Daydream
June 25, 2023
I was thoroughly enjoying reading
West with Giraffes…
I read the line
‘we made it ocean to ocean’
and the memories flowed….
“You know the daydream --
the one where you're dipping your wheel
into the ocean with a continent's worth
of pavement behind you.
Imagine the goosebumps,
the memories, the education,
the absolute triumph of it.
To discover the country's parts
and comprehend the whole.
To leave yesterday's worries by the roadside
and realize only today's goals.
To ride your bike across America.”
(unknown source)
In the novel West With Giraffes, a young ‘Okie’ boy left a pained childhood behind and
grew up on a cross-country pilgrimage transporting a pair of African giraffes…
For me, it was dipping the front wheel of my silver 1980's Schwinn Supersport 10-speed bicycle --
too long for my short torso -- for a second and final time on a cloudy and misty July day
into the Atlantic Ocean at Atlantic City, NJ. Two familiar faces, work girlfriends and still dear friends,
were there to greet me with a giant bear hug.
The first dip of the bicycle tire
was seven weeks prior
on a similarly cloudy and misty day
in the Pacific Ocean in Seattle.
We would climb three mountain ranges;
the Cascades,
the Rocky Mountains,
and the Appalachians
in snow, rain and
extreme humidity.
With a departing hug from my friend, Andrea, in Seattle,
who, the night before taught be how to set up my borrowed tent
in the hotel corridor,
I, too, was wending my way across America.
“I'm cycling from Sea to Shining Sea”
I had typed onto my fundraising flyer
that helped secure my $5,000
for the American Lung Association.
It was my ticket to ride.
Thought I'd been planning for months to take on this grand adventure
marking the ‘delayed’ completion of my
B.A. in English
from Simmons College,
I almost didn't go.
My youngest brother, left a quadriplegic and unable to speak following a sudden burst aneurysm
at age 22 was moving home after
spending four years at a rehab hospital.
My parents, then in their mid-sixties
had committed to an at-home rehabilitation program
that would require seven volunteers
three times a day/seven days a week.
All eight of us
signed on too,
as well as friends and neighbors
and even strangers.
I struggled with missing my brother's homecoming.
Two weeks prior to departure,
there was an itinerary change.
I remember it clearly:
July 13 Columbus, OH.
I would arrive on the very day I share a birthday with my older brother, Ian,
who with his wife, Betty, and daughter, Heather, lived in Columbus, OH.
I believed the Universe was telling me to
“Go!”
And I did.
In many ways, the simple act of day to day living is like bicycling cross country…
the arduous mountain climbs
and exhilarating descents,
the paths unknown
and the eye-opening gaping
in awestruck wonder
at life outside our neat and tidy four corners.
What remains so clear after all these years
is arriving at the end of a
60-100 mile day
hot, sweaty + worn out and
collecting my gear and setting up my tent --
and after a refreshing shower
remembering only the
utter awe of each
day's changing landscape.
And how very cool is it that
35 years later
one of my cross-country friends
Kathy Stringer
is now joining us from Pennsylvania
for virtual yoga!
So many blessings.