Thursday, May 26
Worn out. Spent. Spaint I guess you could say. I don’t even know what to do with myself right now. I feel sort of depressed – like I just rode about 100 miles and I failed. I think I might have rode about 60 miles yesterday. But today, I only rode something like 23, maybe thirty. And I have been on the rode since 8:30. Well, not entirely, I probably took about an hour and a half worth of breaks. But still, that’s five hours of driving. That means I was going an average of six miles an hour all day. Wow.
Worn out. Spent. Spaint I guess you could say. I don’t even know what to do with myself right now. I feel sort of depressed – like I just rode about 100 miles and I failed. I think I might have rode about 60 miles yesterday. But today, I only rode something like 23, maybe thirty. And I have been on the rode since 8:30. Well, not entirely, I probably took about an hour and a half worth of breaks. But still, that’s five hours of driving. That means I was going an average of six miles an hour all day. Wow.
Wow again. Just received a call from Denia with the Peace Corps. Looks like I’m moving onto the second part of the application process! Looks like they’ll be placing me into a program in Subsaharan Africa. If my nomination makes it. June 2012. Wow. Well, not to get ahead of ourselves, I will still need to pass the health check. Ugh. And I’ll have to be elected after being nominated.
That really cheered me up a bit. Anyways, to talk more about the day, I am here in a shortline bus station. Safe to say I didn’t make it all the way. Safe to say I wouldn’t have made it all the way. Might have made it to Middletown by tomorrow afternoon, but no way was I going to make it there by today. Too many hills. TOO MANY HILLS! AHHHH!
I wonder how far I’ve really gone. 100 miles ain’t bad. Monticello is about 90 miles from Binghamton taking 17. Think I might have gone the long way though. The hard and tough hill way. Though, it’s hard to tell – there’s the catskills if you take 17. Plenty of hills going in that direction.
I must have received over 20 voicemails today though – aieyayay. Grandma goes crazy and calls everybody and their mothers. Glad though I got it all straightened out. I might have used the internet while I could over at the Best Western. It’s not that far away still though – maybe I’ll head over once I’m done journaling/venting into a word document.
Can I really post this? It’s not well written. Just stream of consciousness. Guess that’s what I’m comfortable with. No worries – I’ll move onto more description as the trip goes on. Maybe choose a day of the week to write only in description. I’ll get better at it I’m sure. Then, write some poetry too. It has been too long without some poetry.
Woke up this morning at around 7:00. Did some yoga, ate some breakfast, packed up. Talked with Zach the fifth grader. Kid was so interested in me. Told me about how he had a bike. They were pretty wowed at how far I’d gone. Got some coffee at the Rilleyville café. Beautiful waitress – enjoyed talking with her for a few brief instances. Hearing the story about the really young kids who were from the west she said she saw coming through there.
Rode, rode, then rode some more. Tackled a mountain once I got into New York. Really, really enjoyed my stop in Bethel. Nice guy took some pictures of me in front of the picture of Woodstock and the big peace sign. Looked like there’s a phish concert happening this weekend. Would have liked to have stuck around and went to the museum. Probably could have given the amount of time still until the bus comes. Curses, curses, I wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get here!
Lesson #1 – If you hurry, you’ll miss out on the now and the opportunities that come with it. Stay in the now.
That’ll be a hard one to practice. How to stay in the now? Just notice. Meditate. Use your senses.
Practices for lesson #1 – Meditation, using one’s senses, descriptive writing, deep breathes, stories about being present and mindfulness.
Had a nice siesta at the ice cream shop – ate some lunch, took a short nap, and tackled another beastly hill. Man, was I sluggish on those roads. I can still feel it in my legs. I’ll get out that tennis ball again – man, what a clever thing to do.
I wonder if you are reading this right now. If you are, I want to tell you that I love you and I miss you and I hope that these dreams aren’t just foolishness – that there is in fact a good reason why I met you. I hope to divine that reason before this is all over.
Plenty of time and riding still to reflect.
Michael
No comments:
Post a Comment