The Two Things I Really Wanted

With every unit of my desire, I wanted Mexican pesos and a wifi connection. 

It feels amazingly destitute to arrive in a land, at night, where I can barely communicate, and find my debit card spat back rudely from the ATMs and without wifi to call my bank about it (I knew enough Spanish that I gathered it was a card problem not an ATM problem). Come on, networks. Come on, ATM. Pleasepleaseplease I mantrad. I've been spoiled usually to arrive into a foreign airport that includes a waiting friend or contact person. But not this time. I was very much in solitude with this problem.

There was the option to lay sideways my massive bicycle box (hey! It arrived safely!), sit upon it, and wail for a while in the middle of the emptying airport. 

But instead I tried the ATM one more time, looked resentfully at the pay phone that I could not pay (no money without wifi to call my bank and no calling without money without wifi), and rolled over arbitrarily to ask a Mr Taxi Stand for help. He couldn't help with the wifi or the ATM, but he was able to get my card to go through to pre-pay me a taxi to my hostel. 

Which was my saving grace. And why I am not currently sitting at the airport on my box. 

Being driven through Mexico City at night as my first introduction was a surreal experience, the dark quiet streets, the forgeigness made more poignant by lack of sight. I was ecstatic to find the hostel actually in existence (at this point my burned brain was imagining all sorts of unfortunate occurances) and then not ecstatic to find that their wifi was non-functional. ("solomente ahorita", they explained, and I loved the diminutive "-ita" on the "now", as if it actually weren't a problem)  Then I got to explain, in my Neanderthal Spanish, that I had no money to pay them. 

Bless them, they let me stay my first night without paying. I slept in a six bed dorm, all to myself, each bed equipped with a darling reading light and a curtain. The place was so pleasing and like climbing into a nest; I forgot about wifi and money and descended into the dark and silent space in sleep. 

And the next morning the wifi became functional and I called the Bank and told them not to obstruct me from using even "highly doubtful" ATMs, which is what the ones at the airport had been. Even though I had called the Bank yesterday and told them I'd be in Mexico. 

Then I opened the hostel front door and set out for money. Stepping out of the womb and into the street, quiet Mexico City neighborhood, gently sunny, a whole new world. I did a wee dance at the door and strode out. 

And then to have a little fistful of colorful money finally pushed at me through a slot, was the most satisfying thing. 

My first couple hours here have been truly thrilling as I watch myself navigate the Spanish language. I have traveled in Spanish places before, but had never studied it. But this past fall, I took a joyful free-lance Spanish class for 6 weeks in Ithaca, designed for a snow-bird traveler. To now be in it, and trying to apply what I learned then, is that inarguable human satisfaction of learning. 

I can barely say much and I understand little--but even the tiniest pronouncements I can make, and the few words I do recognize, and the bravery to open my mouth and my ears at all, has me in delight. 

Mr Hostel gave me directions to get to the market. I listened, with that attention that comes when trying to grasp a slippery thing that I don't understand. Words I recognized studded themselves above the flow of unrecognizable sounds, and I got it. The lefts, rights, continues, behinds. I loved my Spanish teacher so much in that moment. It was working. At least for this. 

So much of communicating here for me is about regarding a wobbling foggy mass of sound that someone has just put into the air for me, deciding I comprehend a few key bits of it, and then ESTIMATING and INTUITING what is actually communicated. This is so different from how I speak English, going for exact perfection, the key apt phrase. A bemused look from me also goes far here, as the patient speaker trying to tell me a thing tries again, or puts forth some English, or we start a round of charades. 

It just breaks my heart to be among these beautiful helpful people, and to think how Trump is being so offensive to them.

My sweet hostel nest, even without money

Eggs On A Plane

(posted a day late, I made it to Mexico City!, I will post this one before I write about the rest of my journey; I feel I need to nod to the airline travel experience)

A hard boiled egg can be eaten with such thoughtlessness ordinarily. 

But not in my current situation. 

When I travel on airlines, no detail goes unplanned. This is a vestigial trait from the first flights I took alone, at 19, on my early journeys-without-parents where I was deeply anxious and thrilled by the whole operation and thus planned each detail as my coping mechanism. Details like packing the ideal snacks high energy but compact, the most comfortable clothing, the best diverting reading material. Whatever it may have been was an important journey and I had to have met it with readiness! 

I also do not believe in purchasing food while being held in a terminal or, while on a plane, that overly advertised $5 cardboard snack box containing 3 peanuts in a plastic packet, a single spear of beef jerky in a second parcel, and half a raisin in a third wee cup. 

So this is how I came to be regarding my hard-boiled egg, now doubting my snack choice, surrounded by beautiful Mexican people in the back of an airplane. What I had thought: "what a tidy compact high protein unit an egg is!" What I was thinking now: "how am I possibly going to get into this shell?", and: "how is everyone in rows 22 thru 25 going to assume the sudden onset of old egg smell isn't something else?" 

I also laughed to myself with this possibility: what if this egg had been misfiled in the fridge and was actually raw? Imagine yolk and white flowing wetly where it would as I was buckled into coach. I wouldn't be able to reach the Air Motion Sickness Bag fast enough. 

I tapped the egg tentatively on the plastic armrest, highly self-conscious; the smart smack needed to get into the shell would undoubtedly concern my neighbors. Nothing happened. Way to go, organic chickens. 

Have you ever tried to crack an egg by squeezing it? This is much more difficult than I had imagined. Nothing gave. So I tried the Single Thumb Pressure Method and suddenly found myself with white all up my thumbnail and an egg looking like it had just experienced a violent blowout. 

Success. Thank you, protein. 

Here I am on my way to Mexico City, abundantly obvious that I have too much time for needless egg writing. I trust my bicycle is in its massive hard-sided case beneath me. For this third bicycle tour of mine I am not flying with a cardboard box (having been refused boarding to a flight last time), instead with this case that I will leave with a warmshowers host while I loop around southern Mexico. It weighs 70 pounds with the bike (and it's kickstand, yes, Uncle Greg) inside it. That this box has wheels makes me incredibly grateful, and once it reaches cruising speed we could easily wipe out a family of four. 

I will have 1.5 days to walk and gape and eat my way around Mexico City, and then I cart my box and myself back to the airport for a short and incredibly cheap flight to Oaxaca. There, amazingly and serendipitously, I meet Partner Kathy exactly a year to the date from when I met her randomly in Colombia. (If you haven't read the post about how she came to be Partner Kathy, it really is highly recommended) 

It seemed impossible until we did it, fitting my bicycle in this thing. My dad woke up from a nap and announced he had figured out the puzzle. Hint: it has to do with wheel placement.

Southern Mexico: an implausibility

A rare find: a vegetarian restaurant, fresh carrot juices and whole-wheat vegan muffins. We gratefully came in from the surge of heat and I spent $3,000 on a muffin.

This was February 9th, 2016. I was riding my bike in Colombia with my beloved and intrepid companion, Lady Elise. We were in Santa Marta.

We sat down on red plastic chairs (classic) inside, carrot drinks in hand, and I split open the muffin. It pulled apart as strings of decomposition, apparently having waited too long for a customer. A woman spoke to us in English, "I couldn't help but say hi, you two look like travelers too!" We shared we were on bikes and chatted for just a wee while, and Ms Friendly said she had dreamed of traveling by bicycle but was with her backpack this time. I gave her my blog address and we all wished each other good journeys. Elise and I finished our carrot juice, which was in fine condition, used the bathroom for the second time (take advantage when one exists!), and rolled out to the beach.

These tiny mundane moments of travel that fall through the cracks, the new daily ways that get forgotten as I become researcher and apartment leaser again in the north.

And I wanted to do go back south again in 2017; the wanderlust is not necessarily curable. Elise and I Skyped and researched and dreamed and drooled over mangoes-to-come and southern Mexico spoke to me for the diversity, beaches, culture, and corn smut. And then Donald Trump was elected president and Elise decided her travel money would go towards living abroad instead.

I was now without my reliable and adventurous counterpart. I felt so much disappointment, like I'd lost half of myself. It is rare to find a friend who can also take a month off from work, who wants bicycle adventure, who's interested in sweating gallons per day on two wheels and potentially contracting malaria. Interested in seeing a new culture from its streets, breathing the hot wind, admiring soaring rainforest mountains.

Now, I consider myself fairly bold, but the idea of bicycling alone in a place was intimidating. I posted on Facebook for friends of friends who might want to bike, I half-heartedly read bicycle travel forums for "companions wanted", I considered going alone with a backpack instead (making a hundred new hostel friends), I moped and postponed thinking about it. I did not consider not going.

In one of my attempts to find a plan, on a whim I replied to a comment on a bicycle travel forum, 'warmshowers', for Cuba (maybe Cuba would be more manageable?). Nothing panned out though, those travelers were going at a time that wouldn't work for me.

Then I received a note from a Kathy in California on that Cuba 'warmshowers'. She gave me her number and said I could call her and that she was leaving for Cuba soon. 

Because she had shared her number, and because I happened to be sitting in a shaft of winter sunlight, and because I always need practice cold-calling people, I gave her a ring. How bizarre it is to chat with someone across the country over a poor connection who I've never met before. But there's an unspoken intuitive feeling among bicycle people, though, like a pre-existing secret handshake. We fell into a natural rapport. She was leaving for Cuba soon and wondered if I was interested in joining their group ride, what my plan was. 

But I couldn't leave my Cornell work in time to join them in Cuba. But before hanging up, I felt like sharing with her my feeling of loss over my previous bike friend, how I was now brainstorming alternatives, our old dream of southern Mexico. 

"Hey! I've ALWAYS wanted to bicycle in southern Mexico", Phone Kathy said. Right!....the ruins, the amazing food, the fiestas, the colorful everything.

So how does one grasp that shivering sliver of hope that grows with hearing this, the outrageous craziness of the potential tendril of a lead?

Well. You do like Phone Kathy did and state simply, "maybe we could go after I get back from Cuba."  (god bless adventurous and retired math teachers, for they have time for bicycle trips)  So many impossibilities though. I don't even know this person. But I started sharing necessary details: I ride about 12-14mph, I don't like camping, I don't mind climbing, I like eating cheaply. Phone Kathy liked stopping to admire the sites, feeling flexible, interacting with the culture, and also not camping.

We were getting a bit more excited.

We left our conversation with the agreement to write out some thorough emails with a battery of questions for each other ("how do you manage a budget while traveling?", "how do your friends describe you?", "what are you hoping to experience on a trip?"). I mean, this is like going on a blind date. For a month. In a foreign land. 

I got a text from her at midnight that night. "Were you in Colombia on February 9th?" She texted a photo of a worn and scribbly scrap of paper. With my blog address written on it.

What. 

She was that friendly woman from that unfortunate vegetarian restaurant back in Santa Marta. I could feel the bright light of this excitement over her realization. She had recognized my "shorthairedbikinggirl" username from the 'warmshowers' bike forum and remembered it as my blog address. She explained she doesn't necessarily remember people very well, but somehow that bit at that vegetarian place stuck. She couldn't wait to dig through her travel shoebox and try and find that worn scrap of paper to confirm.

The exquisite serendipity of this. At this point I was certain: we couldn't not go. Three more giddy phone conversations and multiple detailed emails later, we were buying tickets.

February 7th through March 8th. 

This entire huge world, and here we were. It's incredibly impossible, yet also not entirely unsurprising: intrepid women travelers going to remarkable places. Finding each other. And going back out into it again together. 

A party in an oven

(This post is delayed, but it still must go on)

I cannot believe where I was Saturday night. I was at the finest party I've experienced since new years eve, and it basically occurred in an OVEN. The most topnotch artisan bakery around—which cultivates strong ties with nearby grain farmers to source their flour locally—was throwing a Farmer Formal, with instructions to dress in one's finest and come prepared to eat pastries and dance to a live band. I would not have been able to know of this party, except for a Farmer Thor (a master of grain farming and life wisdom) who invited me along. As part of my soils work I take small quantities of soil out of Thor's fields and count his weeds and the like. Thank you, fabulous Cornell job that not only allows me to play outside but also connects me to this rich social circle. 

The party was not of skiing distance and the weather was not of biking, so Thor connected me with one Farmer Gentleman Kevin, who unhesitatingly fetched me from downtown. I entered a fairytale world when Kevin showed up at the mansard in a suit and cap, opened the car door for me, and whisked us into the snowy night off towards the little bakery in the big woods. 

Each turn on our route was on a progressively more rural road, until I felt wholly how far we were outside my little accustomed playpen of Ithaca. Walking down the snowy driveway in the wind and the night, and hearing and seeing the little bakery pulsate with light and sound was something out of a storybook. Inside, the place was a tumult for all senses: heat, light, noise, beautiful people, and the inarguable heavenly smell of pastry. 

Essential party ingredients were present: Leaves painted in shiny gold hung draped across the ceiling, a photo booth provided an activity and hilarity, there was a keg of fine beer, and platter after platter of buttery flaky pastry. Chocolate filled cream puffs in a towering landform. A stretching array of sourdough bread.  A table-sized gingerbread house decorated with intricate piping. A woman in a elegant dress nursed a baby and milled among the crowd. A lack of horizontal surfaces meant golden beers tilted on the antique pasta machine. We ate and danced and sweat and then could eat some more. 

The band played gypsy jazz and djug django and swing and I danced alone and with partners and in groups of smiling bopping faces. It was so incredibly hot, band and partiers all pressed into this space with the ovens going. Farmer Thor was dressed in a fabulously retro 1970’s brown polyester suit (“My friend found this ‘specially for me! It was 25 cents.”) and after a particularly vigorous dance I found myself smelling hot melt glue. Was someone crafting and left a glue gun plugged in? But then I realized it was Thor. His suit, acrylic heating up. We pushed outside to the cold air, Tractor Dan remarking it was like a sauna health treatment, alternating steamy heat with blasts of cold. 

The cohort I encountered! It seemed like people were dressed out of The Great Gatsby, somehow, no magazine-popularized pretty or slick trendy or over-stated, but instead timeless elegance and quirky expressive. Furs. Sequins. Sparkles. Classy boots. Some dress plaid. Sleeveless gowns. I encountered the finest selection of intricate plant tattoos on women’s shoulders I’ve ever seen in one place. “It’s a calendula flower,” one explained to me. I found myself part of a red dress contingent, and we pushed in front of the photo booth to celebrate this. I wore heels which I never do and could survey the crowded beautiful space like a periscope. 

There were shelved cooling racks of macaroons by the bathroom near the back, enticing plump mounds in systematic rows. By the end of the night macaroons near the edge were missing. But it didn’t matter, because at midnight after the band finished and we found ourselves drifting in residual delight, a handwritten sign and a stack of paper bags appeared on the cooling rack: “Take pastries home.”

I was buzzing with gratitude and appreciation the whole night: that this local organic bakery would put on such a fabulously generous affair. That these people give so much of their lives and passionately work this land, and that their yields stay local. That I am fortunate enough to live in a place where farming and farmers are celebrated.

Baking supplies regard the pianist tearing it up

Gingerbread house, replica of the little bakery in the big woods

The red dress contigent

Hoppy beer indicates level on this pasta machine

The oven is ringed in a string of lights; I feel like a periscope in heels

The Hunt for Soil Enzymes (A Day In The Life: Soil Scientist)

A Styrofoam Search is how the day began, by Counterpart Chris fellow research technician, and Adorable Ann graduate student, and myself. A hunt to purchase one of those terrible white Styrofoam boxes, to hold and ship certain precious must-be-kept-cold soil samples to a VT lab for soil enzyme analysis. 20 years ago this wouldn’t have been possible: the technology for the enzyme research, and overnighting a package so effortlessly.

Alas, Styrofoam boxes were not in season, and thus I found my work task for the morning becoming a hilarious and frustrating drive around shopping plazas between stores. Finally, Wegmans provided.  “This goes against all of my shopping values,” I announced to Counterpart Chris, of the not-previously-owned plastic un-recyclable thing we were purchasing. But, Science. It justifies these acts I hope.

The technician’s life contains unexpected tasks like this, where I learn lessons like: how hard it is to find Styrofoam coolers when it is not beer picnic season.

Our experiment is looking at how different inter- and intra-species cover crop mixtures (designed as forages) influence soil health and success of the cover crop stand. Today we were collecting soil from each of the treatments, sieving it, and then sending it off to a schmanzy lab to see what soil enzymes (proteins that help catalyze things) were present in the soil of the different mixtures.

In a rare display of whimsy, our usually gruff Mr. Farm Manager watched us playing in our soil, and then remarked, “Good luck with your emm-zyme hunt! Maybe you’ll find a striped one or something else interesting.” And I did indeed feel whimsical about it, the hunt for that which I cannot see and which I yet do not understand. 

So into the research plots I go, soil probe and bucket in hand. The morning is cold—oh those days of strappy tanks and sunscreen as if I’d only read them in a novel—and I’m puffy and inaccurate in my layers.  But as the day warmed up and I worked through the experiment, I stripped systematically and deliciously, leaving a red wool sweater in front of Plot 25A, a scarf outside Plot 26A, a vest at Plot 27A. As if these garments were somehow marking treatments.

But the plots sadly looked little like cover crop plots yet. Our experiment site had seen some mismanagement before we acquired it, and our cover crop treatments were superimposed by an unapologetic blanket of brassica weeds. Although “weeds” does not do these plants justice. Try “shrubs.” Entering a plot required a certain mule-like tenacity, charging headfirst into a thick forest of mustard plants as tall as I was. It was a blizzard of brilliant yellow, all the plants flowering. I elbowed my way along, yellow-tipped branches grabbing me by the waist, others tugging at my ankles. The yellow petals floating into my soil samples, polluting them, causing us a later step: Petal Picking.

And it was a beautiful day and I was outside and I was treating myself to Aretha Franklin and podcasts about love and human behavior as I soil sampled….so the day was one of Soul Sampling as well.

After collection, the afternoon stretched as Adorable Ann and I passed wads of wet soil through fine-meshed sieves. The samples looked at first like goose poos, still in the shape of the corer, and then like brownie dough as we coaxed them through the top of the sieves. Once through the sieve, the resulting sample was a fine pile of intricate coiled crumbs, like the litter on a plate after cutting a particular fragile chocolate cake. Soil crumbs clung to the back of the sieve, like cheese on the backside of a cheese grater. This whole process was very pleasing to my tactile sense. “We are siever servants,” I said to Ann, adding to our pile of sieve and grate puns.

These enigmatic—hopefully some striped—soil enzymes in their wee sample bags: we packed these devotedly on ice packs and into their Styrofoam box. The sun was beginning to set, the skies pink and palpable and puffed like cotton candy. Reach out and it would cling a tendril to your hand.

We were loopy-tired and laughing and celebratory from our long day of work and drove our box to the post office just before it was going to close. We all three piled in line there, all eager to participate somehow, all invested in this mailing experience. Chris held the box, hours of probing and sieving contained inside. “Let’s have our picture with it! Get your phone Ann!” I babbled. We stood in line there, posing and smiling and pointing at this box as Ann photographed us.

“Is that your first box?”

This was from Mrs. Postal Service, amused at our photo shoot. “Oh! We’re next up!” I couldn’t stop laughing then, and the other customers were peering around smiling along with us. We placed the box on the scale, and I handed Mrs. Postal Service my P-Card.  “We’re mailing soil enzymes,” we said proudly. We were all still smiling. A generally inhuman interaction of customer and service person now made jolly, what an unexpected bright little turn.

“Are you Sandra?” she then asked, taking the P-card. “Yes,” I said automatically, “would you like to see ID?”  “No,” she said, “I mean, you’re Sandra pronounced Sondra; you work with my husband!” And indeed! My office mate, the Indefatigable Brian, spoke of his wife who worked at the post office. (she must have had enough to place me, with the context of a box of soil)

What a pleasing little connection made among us! I love my job. I love Ithaca. Thank you both for a beautiful day. 

Bundled in Bah Hat, brassica weeds bursting brightly behind

Soul sampler

The soil crumbles post-sieving

Cotton candy sunset over the research farm

Tales of Plaid and North: a weekend in Canada

I went to Canada this weekend. My lifetime friend, Tall Farmer Nathan, was getting married and he asked if I would play for his ceremony. Once upon a time we were playing Beanville with Lincoln log cabins and Lego people farmers and dry bean crops on the basement floor and now here we were, organist playing Bach and groom walking down the aisle. Needless to say, because childhood and because witnessing the love of the couple and the kindness of the family, my eyes were not dry.

Farmer Nathan married Tractor Goddess Aleta; they had met at a square dance, are both farmers, were both homeschooled, and both came from Christian backgrounds. Needless to say, there was no wild drinking and sloppy dancing at this wedding--like some--unless you count cartons of chocolate milk and square dancing. 

I was so happy to be serving as organist and getting to know the bridal party. Mr Uncle Pastor high-fived me when we met, "we're gonna make this thing HAPPEN!" I said. For the rehearsal, just about every male showed up wearing plaid (plus myself, and yes I was pandering) and the group was completely slap-happy. Laughter and puns and everyone talking at once. "Remember not to step on Aleta's train" said Sister Sylvia; "chugga chugga chugga" went Nathan. Then Nathan kneeled at the moveable bench at one point, to reveal manure still on his boots. A great hoot of laughter.

Some of my favorite moments were cleaning up from the rehearsal dinner, a large and farmer-feeding affair homemade by the family. I worked with Suemom GroomMother (who took care of my sister and me one day a week for years when we homeschooled) to wash dishes, clear tables, and load empty tofu roasting pans into farm packing crates. Although Suemom essentially raised me for 1/7th of my homeschooled life, I hadn't until my adult period truly appreciated what a model human being she is. Kind, compassionate, beautifully patient, wise about love and communication. Somehow, as a child, I only cared about lunchtime and thought she was "weird" for inviting us to eat Indian food with our hands. But now I want to emulate her communication and empathy and generosity and non-stress nature. "Oops", she said as we prepared to load dirty crates into the back of the Prius, "I've forgot the trunk plastic lining. Well. We'll just not slop then." This was hilarious and adorable to me. And we did slop. And that was ok.

The wedding day was autumnally beautiful, the bridal party had photo shoots with a cow in the alfalfa, the wedding cake was delicious and made painstakingly by Sister Sylvia. During the reception the bride's family spoke of her growing up as a star member of Rabbit Hopping Club (and her homeschooler's dedication for making jumps), and her prowess in plowing competitions.

After the reception, I decided on a whim to join Mr and Mrs Ride (how I got to the wedding in Canada) for their little trip to Toronto before they returned to the states. So Saturday night I slept in a cozy third floor room of a friend's friend's friend's house near Queen St in Toronto. I felt like a traveler again, me and my backpack, meeting new people. What fun!

Sunday morning I walked for hours in Toronto, building gazing, people watching, sipping coffee, eating falafel, looking at Lake Ontario. Feeling the buzz of a large city, the potential of it.  I love wandering alone, miles and miles, just being and viewing and not having to talk to anyone. I heard so many languages in Toronto, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese... It had an expansive international feel to it, and felt like being all over the world at once.

Canada had no comment on my hair. (Blonded, spiky short funk) Not that this is scientifically very sound, but I sometimes do use my hair as a social barometer. Like, where does it receive comments, and by whom. What does that say about the style preferences of an area or the outgoingness? In Rochester, the black women love it. In Ithaca it is often older white women or young men. I was surprised by the favorable reaction it received in St Louis MO, actually, for being the midwest. Lots of praise. But not a single person, whether among the conservative Mennonite farmers (not surprised there) or in hip Toronto, commented to me about it. Though it may be subtle, I think this may be a reflection of Americans being slightly more outgoing and Canadians being slightly more shoe-gazy.

In my Toronto walking I came across the Toronto Marathon occurring on this day.  I watched hundreds of runners cross the finish line. Running for 26 miles, running for hours....what a moving picture of humanity and determination. The variety in running movement is astonishing, the bouncing runners, the power walkers, the sprinters towards the end. And how people approach the finish, some flapping and painting, some slow and measured, some blowing their last energy and then coming to rest on their knees, some pumping in the air, guys throwing arms across their buddies shoulders in celebration. With tiny tears in my eyes I watched this display of stunning motivation and determination.

Also, seeing Lake Ontario from the northern side was huge for me. Growing up, there was nothing more northern to me than the lake. It was our back yard, one couldn't see across it, it was so huge and wild and churning. I had an internal compass around it and could sense it's location and could "feel" north as I navigated further and further from home. Lake Ontario was the definition of "North" to me, in my little child brain. To be "more north" than the lake now, to look south into it, was stirring and amazing. It was somehow a metaphor for growing up and finding new broadening perspectives. 

"yo, Bessie! over here!" In which the bridal party poses for photos

Canada-sized maple syrup, with the beloved Suemom shown for size

BIG PRUMES. Being in toronto felt like being in many world cities at once

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100 Miles AIDS Ride For Life

This post is to say thank you to those who donated in support of my 100 mile AIDS Ride For Life yesterday, my friends and especially my aunts and uncles and parents. With your help I raised $544 dollars for the Southern Tier AIDS program! I write to share about the experience of this ride.

We were about 280 riders, starting at a park in downtown Ithaca in the dark morning, and then stretching into a line of colorful jerseys as we threaded ourselves up a grand hill overlooking the lake. We headed north on the east side of the lake, fields of soybeans golden for harvest backdropped by the hills and the lake nestled below. Cows, white farm houses, riders passing you or you passing others. The fluid flow of physical movement lulling me into a gentle trance. The sun was behind clouds, the wind was at our backs. We flew.

A ride like this has such a sense of community, anyone has reason to talk to anyone ("nice bike!", "Is this your first year?", "How about this hill!"), given our common goal and shared suffering. All sweating and in stupid outfits. It's a beautiful thing to be part of. 

I met so many people, and i wish I could check in with all of them now, how was it?, how did it feel to finish?  Little conversations to pass the miles, pedaling together if our speeds matched, or maybe only a momentary greeting if someone was flying past another. Mr Plant Biology, Miss Spiky Grey Hair I'd seen from contra dancing, Mr Cornell Police Dude, Orthopedic Surgeon Avi, Mini-Santa Ned who'd ridden 17 years and was here with his brother, and Mr Head Brewer at Bacchus Brewery and his buddy, Struggling Trevor. No-Nonsense Laura of the Spectacular Tattoos. I rode sometime with Mr Dentist, both of us talking of my grandfather, oh small town. "You're the granddaughter of JD Wayman?!?" he exclaimed, "let me tell you, I used to keep a cigar in my pocket when I'd be with your grandad and when I'd get tired of listening to him, I'd pull it out and he'd go away. He hated them."

After we had pedaled through Montezuma Swamp (me admiring the dark muck soils sporting tremendous soybeans), we turned south to ride the western side of the lake. The headwind now was like biking into a wall. I was going about half the speed I had been on the east side. The sun was out now, baking beating heat, and riders could be found resting under trees along the route. Everyone checking in with everyone, "doin ok? Need any water?"

"I feel like I'm pedaling in SAND" said Mr Brewer. This was apt; to expel so much energy and feel like a giant hand is rudely pushing you backwards is disheartening indeed.

For me there was a period in this hot blasting wind where I felt like a single life boat alone at sea; no other riders around and how I wished for my powerful large uncle (who had ridden last year) to cut a hole in the wind for me. But I thanked my times in Southeast Asia and South America for having given me experiences like this so many times before. I wasn't scared out alone on that windy treeless empty stretch; I was stoic and i knew what I needed to do: drink electrolytes, eat tiny amounts of sugar frequently, go and keep going.

I had no question whether I'd finish the ride, the only question was how much suffering there would be.

A joyous moment was coming upon Mini-Santa Ned in the overwhelming wind, and amidst a choppy conversation we began tacitly drafting each other. Trading off punching that hole in the wind, like two geese in a little formation. I felt we had a bond, this retired satellite engineer and young organist. It was all big grins when I found him again after the finish line.

When I have seven and a half hours in the saddle, sometimes the best way to remember the day is through specific little moments.

--The moment looking north and seeing not the continuation of the lake, as I had for the first hours, but seeing the curving end of it. The northern most tip, the part I rarely get to see, and I'd arrived there under my own power.

-- That moment in astonishment, where I surface from a response I made so fast I didn't even realize what happened. I had just joined a line of youth who were biking with their mentor, a tight pack on speed bikes tucked close as if they were racing. This was the unbearably windy portion of the day and i tacked myself to the end of the line to participate in the drafting. But without warning a boy ahead of slammed on his brakes and his bike was then fully longways across my trajectory. In one amazing movement I grabbed my brakes so hard the rear wheel bucked high, I lifted my right leg and arced it over the seat, and somehow got my left leg out of the stirrup. I found myself standing, holding my bike, and facing this kid. My heart was blasting, but I had avoided one of those terrible gangly tangles of bikes and riders. It was miraculous. Thank you Right Leg.

--Seeing a Wayne County sign, the county in which I grew up! And here I was, bicycle riding adult, touching back in.

--The nearly transcendent moment of ice coffee at the lunch stop. Cooling caffeine power yeah!

--Sitting on the pavement after 70 miles in a sliver of shade at a rest stop, legs asplay, holding ice to various limbs to cool them, and reaching out to introduce myself to Laura of Tattoo. She looked fierce but also beaten, and i was drawn to this combination. Maybe i looked the same way too.

--Finishing a conversation about chloroplasts and peptides and ribosomes with a Mr Peptide (who had noticed my bike parked at Cornell actually) and then finding a descent upon us, revving up in nerdy rejoicing and hitting 44 mph zipping down that hill.

--A Peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Uninspiring bread with a flippant spread of peanut butter and gooey jam, not to the corners, but irregardless, eating this made chimes ring and symbols clash it was so pleasing and needed. My body knows what food it wants (or doesn't--some oatmeal made me feel deadened and I had to stop eating it) by responding with joyous taste buds. The route was peppered with rest stops for us, so I ate and drank myself around the lake with ease.

The following occurred with Ned and his brother, probably 80 miles in and this illustrates how fried of brain I can become while riding, even though the legs are still churning out miles.

[Scene: something regarding helmets and styles thereof]
Ned: "Well YOUR helmet TOO."
Brother: "What, are you commenting on its age? Like what century it's from?"
Sandra: "It's like....the ones you'd wear, [trying to get at gladiator], the Romans...um, in the arenas. My brain is fried."
Ned: "I'm surprised it's not leather"
Sandra: "What?! My brain?"
Ned: "No! His helmet."

Laughs and legs and views and good people. What a special day.

Helmet hair was incredible

The stretch through the Montezuma swamp

Wind not shown. Western side of the lake, windblown stoicism in solitude

They fed us well afterward

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