So today is a rest day. That means that I'll be spending the day repacking my bags, running small errands, watching movies on Netflix, and getting rid of things I don't need. Yesterday's blog post has also been updated to tell the story of why it was posted so late.
Today I was alone. Every day, I'm alone, but today was the first day I've felt truly lonely. With weather alternating between heavy thunderstorm, and light rain, I am stuck indoors. I was stuck at my hotel room, I was stuck at the post office, I was stuck at CVS, where I bought and returned headphones that didn't work. I wanted to go to a cafe, I wanted to go see a movie early, but when there's weather warning alerts for flash floods and tornadoes, the desire just slips away.
There's four days of this in the forecast, and I don't have four days to sit and wallow in the dull humidity. I know that I can bike my way out of this weather within a day. I know that tomorrow, I can wake up, bike in the rain all morning, and be out of the storm. But I also know that I could have done that today. My day off could have been in Alexandria, LA, in a city, with cafes, buses, nearby movie theatres, and Indian food.
Instead, I'm sitting in front of my computer, with four tortillas, graham crackers, and peanut butter for dinner. Food means biking, biking means getting soaked from above by the storm, from below by cars splashing water on me in shoulder-less highways, and from the inside from the sweat and humidity. I biked for 10 minutes to get to the post office, and, in the rain, got honked at, and told to get off the road. I wish I could get off the road today. I wish there were other options.
When I was younger, I would tell the joke about how mathematicians are always frustrated. In math, you spends days and days bashing your head against a problem. The work can be long, it can be boring, and it can get very technical and messy, and there's no end in sight. But then, one day, the one day out of the twenty, there's success! You're lifted from the cloud of drudgery, and celebrate! Yet, the next day, there's a new problem to solve, and it's back to work. Thus, the joke goes, an averaging argument says that mathematicians are always miserable.
To me, this is joke is an all-to-real double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it means I am always chasing the dragon. There's a kind of a reset, where I'm never comfortable where I am, and I always need to push more. I realize just now that during this whole blog, I never once noted that I've already biked over 1500km, alone, and tented more than I've ever tented before. I've learned so much about the bike, and parts of the US I've never been to and may never visit again. Yet I don't look back, only forwards. Every day, it's how many kilometers I can still do, not how many I've done. I'm always pushing, and by Newton's laws, this means I always move forward.
On the other hand, it means I am always worried about the future, and the path ahead. I am scared about the things I will have to face later. Things like getting a real job, finding my place in the world, and getting older. I'm scared of the literal mountains on my horizon, and of the stormy ride tomorrow. I'm scared of failure.
We judge others by their actions, and ourselves by our intentions. I think this can be taken further, to say that we appraise others by their pasts, and ourselves by our goals. By definition, goals are not already achieved, so to me, the box of pride that contains the next 3000km is empty, whereas the box that contains the past 1500km does not count towards my pride in this bike ride.
It's hard writing a CV.
Today I biked 7km. I was hoping to bike another 7km back and forth from the movie theatre, but the weather was not permitting.