Black Coffee and Bike Grease

They say good artists borrow, and great artists steal. I've never liked that little axiom, but I'll admit, the title of this blog is plain thievery. When I was getting ready to leave on this trip, I met a guy named Kurt. He was a friend of my friend Molly's, and we sat over an endless cup of coffee while I asked him a million questions about bike touring. Seems like years ago now, but his email address has stuck in my head forever... blackcoffeeandbikegrease. That's a good way to sum up my life these days.

So I left you somewhere chasing my coffee addiction, and I don't know that I'll get too far in this little entry. I'm writing in between the cracks, getting booking work done while I have a computer to work on, and the moment that I hit the road again is pressing in on me....so much to do, so much to consider.

I stopped at some off-beat little places that morning along Avenue of the Giants. I stopped in Myer's Flat, and the owner of the coffee shop was so rude I nearly started a fight with him. Some people shouldn't be in customer service. He nearly snapped at me for dropping a quarter I was trying to leave him as a tip... Sitting on a log in the sunshine, I saw one of the only queer people I had seen since I left Portland. It made me feel lonely. I wanted to ask him to be my boifriend. I wanted to kiss him. To take him with me.

Sigh. I smiled instead, and flirted awkwardly, and watched him go on his way, off looking at grad schools with his friends. Two bike tourists stopped to chat, and then went on ahead to look for a more suitable lunch. I was eating a roast beef sandwich from the supermarket.... not quite energized enough to be picky.

I caught up with the bike tourists later, in the next town. Alex and Chris. They invited me to join them for pizza, but I just sat and spent time, having just eaten, and trying to keep cheese out of my diet while I'm riding. I tried to tell them that I ride really slow, and they would want to leave me behind, but they insisted they don't go very fast. I just couldn't make them understand.... I could tell they were faster than me. We got going together, regardless, and about a minute later, Chris is looking back at me and he stops to take my picture, so they can leave me in their wake. I told them! I'm a slow kid, not a bike jock.

The hills that days were the beginning of the mountain, leading up to the giant hill after the town of Leggett. For days now, I had been watching the elevation map, knowing those hills were getting closer. Today was the big warm up... a good mess of steady inclines. I did well though. Enough miles that I felt really solid at the end of the day. The boys were up ahead of me at the campsite right before Leggett, but I stopped about 10 miles back in Richardson Grove State Park.

I crawled into bed and realized that I had let myself get pretty badly sunburned. I didn't even think about the sun, after days of praying to leave the rain behind... oops. I fell asleep hot and tired, worried about how I would feel in the morning.

At this point I am about 235 miles from San Fransisco, and I am starting to keep careful track. I have to get to the city on time, because I am playing show at Seneca's house when I get to town. Imagining being in the company of friends makes me feel supercharged... I can't wait to connect to people I love.

I woke up determined. The day is finally on me... the really. really. big hill. I half convinced myself that I had read the elevation maps wrong, and that I had done most of the hill already, so when I started up... I kept expecting it to end.

I have never in my life ridden uphill for so long. The road just seemed to wind out above me, and I could hear the cars switch-backing over my head at one point. There's nothing quite like looking up to see the road over your head.... Makes you feel like you aren't going anywhere. When I got to the top of the switchbacks I thoughts I must be nearing the top.

Man was I wrong. This road just kept unravelling up the hillside, uncoiling, inviting heat into my body. I kept moving. I stuck with my rule of the road... Just stay vertical.

When I finally hit summit, I was exhausted. The downhill was perfect... Miles of flying through the trees, at a comfortable enough grade that I could lay off the breaks most of the time, and just enjoy the ride. Then my body temperature was dropping so fast.... ugh.... I was freezing! When I hit a safe place... a long flat meadow after the hills started to ease, I layered up and started to feel just how tired I really was. I looked at my maps and realized that I was (a) in the middle of nowhere and (b) about to hit another hill. After riding over 1800 feet elevation, 500 feet shouldn't be so bad, right?

Oh lord.

When I hit this hill.... I started to cry. I didn't think there was any way I could get up one more switchback. There they were... two or three of them, laid out in front of me. I had no fight left. I stopped and stared. I daydreamed about calling the local police for a ride. Go ahead and laugh. I was friggin tired.

I pulled myself out of my desperate reverie and walked a little. Then I rode a little. Then I found the top of the hill. Then I was flying down again, gratefully... amazed that I was still in motion. I remember thinking to myself... I miss the ocean. Then suddenly I am poured out of the hills back onto the ocean, and the bluffs.

The sun is going down at this point. The cold has set deep into my bones. I am so happy to see the ocean that I pull the next three miles energized.... then I am suddenly aware of my surroundings. There is nothing but wind.

There is nothing but wind.
Nothing.

I get to the campground. The campground is on the beach. I do not want to move. I do not want to set up a tent. I can not set up a tent. I can not ride into town. I have to set up a tent. The campground is on the beach. There is nothing but wind. There is nothing here but the wind.

So I'm feeling paralyzed. Standing and staring at the map of the campground. I know that a tent wont stay up in this. I'll lose my home into the ocean! She already has my guitar...

The ranger drives by to check the camp, and he tells me a secret. There is a little wind shelter between some bushes, behind campsite #75. It is perfect. I get my tent up, and stake it down really well. I do not leave again until the middle of the night.

My sleep is affected by the wind... I am dreaming more than sleeping, moving through layers of my life and my thoughts, reading the future, telling myself stories. This is the west. The west is where the wind comes from.... the wind rules the unknown, and the subconscious. I am haunted.

I crawl out of my tent to go to the bathroom, from my strange half-sleep... and I fall into a deep silence.

I have spent a lot of time with the stars. I went to college in Flagstaff, Arizona because the elevation was compelling. I have lived my life tied closely to certain constellations. I have named and renamed stars. I have learned their western names and forgotten them. I have lived with a star chart in my backpack. Yet somehow, it has been a long time.

There are no constellations. There are too many stars for there to be constellations. I look for a few personal favorites.... Hydra (so tiny!), and Cassiopeia.... They are so insignificant. The sky is still and cold and looming. It seems as if all the stars could fall at once; as if the sky is heavy with them. They are brighter and rounder, saturated somehow. I am spellbound.

The wind is still whipping around me, and I am chilled. I settle back in to my half-sleep, listening to the wind, feeling held now by the immense sky. When I wake, it is from dreams... I don't believe that I have slept.

There is something shifting inside of me. I remember a moment in Port Orford. I was out walking with the stars, and singing with them a little. I noticed Hydra... a constellation I always associate with a very difficult and beautiful time in my life. I realize how small she is. She is such a small part of my experience. I focused on her for so long....

but she is only one small part of my body. A fragment of my experience. I am humbled.

In the morning I barely make it into town for coffee. I love this tiny town.... Westport, California. There's nothing going on. It's a quiet sea-side village. The girl in the coffee-shop / gas station / cafe / grocery tells me she likes it here.

"Everyone knows every one's business... Not great if your on the other side of it, I guess."

I'm imagining my life up until now. How I would cringe to be under any sort of microscope. All of the work I have done in secret. All of the messes I made. I don't understand this girl... but I sit down on the old wooden porch of the shop, and I like it there. I am so tired that I can barely put my thoughts together. I sit and stare into my hands. I stare into myself. Into the plants.

If people have batteries... mine is dead. I don't know how I will ever get moving again.

... Time for me to rest again. Seneca has just made some sweet millet, with raisins and coconut shavings. It is late and I want to protect this little flame, my health, my body. There is so much ahead of me.