off, however, Richard produced a small glass vial and asked me to carry it. Prior to the Big Ride's beginning in Seattle, Richard had pedaled to Neah Bay on Washington's Pacific Coast.  There he dipped the rear wheel of his bike in the ocean and collected this vial of water before pedaling with it back home to Seattle.  He had vowed to carry the water vial across the country and to continue on past Washington, D. C. at the other end of the trip to dip his front tire in the Atlantic.  He asked me if I would carry the vial, as he wanted it to travel by bicycle across the entire continent.

I protested, "I haven't ridden an entire day's mileage yet.  Maybe you better ask someone else."

Richard smiled and refused to change his mind. "You're going to make it."

I placed the vial in the pouch of my CamelBak, and Zoi and I set out again carrying this liquid treasure and the weight of another man's vision.  We pedaled into Washington Park at 2:00 on the nose, just in time to hear Karen shouting that the pit was closing.  After we filled our water bottles and stopped quickly at the Port-A-Potties, we headed back out in search of food.

Not far down the road we found a Taco Bell, leaned our bikes unlocked against one of the windows, and ordered and ate altogether too much food.  We sat among other riders and crew members, and learned that one of the riders had been assaulted with a pop bottle thrown from the window of a passing van. Luckily, the rider was shook up, but not hurt.  The police had been called as throwing anything at a moving vehicle, including a bicycle, was a felony, but no one held much hope that the perpetrator would be caught.  Most of the rest of us had had rude comments yelled at us from passing vehicles and had witnessed a crudely handwritten sign hung along the route that read, "Bicycles make good targets."  As we all agreed we would be happy to put distance between ourselves and Walla Walla, I thought of my new Big Ride friend Susan who was a teacher in this community and who had proudly passed out small, white, onion shaped pins with the town's name stamped in gold to riders at breakfast.  The news of these things would surely sadden her on what should have been such a triumphant day.

I followed Zoi back out onto the route, which led past an elementary school and a row of small but charming houses before dumping us back on SR 12 East.  Our bodies seemed to have adjusted to the saddles, and our hunger was gone, but I had a completely new complaint.  This was the first full-sized meal I had ever eaten in the middle of a day of riding.  It sat in my stomach as if I had skipped the tortillas and beans and eaten an entire can of lard instead.  I was even more sluggish than usual, and as a result, even more whiney.  If Zoi had wanted to ride off and leave me, it certainly wouldn't have been a challenge.  We rode through a construction zone on pavement that was alternately pocked and ancient and smooth, new, and perfectly black, before heading back out into farmlands.  An hour down the road the lard had melted and redistributed itself to other parts of my body, and my need for a nap was much less acute.

My need for a Port-A-Potty, however, was strong--that'll teach me to drink a large Mountain Dew with lunch.  Luckily, we were now riding through slightly greener pastures, and there were trees and shrubs shielding some of the rolling fence lines from the highway.  I waited by the road with the bikes while Zoi tried to find suitable seclusion in the brush.  A male cyclist rode by and called out to her, while she was clothed and still searching, "I can still see you!"  My sphincter muscles clenched even more tightly at his rudeness, and I anticipated several hours of pain before I would be able to find a Port-A-Potty at Pit 3.  Zoi, however, returned several minutes later, successful.

My turn.  I headed toward the line of bushes behind me, finding a relatively secluded spot behind a tree.  Although I had been able to find no literature on the women's long-distance cycling skill of peeing by the side of the road, I had picked up a few tips from some of the other Washington riders in recent days.  Supposedly, it helped to relax all the right muscles if you held onto a branch of a tree and leaned back to take some of the weight off your thighs.  I grabbed a branch with one hand, and held my lycra shorts forward with the other, taking care to position myself on the hill so as to not soak either shoe, leaned back and tried to imagine myself relaxed.  This was no small task, and for several moments I feared I would fail as I had previously.  Today was apparently my lucky day, however, and when I finally emerge from seclusion, I had a wide, triumphant grin on my face.

"I did it!" I called to Zoi, who understood that this really was an accomplishment for me, and didn't laugh.  At least now, hopefully, I could put the threat of a bladder infection behind me and enjoy the trip more easily.

Back on the bikes, we leapfrogged up and down the hills with a couple of other women and rolled into Dixie under a gorgeous blue sky in full sunshine. Dixie was as small and quaint a town as its name might imply with well-maintained, decoratively trimmed, two story gingerbread houses lined up neatly along a friendly sidewalk.  We stopped at a small, old-fashioned grocery store for more candy bars and ate them outside on the porch, partly as a reward for the sixty miles we'd ridden already, and partly as a chance to gear up for the climb that awaited us on the other side of town.

We had only ten miles to go from the grocery store to Pit 3 at the elementary school in the next town of Waitsburg.  Even as Zoi and I alternately pedaled and walked up the hill out of Dixie, I began to hope that for the first time I would make Pit 3 under my own power.  Richard's water vial was still in my CamelBak.  His expectations that I would finish the day nibbled away at the corner of my mind.

When we finally reached the top of the three-mile climb, Zoi went zipping down the other side.  I, on the other hand, approached the downhill every bit as cautiously as I had all the ones leading up to it.  I allowed myself to coast for a few moments, then applied the brakes to lessen my speed and convince myself I could stop if I wanted to, before letting them back out and testing them again a few moments later.  Zoi was now long-gone from sight.

Despite my trepidation, however, neither the joy of coasting nor the sensual combination of the afternoon's golden light, fragrant fields, and smooth, hot asphalt was lost on me.  I was ecstatic when I finally reached the bottom of the hill and coasted to a stop in front of Zoi, patiently standing by the side of the road and looking back at me.

"Karen drove by and saw me standing here and asked what I was doing.  I told her I was waiting for Kristine to come down the hill! They're closing Pit 3, but she said we should just keep riding into camp." Zoi smiled as she relayed this.  I had to wonder yet again why she bothered with me.  She seemed happy enough, though, as she climbed back on her bike and led me the last ten miles into Dayton.  On the edge of town, we passed Richard, flat repaired, heading in the other direction.  He waved, crossed the road, and fell in line with us.

"I knew you'd make it!" he shouted. "I wanted to come out and escort you into camp."

"It's all because of Zoi," I said. "She's been pulling me all day."

"Oh, I knew you were going to be okay as soon as I saw you pulling us up that hill this morning while you were still in your big chain ring."

I am sure Richard knew that at this point in my still novice cycling career, my climbing hills in big gears had much more to do with stupidity than strength.  Although I had been careful to choose a bike with a triple chain ring to give myself extra climbing options, I had not yet trained myself to shift down before attempting a hill.  This probably accounted to some degree for the frequency with which I walked.  It probably also accounted to some degree for the speed with which my power on the bike increased in the early part of the journey.

Zoi, Richard, and I cycled into downtown Dayton just before 6:00 p.m.  It was Friday night and the town had an air of excitement about it, something I attributed more to the town's preparation for a weekend of parades and antique cars than to my own exhilaration at finally finishing an entire day's mileage.  As we rounded a corner into camp at Fishing Ponds Park, Ron stepped off the sidewalk, and recognizing my accomplishment, called his congratulations with a genuine smile on his face.  I grinned back, unable to help myself even if I'd wanted to.

We parked our bikes on the fenced-in basketball court that would house them overnight and soon discovered that the camp's various services were the most spread out they had been to date.  It was a quarter mile walk from bike parking to the camping area, followed by a lengthy, muddy search through a ravine at the bottom of a rock cliff for the gear trucks and our luggage.  By the time we had located and hauled our gear to our tent sites, dinner was well under way.  We skipped showers and headed straight for the catering truck, joining Ron, Randy, Grant and several other Washington riders.  The meal's particulars are now lost from memory.  All I remember is how satisfying it felt to sit under the red and white striped canopy with friends and relax knowing that I had reached a new milestone in my progress on this journey, two if you counted my success by the side of the road earlier in the afternoon.  The morning's trepidation had completely dissolved, never having met the obstacle of which it forewarned.  I pushed my empty plate to one side, leaned back in my plastic folding chair and smiled to myself and anyone else who cared to notice.

Finally, I was a Big Rider.

Posted by Kristine at 12:14 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:22 AM EDT

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Mood:  happy

This is precisely why I don't let myself write.  Because eventually I will get turned on by some idea and I won't be able to quit.  As painful and scary as it is to sit down to write when I am feeling uninspired, it is infinitely more painful to WANT to write and not be able to because "real life" has a schedule to keep and I am required elsewhere.  

I have been in a state of agitation, bordering on distress, all day--in part, I think, because I was dying to get back to my notebook, and in part because of the small but potentially life altering revelation I made last night.  I have been practically mainlining Mountain Dew for the past six hours, caffeine-free, but the full sugar version.  And on the drive home from work, I considered my eat-what-I've-already-bought dinner options--salad, veggie wrap, sandwich, or whole wheat spaghetti with meatless meatballs--and then opted to stop at Food Lion and buy a Digorno Pepperoni Garlic Bread Pizza and a Nestle Crunch bar.  I have eaten the Crunch bar and the pizza is in the oven.  I won't call this a binge--if I'd bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food it would be a binge--but I would say I am probably asking my food to serve a purpose for which it was not intended and that I could probably be making better choices.

In fact, I could stop and make a better choice right now.  I could get up, with eleven minutes still left on the oven timer for the pizza, and I could make myself a really tasty, low fat, vegetarian salad in a whole wheat wrap and choose to eat that instead of the pizza.  Or, I could decide that I'm really not hungry after drinking four 16 oz. bottles of Mountain Dew this afternoon, take the dog to the park, and decide what (or whether) to eat when I get home.

But, now, there are only 8 minutes left on the timer and I know that when it buzzes, I am going to slice the pizza (to which I've added pineapple, green olives, and jalapenos) and choose to eat at least 1/4 of it.  I will eat it mindfully, maybe with water even though I still have one more Mountain Dew in the fridge, and at some point I will probably realize that the pizza doesn't make me as happy as I thought it might when I drove to the store to buy it, and, at this point I don't really need it to make me happy because I am home now! and I am writing! and I have written myself back to a place of calm--in only 24 minutes!

But, the rest of the day....

It seemed so odd to me that figuring out the major source of my major depressions and minor unhappinesses would make me antsy and uncomfortable and send me towards food (or Mountain Dew, which doesn't really qualify as food).  [Okay, 4 Mountain Dews in one afternoon is extreme, but I would have known I was really in a crisis if at any time today I got up from my desk and drove to Taco Bell instead of eating the frozen Lean Cuisine I had brought for lunch.  I didn't do that.  So, mini good for me.]

Then, while I was researching the Vedic goddess of the Dawn, Usha (or Ushas), for the divination project I am co-writing, I found the most wonderful quote on the website www.vedah.com:

When the divine consciousness [Usha] dawns on us, it cannot last very long because the human vital which clamours for excitement cannot appreciate the bliss of the divine consciousness which is suffused with calm and is untinged with sorrow.  The ordinary human mental personality which loves to wallow in doubts is not comfortable with the certitude offered by the divine consciousness.  Thus Usha, the divine consciousness, recedes from the human and in its place, naktas, the night or the ordinary consciousness takes its place....

...There is a constant rhythm and alternation of night and dawn, illuminations of Light and periods of exile from it.... 

Posted by Kristine at 10:10 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:15 PM EDT

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Mood:  incredulous

I went home last night and got attacked by the need to write as I finished eating dinner.  I picked up the pen and wrote for more than an hour, went to the park with Kaija, came home and wrote several more pages of

LARGE PRINT DIRECTIVES AND THINGS I WANT MYSELF TO

UNDERSTAND AND REMEMBER!

and then ended up telling Hans about the experience on the phone while he drove home from work.

Hans was not the first person I should have talked to about this.  We discussed a few weeks ago that even though he loves me (or maybe because he loves me), he is probably not a "safe person" for me to talk to, as defined by the Don't Diet, Live-It ladies, but Tad wasn't home when I called, and I don't get to see my therapist for two weeks because of the holiday, and I needed to tell someone. 

In short, I figured out where my Self has been hiding out for the last ten years and I know now why I didn't feel she came home with me (when, of course, she did) and I know why I got scared and depressed and fat after the Big Ride ended.  I know why I got depressed when I moved to Farmington as a senior in high school, I know why I couldn't let Ken love me and couldn't trust the love I felt for him, I know why I've stayed fat for most of my adult life.  I know why I can't or haven't chosen a "career" and why I can't or haven't let myself be all the things that I am.  I can tell the difference between pain I've caused myself and pain that's been caused by the world and I'm almost ready to start letting myself experience sadness and pain that is caused by the world.

I don't feel I can get into it here, now, but I will say that it boils down to me being a person who says "no" all the while believing myself to be the kind of person who says "yes" more often than the rest of the world.  It makes me sad.  And a little scared.  And a little confused but maybe a little less confused than I was before.

June 24 might prove to be a day for my personal history book.  For now, let's just say that on the 10th anniversary of the 10th day of the GTE Big Ride Across America I finally realized that my Self is home.  My Self is not yet ready for visitors, though.

More on this, in hopefully clearer language, very soon.

Love,

K

Posted by Kristine at 10:44 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 11:22 AM EDT

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Mood:  caffeinated

Hammerin'



Day Three seemed made just for me.  Brilliant sunshine flooded camp as I packed my gear, ate a breakfast consisting of the same array of foods as the day before, and located my bike inside the fence of a basketball court doubling as bike parking.  While I was applying sunscreen to my as yet pale, bare arms and face, Jose, a cyclist whom I hadn't met before approached with a video camera and explained he was making a documentary before asking why I had chosen to do the ride and whether I thought I'd finish.  At this point, I was still hoping to finish one day's total mileage under my own power, but I was optimistic.  This morning I felt rested and sure today would be the day.

I left camp well before closing, navigating the narrow city streets of Yakima on my own until another, unknown rider passed me, and I decided to see if I could keep up.  He set a good, steady pace, and I was grateful for the motivation.  I don't know where the spunk to follow him came from, but I was having fun and managed to stay with him until we reached SR 24, a level, well-maintained road through fields of vines growing along strings stretched above them.  At this point we began traveling with more riders than I had seen since Day One, passing and being passed sometimes more than once by the same person.  It was a welcome change from riding alone at the back of the pack, and a much needed ego boost.

About an hour down the road, I saw Zoi pulled off onto the shoulder, resting her wrists which had begun to hurt as a result of her bike's straight, mountain bike handlebars that afforded no opportunity to alternate hand positions throughout the day.  She explained that the vines I'd been seeing were hops before getting back on her bike and riding with me to a family home whose driveway and yard at the edge of a pond were being used as Pit 1.

The family's yellow dog trotted in and out of clumps of spandex-clad cyclists who happily scratched his ears or hugged him, although I don't remember seeing any of the human inhabitants of the home whose grounds were totally under siege.  Bikes laid over on the grass formed double lines up both sides of the drive, and two long tables in front of the house held snacks, sports drink, water, sunscreen and medical supplies.  There was also a large piece of poster board for riders to sign as a show of thanks to our brave hosts.

I was able to find a piece of unoccupied lawn in the shade behind the house and sat down to eat a bag of pretzels and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had made in my tent earlier that morning.  During my training rides, I had eaten peanut butter and jelly because it was an easy source of protein and less expensive than energy bars.  So in the belly of the Purple Monster I was carrying a blue plastic washtub for laundry that doubled as a hard-sided container for a jar of peanut butter, a jar of grape jelly, a loaf of bread, 24 Power Bars, 10 Clif Bars, a box of assorted fruit-filled breakfast bars, two cans of tuna, one can of  refried beans, and a knife, fork, and can opener.  I did my best over the course of the first two weeks to make sandwiches in the morning to carry with me on the bike, but it would not be long until I tired of the extra weight in my gear bag and the peanut butter, jelly, and tuna would end up as donations to a snack table in camp.  Many of the bars would remain in the duffel for the course of the entire trip, returning home to Seattle in a slightly mangled zipper freezer bag, only to be thrown out by my husband when he got tired of looking at them in the cupboard the following winter.

The atmosphere at the pit stop was almost that of a carnival.  Between the friendly dog, the pond with a great view of the dormant volcano, Mt. Ranier, in the distance, the sunshine and the good road conditions, everyone was in great spirits.  Dave Bell, Phil Lanier, and Welmoed Sisson, a woman not much older than I was whom I had first come to know over the pre-Ride Internet message boards, were taking it easy in the backyard, and it was nice to see familiar faces at a pit stop.  Since I had been pulling up the rear consistently, I hadn't had much time to people watch, and I enjoyed this opportunity.  I managed to drip grape jelly down my jersey and onto my leg, drawing the attention of the dog who was more than glad to help me clean up.  I squeezed water from the bite-valve of my CamelBak onto my hands, and when I had gotten rid of most of the stickiness, I headed off in search of Zoi and my bike.

Zoi's arms and wrists were still giving her pain, and she had decided to get a ride in a SAG van to the next pit to give them a longer rest.  I found my bike and headed out once again.

The sun was much higher in the sky now and more generous with her heat.  As a dry wind picked up, the terrain became increasingly desert-like.  The first ten miles were mostly on a gentle incline, but I seemed to have the smooth, wide shoulders all to myself for most of the next two hours, making for a glorious ride.  When I stopped to take a short break at the base of a hill, I noticed a large animal skull just inside a barbed wire fence.  Its long cranium and now empty eye sockets had probably once belonged to a cow.  I reminded myself to drink more often than I was used to now that I was in this new, drier climate.

I crested the top of the ten-mile incline and fairly flew the last, ten, sloping miles into Pit 2 at the Silver Dollar Cafe.  This morning had been my first experience with a tail wind, but being unaware of this small miracle of nature, I enjoyed thinking that my body was fast and strong and getting faster and stronger every day.  When I arrived at the pit, I was high on adrenaline and, except for a piece of sand in my right eye from riding without my recently broken sunglasses, feeling invincible.  Zoi was there, grinning under her freckles and sandy brown hair which had been cut so short for the summer its natural wave occasionally caused it to stand up on top.  She was waiting for a ride into camp, and sat with me while I scrounged together some food for lunch and washed my eye with saline solution courtesy of the first aid volunteers.

These long distances were still quite new to me, and the thirty-five miles I had just pedaled felt like a good accomplishment as most of my training rides had been in the twenty-five to thirty-five mile range, with a few longer rides of fifty or sixty miles thrown in.  I still hadn't established a feeling for time on the bike or a rhythm for riding an average of eighty miles a day.  So while I had reached the second pit stop, I hadn't yet completed half of the day's eighty-four miles.  I allowed myself to rest and enjoy the crowd at the pit stop for about an hour, longer than I should have considering the terrain that awaited me, before borrowing Zoi's amber-lensed cycling glasses and climbing back on the bike.

Pit 2 was at the base of a two-and-a-half mile steep climb that promised a two-mile medium descent on the other side.  I was a little nervous about attempting the climb after letting my lungs and muscles relax for so long, but climbed nearly to the top before needing to dismount and walk the last half dozen yards.  At the crest, the wind changed.  It no longer pushed from behind but alternately blasted me in the face and threatened to push me over from the side.  The one bonus was that it slowed me down enough that I felt comfortable riding the entire descent on the bike, another small achievement to feed my ever-strengthening ego.

Unbeknownst to me, however, both my accomplishments and riding pleasure had reached an end for the day.  Seven miles from Pit 2, the route turned onto SR 240, a straight as an arrow highway with very narrow, exposed aggregate shoulders, and a steady stream of fast-hauling semis that led directly through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 560 square miles of shrub steppe, sand and sagebrush located on the Columbia River.  Six years earlier I had been an activist for U. S. PIRG, a nonprofit environmental and consumer advocacy group in Washington, D. C., and it would have been my job to know about the nuclear power plant in my backyard.  Recently, however, I had done an unexplained 180-degree turnaround, often preferring to remain ignorant of things that would make me angry or scared.

In the last year, while tutoring students in the government library at the University of Washington, I had seen an entire wall harboring thick tomes about Hanford, but I had not opened one book.  It had seemed more battle than I was ready for.  Now, pedaling through this shrub-steppe with no river in sight, under a clouded over, bone-dry sky, blasted from the right by crosswinds and blasted from the left by passing semis, I watched the tumbling sagebrush and remembered news reports I'd seen about the people hired to collect radioactive tumbleweeds before they blew off the reservation.  I thought about the strange name, the federal government calling this a reservation, just as they called the few lands left for the Native Americans reservations, and realized that Merriam-Webster's definition of the word, "a tract of public land set aside," was incomplete, as it left out the modifier, "as a holding site for the unwanted, the embarrassing, or the forgotten."

The amber lenses of Zoi's glasses made the place feel even more alien, even less inhabitable.  Tracking straight on this uneven pavement was difficult, and the constant truck traffic made me nervous.  I began to feel a queasiness in my stomach.  As the road stretched on its seemingly endless straight line, I also began to despair of ever making any progress.  It was as though I were the mean witch of a neighbor in the Wizard of Oz, pedaling with all my might in the tornado but getting nowhere.

At one point, another cyclist passed me, moving fast.  He pedaled in front of me for awhile before taking a quick, deliberate left turn onto a crossroad.  When I reached the same intersection, it was clear to me the arrow marker still pointed straight ahead.  I wondered where the other rider was going, but didn't follow him in an attempt to find out.

I pedaled on alone, my only source of amusement or accomplishment pedaling from mile marker to mile marker, sipping water at each one, to prove to myself I was still moving forward.  The map of today's route promised a water stop at mile marker 10, and my legs pumped hard for that destination.  I didn't need water, but I needed comfort and reassurance that I was not yet in hell.

Just past the mile marker on the right side of the road was a small pullout with a van, several people, and dozens of gallon water jugs.  A young woman stood at the side of the road, flagging me down, as though I weren't the kind of rider who stopped at every possible
excuse, anyway.  As soon as I had come to a stop, she demanded to see the bladder in my CamelBak.  I unzipped the bag and pulled out the blue plastic water container, revealing it still half full.

"How many times have you filled that today?" she asked.

I didn't recall filling it at all after I left camp that morning.

"That's it.  Give me your bike.  You're not going anywhere until you finish drinking what's in there and at least one more water bottle
full."

I was stunned, but gave her my bike.

"You're probably dehydrated," she explained. "You've done fifty miles in strong, hot winds, and you need more water than you've had.  Sit down and drink."

I immediately fell into good patient mode, becoming even more docile and thankful for the care this woman was showing me.  I sat on the rear floor of the open van and began sucking down water from the CamelBak.  I learned that the young woman referred to herself as Hammer and had first gotten involved with Pallotta Teamworks, the organizers hired by the American Lung Association to handle the logistics of the GTE Big Ride, as a cyclist in one of the Aids Rides. She had a passion that was contagious.  Other riders, including the man who had taken the wrong turn earlier and apparently realized his mistake before too long, were flagged down and instructed to hand over their bikes as well.  We all sat dutifully attempting to hydrate what Hammer insisted were our thirsty, heat exhausted bodies, taking turns slipping behind the van to relieve our newly inundated and shocked bladders as necessary.

The longer I sat there drinking large amounts of warm water, the worse I felt.  The queasiness of before was replaced with full-blown nausea.  I decided that Hammer must have been right, I had been dehydrated and didn't even know it, although it's just as likely that my stomach wasn't happy with the rate at which I was now attempting to consume fluids.

I was done for.  There were fifteen miles still to go to Pit 3 and thirty-one miles still left in the day, and I knew I wasn't getting back on my bike for a single one of them.  What had started out as the first day I would finish under my own power had become another day that ended in a SAG vehicle and a deflated ego.  In three days, I had had an asthma attack and a full-body rash in freezing rain climbing a mountain. I had been chased through a canyon for hours on end by a yellow Ryder truck referred to by its occupants as The Caboose.  And now I had had my first brush with dehydration in the middle of a radioactive shrub-steppe.  It was certainly not the adventure I had visualized for myself, and not one of which I was particularly proud at the moment.  Some of the riders would probably describe my efforts so far as failure.  Would some of the people out in the rest of the world who had encouraged me to attempt this also think I had failed?

The energy that had been zipping through my body just seventeen miles earlier was now draining out along with all the excess water I was drinking.  All I could think about was getting to camp and enjoying tomorrow's rest day in Kennewick.  Any further hammering would have to wait for the day after that.

Posted by Kristine at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 11:39 PM EDT

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Mood:  mischievious

I know that the best way for me to stay in touch with myself is through writing and when I began my stay-at-home meditation retreat this summer, I hoped to write a minimum of fifteen minutes a day every day just to get a writing practice established.  On the days I have written, I've written for much longer than fifteen minutes.  However, there have been many days that have gone by that have not seen me pick up a pen for any creative purpose.  For the past several days I've tried to be more diligent and get even a few words on paper just to feel as though I've tried.

When I sat down to write today, I met with resistance--much as I did last Wednesday when I refused to write in sentences--and so wrote about resistance until I got really, really bored.  Then I watched as my hand lifted off the right hand page of my notebook, crossed to the left hand page of my notebook, and wrote (on the back of the aggressive letter I'm attempting to write to a former boss) a one-sentence paragraph:

Guys are jerks.

And, finally, I THINK, so begins my novel.  The novel I've been thinking about writing and attempting to start writing for several years now.  The novel whose title Chad loves.  The novel that lets me fictionally deal with various people from my past.  But, here's the interesting part: it gets me writing fiction again - yay! this is a good thing (unless you don't like my fiction) - but it also helps me deal with my inability to use aggressive language and face the less than perfect parts of myself.  Because this novel is going to revel in all the imperfect parts of myself and this novel is going to use aggressive language at every possible moment.  In this novel, I am going to say all the mean, funny, witty, bitchy things I've always wanted to say but couldn't (or simply didn't think of them quick enough!) and I'm going to expose all the very human, less-than-ideal thoughts and emotions that go through my head and heart and usually get censored and stored somewhere on my body in fat cells.  This novel might be my way of writing myself back to a healthy weight--yes, the main character is going to be fat--simply by acting as a receptacle and viewing platform for everything ugly in me that I try so hard to fight against.  Tying the novel together with the aggressive writing and channeling my inner bitch also satisfies the directive Danielle gave me on Friday regarding a writing experiment she wanted me to engage in.  She said she saw the experiment culminating in a play (even though it would be a book first) which is part of what pushed me in the direction of the novel because when one of the characters who was already planned to be a part of the novel (in every previous conceptualization) was breaking up with me in real life, I had the very real experience of going out of my body and watching the two of us argue as though we were characters on a stage.  I even interrupted the argument to comment on how absurd it was and to say that one day it would be performed on stage.  So, sweet man who is once again my friend but who broke up with me in one of the stupidest ways ever, sorry, but I think there's a train coming your way.  And I think it's really on track this time.  I think this go-round it's going to get all the way to where you are.  Luckily, I know you're strong enough to meet it and, hopefully, you'll laugh  and still love me  after it barrels through your life and on into the next jerk's....

Posted by Kristine at 3:13 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 3:53 PM EDT

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