Bummer.
Oh well, just another in a long line of rejections. I manage to survive and get by anyway, so I've nothing to complain about. I'm well aware that I'm living a life of privilege to even have the chance to take this trip. As for not being perceived as "good enough"--well, I've faced that all my life in one form or another. It is a struggle to care enough to keep trying, but I don't have the luxury to give up. There's too much to be done.
There are three of things I wanted to share. Here's the earliest photo I can find with me on a bike, well not exactly on it, but wanting to be. I'm the little kid trying squeezing in on my brother Bob who's on the bike. This
is many years before the infamous orange Stingray. It must be around 1964. My oldest sister Rosemary is in the middle, Beabee is to her left and Margie is sitting on the ground. I can't figure out where we are (maybe one of our grandparents' homes?), but I assume it must be early spring since it can't possibly be summer if we're wearing coats and sweaters. We all look pretty happy here--though we're lined up, it's not the whole clan like photos taken during holidays.Last week, I went to San Jose, CA for the NACCS conference and when I was at the airport I picked up an interesting book. I seem to rarely read new books outside of what I assign in class, but over the last couple of years, I've been wandering into airport bookstores and picking up books that I would never read otherwise so I'll have some distraction from grading or reading reports over a long plane ride. The beauty of this, is that between going and coming, I'm usually able to finish the book so I don't have to figure out how to fit this kind of random reading in to a crazy schedule. In any case, this time around I had a serendipitous syncroncity occur when the first book I picked up was once called A Strange Piece of Paradise.
Once I read the book jacket, I was hooked and spent as much time as I could over the next 3 days reading through this 730 page paperback. It's the story of 2 young women (Yale sophomores) who in the summer of 1977 decide to take a cross-counry bike ride.
"They pitch a tent in the desert of central Oregon. As they are sleeping, a man in a pickup truck deliberately runs over the tent. He then attacks them with an ax. The horrific crime is reported in newspapers across the country. No one is ever arrested. Both women survive, but Shayna suffers from amnesia, while Terri [Jentz] is left alone with memories of the attack. Their friendship is shattered. Fifteen years later, Terri returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered, on the first of many visits she will make "to solve the crime that would solve me." And she makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Slowly, her extensive interviews with the townspeople yield a terrifying revelation: many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst. Terri then sets out to discover the truth about the crime and its aftermath, and to come to terms with the wounds that broke her life into a before and an after." (From the book jacket)
It's an amazingly courageous book. While their story has to be understood in the national context of rampant and random violence against women during this time, this isn't exactly something this country has outgrown. Can you say Don Imus? (What an appropriate name: I am us!) I encourage you to see the webpage (http://www.strangepieceofparadise.com/) if not read the book. They were only six days into their cross country bike journey when this happened, but the author's journey--her life path--was altered forever. The lessons one can take from her are many--courage, tenacity, perseverance, spiritual strength, how to channel anger and action into a creative force--and the book is also a cautionary tale about the fragility of life in both large and small ways.
No doubt I'll have to think of issues of safety on the road--how I'm perceived by strangers as a curioisty, a threat, an opportunity, as vulnerable. No doubt that I will not be able to account for unforseseen possibilities. These were already on my mind before picking up the book, but this has reminded me of how much I need to both anticipate (control) and to let go of (the illusion of control) even before I get on the road.
Which brings me to the third point. Now that I have no appointment to keep in San Antonio in mid-summer, I've decided to change my route so that I'm traveling the entire perimeter of the country. This will give me the opportunity to go through Cline Falls, Oregon where the events documented in A Strange Piece of Paradise occurred. I don't think I'm being morbid in doing this--it's curiosity, yes, but it's a tribute to the journey those two young women were never able to complete. This will add some miles to my proposed route--but the more I read of other people's journey's, I don't think I'll have a problem finishing this expanded route in my 6 month time frame. I may start out slow, but I think I'll be able to pick up speed & stamina as I go along (I better!). I'll post some map belows--I need to figure out how to turn this into one map later. I will be crossing into Canada and Mexico at points along the way so I can add an international dimension to the trip. I've decided to start this trip in San Jose because my goal is to travel the northern route in the summer so I don't have to confront the cold (at least not the northern cold). What is left out is a trip up or down through the middle of the country, though I still go through many states in the upper midwest. I may yet do some piece of that if time allows.
