Adventures of a Sun Seeker: The Descent of Woman, Or: Oh Holey Butt

(This is unfortunate. Here is an entry that should have been finished and posted last month: that bicycle ride from Wayne County back to Ithaca. But better late than never.)

May 25 2015.

Destination Bicycling is much more of an involved way to get back home.

Involved in a way that is sensual, meaning senses participating more than just holding a steering wheel while under a seat belt. Instead sensations become perceptible thanks to the meditation of spinning along endlessly in the air.

To feel the air temperature change, dipping into a stream valley, like passing through a curtain and feeling the cold fabric of it brush against your body. The smells of a Laundromat, the honey suckle, the cows.

To really know the wind. To have emotion for the wind, impeding my progress so thickly. In our houses and offices we can be removed. Look out the window and see the wind in the trees and know a storm is coming….completely different than grinding into it.

I wanted to bicycle back to Ithaca under my own power, to have awesome novel thoughts all the hours in the saddle, see my edge. To earn views and earn chocolate cake.

The ride started out powerfully, churning along at 14 mph (fast for me, #allsteel), from Canandaigua to Geneva. I lived in Geneva last summer, and returning there it felt recognizable but not familiar. It did not feel like I had embodied it as a home place. But I relished espresso and a second breakfast and rejoiced I was continuing on to my new home of Ithaca.

Midday, full sun, the adhesive air of pre-thunderstorm humidity. And the southern wind. I pointed directly into it, watching the leaves exposing their undersides in the flapping as I rode. The grain fields bending in huge synchronized dance numbers, the Memorial Day American flags waving vigorously. My pace slowed to grappling along at barely 9 miles an hour.

I was out of water.

I’ve stopped at places before, noticing someone outside and pleading for a water bottle refill. People have gone out of their way to get me ice. (With a bit of common sense, and excluding the hyper violence on the news, I choose to believe in a mostly nonthreatening world. Most of the time I get by excellently.)

There was a woman out gardening in front of her trailer home, and I pulled into her driveway hopefully. I called out my plea and she saw me and looked slightly perplexed, then started gesturing. Before I could stand my wits at attention, a throng of 17,000 terrible, gray, enormous, pregnant dogs rampaged from the side yard at me. The ugly kind of gray, bred for grumpiness, snarling and roaring and charging. I was on their rural plot of territory. I must die. The woman came to my aid--bless her; she was barking at them to get away and swinging her shovel, "they're breeders!" she explained to me. My bike became a shield and I spun with it, dancing in horror and fending off the dogs. But my butt—the only part of me offering a real purchase, padded in bike shorts and jutting out juicily--was too easy a target and I was chomped.

Bitten in the butt by a dog.

That's a first. Well at least I've had my rabies shots.

(after beating them with her shovel she finally dismissed them and did fetch me some plastic bottles of water, although a little wordlessly and, I assume, begrudgingly)

I think next time I'm thirsty I'll avoid rural trailer homes.

Later: after the adrenaline receded.

I pulled up at my aunt and uncle's place, surprising them in their afternoon projects. They fed and watered me, and we sat at the kitchen table as I consumed melon, and CHEESE, and bread, and peanut butter. I LOVE THESE PEOPLE I kept thinking inside, and want to tell them things! And share anecdotes. But all I could properly do was eat food.

Riding 70 miles in heat and unforgiving wind was a study in discomfort and also presence. I’ve done way more than 70 miles before, but usually in a group of others, where everyone is bonding together and encouraging each other on. The best way to go about it alone was to notice this house, to see that tree, to laugh at that road name. Not so helpful is to think, “so that was 2 miles…I just need to do that 10 times more.”

The point where I’d reached the zenith between the lakes, where the ride into the southern wind was over, where I was just gravitating down towards the road running along Cayuga Lake…with the yellow road signs with the truck pointing down a triangle… the DESCENT. Flowing and flowing and not pedaling….I started to have normal thoughts again, cooling off enough that I could have thoughts. And then seeing the Ithaca 2 Miles sign….the arrival would have been more epic had I not been so tired.

But I can store it up and reflect on it later, drawing a little epic pride perhaps for when I need it.

To do something other than pedal, like to shower and eat sausage, was a change of pace after such single-minded focus. How fortunate that I could push my self this way on this day under my own volition….because for many people having to push is not a choice.