A Trial of Errors

INT. AIRPLANE - SOMEWHERE OVER IDAHO - DAY

Squished in a middle seat on a full Southwest Airlines flight, doing my best to ignore my jangling nerves (all the flying I've done in my life and I've never gotten used to the idea of being stuck in a giant metal tube 35000 feet in the air with no control over my own safe passage...but let's not think about that now!) At any rate, it seems as good a time as any to dish about this past weekend's bike camping excursion.

Clearly, I'm alive, and happily still in one piece. My trusty friend/current roommate/travel companion turned out to be not quite as badly banged up as I'd imagined, and was game to come with. (Whew!) His bike, on the other hand, was pretty much totaled (Crap!) And so we lost a good three hours off our planned start time searching out a loaner, and then franken-biking a seat onto that loaner. So the planned 40 mile trip out to find a campsite was whittled down to 27 (the last six of which were done in the back of a taxi, as we didn't have enough daylight to safely navigate a six mile straight uphill climb from Port Angeles, and the loaner bike had no lights.) Once we set up camp, though, the rocky start gave way to a pretty solid weekend. The scenery along the Olympic Discovery Trail was lovely:

Along the Strait of San Juan de Fuca

My camping gear performed beautifully (super star shout out to my NH bestie for the gift of the year in an inflatable solar powered lantern!) my legs, though well battered and bruised from numerous run-ins with the pedals and a couple minor crashes, held out well enough to tackle a four mile hike on our one day off of biking, and I even managed to make it down the six mile long hill, on a main road with traffic, without dying, or even falling off (scariest part of the trip for sure!)

I may not know what I'm doing, but at least I look the part! 

20 miles in and still smiling

So, for all of that I should feel much more prepared for my impending Scandinavian excursion now, yea? You'd think so, but truth is I think it only made me realize how much work I still have to do to get to where I'm truly comfortable on the bike. (Like, say, getting to where I can mount and dismount without veering wildly and/or falling over!) Good news is Finland, by all accounts, seems to be a country full of long empty roads, courteous drivers, and extensive bike paths....exactly the environment I need to really learn to become one with the bike. So roll on, Scandinavia...but first, I'm shipping up to Boston! 

The Best Laid Plans...

I woke up this morning homeless and unemployed...and breathed a huge sigh of relief!  I've been homeless for the better part of two weeks now, having moved out of my rented cottage and into a friend's tiny guest room a month earlier than I'd planned to accommodate a pair of overzealous home buyers, so I've had plenty of time to let that new reality sink in. The unemployment began just last night, with a round of celebratory drinks at the local watering hole.  I've spent the past year working slavishly at four separate jobs (dry cleaning, script reading, dog sitting, typing notes for a local author), denying myself almost any semblance of a social life, and it's all come down to this: a fat bank account, a near complete lack of debt (except for the one student loan that will be there to haunt me for the rest of my life) and the freedom to do whatever the hell I want...for a while anyway. It feels nice. It feels weird...knowing that there's nowhere I have to be, nothing I have to do...except to worry about this trip! Yikes!

In two weeks time, I will be in Finland.  TWO WEEKS! How did that happen? It feels like I've spent ages thinking about it, planning it, working my butt off in the spin room at the gym...and now it's here, and I feel woefully underprepared. For one, I haven't had occasion to ride my actual bike since the Chilly Hilly back in February, and I've NEVER taken it out fully loaded with gear.  Ah, but no worry, see, cuz I've planned a test run excursion over the next three days to solve that little hiccup.  A forty mile ride along the Olympic Discovery Trail from Sequim out past Port Angeles, followed by two nights camping, and a forty mile ride back.  If that doesn't break me- in..."break me in", I meant- then nothing will! All I need is my trusty bike, loaded down with gear, and my trusty friend/current roommate/travel companion to be there for moral support (and more importantly to help keep me from falling into traffic).  And then I got the text...

My trusty friend/current roommate/travel companion has been in Seattle all day participating in the Haul Ash bike ride. Forty miles along the Burke-Gilman Trail from the Red Hook Brewery to Fremont and back. Yup, that's right, it starts and ends at a brewery.  I was invited to come along, and I did consider it...after all it is a completely flat trail, so it would be a very easy ride, with no gear strapped to the bike, so it could make a nice warm-up before the main event on Sunday, plus there's the added bonus of beer.  But then I further considered that added bonus of beer, and the fact that the "hundreds" of other participants crammed on this not-overly-large trail would also be partaking in that bonus, and all of a sudden it didn't seem like such a great idea for an ungraceful cyclist such as myself...or anyone, really.  And so I sent him on his merry way, with the strictest of warnings that he was NOT to injure himself. 

About 2:30 this afternoon, my phone buzzed: "Totally beefed it on the ride. Kinda hurting right now." Without hesitation my fingers flew across the surface of my iPhone to the tune of "I told you so!"  My phone buzzed again: "I might be questionable for tomorrow. My bike is tweaked"...Cue panic attack!  I've been worried enough about this test ride even knowing that I've got someone to go with me. What if I fall off and severely injure myself? What if I fall into traffic and get mowed down? What if I get a mile down the road and think "fuck it, I can't do this!"? Now I'm looking at the prospect of going through all of this by myself?  Yes, I do realize I'm going to be by myself in Europe, but that's exactly why I was really counting on the support and guidance of another slightly more experienced cyclist to help me out on this trial run...training wheels, if you will, until I get my confidence up a bit.  Well...so much for that idea.  I can't call off the test run, and I don't have time to postpone it. Unless I can find a way to get him a last-minute loaner bike for a couple days and convince him to pedal through the pain (I'm working on it), I'm on my own. Trial by fire. I've not even left the country yet and already it's all going tits up....if this is any kind of omen of things to come, this is going to be even harder than I thought...good thing I like a challenge.