Day 14: I Didn't Realize There Would Be So Much Biking

So here we are in Port Huron, MI. Bonnie from warmshowers.org was nice enough to take us in on only a day's notice, and we're living the dream. Among the amenities:

-Kitchen
-Dinner
-Shower (and bathroom!)
-Fuzzy, a little dog that looks like a wolf
-Beds (indoors)
-The Internet

[Major league thanks to Bonnie. Kind, generous, fascinating, and leaving on a bike trip of her own tomorrow. We wish her well.]

I wanted to do brief rundowns of the past 10 days or whatever it's been since the last posting, but Bonnie was in the Peace Corps so obviously we talked about that after dinner and then there was a map session, etc. -- point being that we have stayed up later than expected and now have little energy for this blogging thing. By the way, gentle readers, please have patience with me re: infrequency of posts. It's not that I don't care about you, but rather that we've been in the wilds of southern Ontario where a "blog" is a smelly, poorly drained place at the bottom of a pasture. Too, frankly, at the end of a long day of riding it's hard to lie down in the tent and do anything other than go immediately to sleep. So maybe I'll start updating at lunch or something.

Thus far the hardest part (since people ask) is eating enough food. This is not really a surprise, but it is a little disconcerting that we haven't quite figured it out yet. One can only eat so many granola bars, but doing much more that that seems to take the wind out of our sails if we stop mid-ride for a snack. I have lost considerable weight, as I believe Bonesy has, and even though I stuff myself at night I feel hungry in the morning. I sure would appreciate some advice here, community. Not sure if Gary's reading this, but I'm going to try to call him (my Ironman-conquering godfather) for some advice on this point.

Biggest emergencies to date:
1. Racoon raid at Rock Point Provincial Park on the northern shore of Lake Erie. It wasn't so much that they took all our food (which they did) as the sniffing, and the clawing, and the snarling that kept us up until dawn. Totally undeterred by lights: v. unsettling.
2. Flat tires. So far only two, actually, which seems fine. I patched mine up fine but Bonesy's was punctured right on the seam so it kept leaking all yesterday and today. We were lucky that the patch held as well as it did because we didn't have 32c tubes for her until this afternoon (I had packed two larger tubes thinking she had the same tire size as I did, but so crisis averted).

Biggest surprise: Niagara Falls! It's like Disneyland on the Canadian side, all built up like that. We had no idea. The falls were gorgeous, of course, and we spent a vacation day just looking at them and wandering the little city (great falafel at Tarboosh, and about the best deal in town for the calories). Somehow though all the entertainment complex that's grown up around there kind of detracts from the natural spectacle. I'm not being cynical here -- we approached even the overwhelming commercialism with an anthropologically objective eye -- but I really was a little underwhelmed by the falls until we spent some serious time just gazing. The Rainbow Bridge, though? Really, really beautiful. But I'm kind of a bridge guy.

Best coffee: two mornings ago when we had a long day of riding ahead of us and the skies opened up just as we were mounting the bikes, an older couple in an RV invited us onto their awning to set a while and wait out the storm with a cup of Tim Horton's (I love Tim Horton's -- always have, ever since working on a farm in PEI).

Best quote: yesterday we were stopped in the middle of a long day against a headwind (oh, more on the blasted winds below), making tuna wraps in what can only be described as the prairie town of Melbourne, ON. This older guy is there with his niece and the sky is like, hard, it's so blue, and he's gabbing away at us about not riding through northern Ontario in the dark because of the bugs and the moose, and we're just nodding, staring a thousand yards into the grass and munching away with full mouths. And so of course we talk to him about the trip, which is beginning to feel like a routine with people ("Burlington Vermont. California. Almost two weeks. About three months. Yes."), and really I'm kind of throwing him under the bus here, because actually he was an unexpectedly nice guy in a pretty terse-talking area, and so we're leaving and we've said our goodbyes and then he says:

"Do you ever just want to give up?"

Never, of course, and we rode away.

For real, though? The headwinds. Today was the first day that I would downgrade to "breezy" from "windy" in the past seven. And all due West, too. I know it's likely to be that way most of the way across the country, what with the prevailing winds on the continent, but this was pretty ridiculous, and it slowed us down, and there's just no one you can blame or be mad at so you swear and you grit your teeth and you get down in the drops and you pedal. I try to think of the wind as just being part of the world's energy, and we have to keep things in balance by cutting through it with our westward energy. That is our role.

This is the fourteenth night of the trip, and Bonesy and I are loving it, even when it's not fun. I got a puncture wound in my left calf when my fender stay bit me on a railroad crossing back in Rochester; my sock turned red and after we dressed it our first conversation was about what a good picture the blood would have made from a low angle along the tracks (it healed up just fine, mom). Speaking of pictures, we'll try to post some at some point -- there are a few good ones, is my understanding.

Major life lesson in the process of being learned and integrated: it is OK, and even a good idea, to ask for help when you need help. Simple, maybe, but I have always experienced some uneasiness about this sort of thing. Out here, too, it's like, you don't really have anything to give back other than a little conversation and your gratitude. But people like to help, and we are grateful to them for doing it, and the giving and the taking maintain that old balance. Mom says that human beings deserve each other's love and care, and that I can repay by being a peaceful man. I feel peaceful these days, as barns and silos roll by on the picture box of county roads. Ride on.