T+1: It's About Time

NEW BUFFALO, MICHIGAN:  We got out of town on time, much to our surprise and exhaustion.  The last few days have been a marathon of endless work and stress, trying so hard to make sure we are leaving the systems of our life intact.  The transition in our house goes well.  Our demented dog, Louie, is in love…not with the house sitter, but with her dog.   This was a bit of risk, bringing in a house sitter with her two animals, a dog and a cat.   However, she is obviously an animal person, and we have been very concerned that Louie, who is so connected to us, and has very limited coping skills, would absolutely freak out. 

The object of
Louie's affections

Her dog, Tucker, outweighs Louie by at least 40 pounds.  He is gentle and well behaved.  Louie follows him around and watches everything he does.  Tucker has basic dog skills, like coming to “Come” and drinking from a bowl.   Louie follows Tucker in and watches with great interest as Tucker slurps water from a metal dish.   Whether Louie overcomes his great aversion to all things metal remains to be seen, but it is astonishing to see how much Louie has relaxed to be around this big, calm dog.

The cats are less happy.  There is some spitting and arching, but it is too early to tell whether war or acceptance is the future of the cats’ relationship.  Mimi, in particular, seems to be in high dudgeon.  She is mad about being kept in after her escape earlier in the week.  Then there was that rotten visit to the veterinarian.   Riding in the car is always a hated experience for this cat, and it is made much worse by getting shots.  She seems under the weather and lethargic before the entrance of the new cat Bailey.  When we leave, she is sulking on top of the entertainment armoire.  I try to coax her down for a goodbye snug, but she is not having it.  All we can do is hope for the best. 

The exit from Matrix was far from smooth. The thanking process after the fund-raiser had major problems, made worse by critical absences by staff, contractors, and volunteers.  A task that should have been done easily, well, and quickly stretched out for days, then weeks, leaving me to sign apology notes and re-issued thank you's late, late, late on Friday night.

It excites the fear in me that has been sitting at the base of my spine for months.  Will anyone, in the words of my favorite Marge Piercy poem, “do what has to be done, again, and again” for Matrix?   Will it be the first order of attention for anyone?   Then I wonder:  Is that even required? 

I am depending on a kind of radical trust to step away, even though there is a nagging voice in my head, whispering fearful doubts.    I make myself remember all the heart and time and effort staff and board have brought to Matrix for years.   I tell myself to get over myself and quit being such a narcissist. 

I close my mind to this riddling voice.   I know, oh so well, that my work-life has been unbalanced and unhealthy for years.  I have to let it go, for my own good, if nothing else.   This is not easy.   It is necessary.   It is better to believe in good.   Good comes best where good believes most.   Or so I tell myself.

We got on the road at 11:08 am.  Our goal was 11:00 am.  By the time we get to Chelsea, it starts to dawn on us that we have left.  Wes gives me a fist-bump.  It is not long before I am sleeping fitfully in my seat.  I wake up with a sore and clanging neck, but see that we entering the big forests of West Michigan.   We peer up the Kalamazoo River, looking either for kayaks or for remains of the devastating oil spill.  Neither can be seen.  We wait for the turn south that signals the approach of Lake Michigan.

We make the turn and look for exits to the Red Arrow Highway.  We have traveled this country quite a bit on our way back and forth from Wyoming, and seeing our favorite shops is a welcome relief.  We are on our way to our 1^st nights lodging when we see the turn off to the Warren Dunes State Park, with one of the finest beaches on Lake Michigan.  Shall we?   We shall.

We turn from the prescribed path, and in a few moments, we are taking our pasty white, excessively large selves gingerly into the brisk, clear waters of Lake Michigan.  We both know that a sudden plunge into the water is the best way, but we dither and giggle and squeal as the cool water laps against ever higher parts of our body.  It is not long before we are swimming and floating, marveling at the mountains of sand and the thousands of people up and down the shores. 

For the first time in days, I can feel my neck release.  Out of the water, we relax on the sand, and people watch with great delight, then decide to swim again. On the way out of the park, we stop at a farm stand and buy fresh picked strawberries and cherries.  Both are incredibly sweet and delicious. 

A few hours a later, we are in our room.  We are pleased that the trip is already working.  The trip to lake is just the first step of giving ourselves the time to be fully alive, not embedded in our fear or bound by the knots of our own making.  

It is early morning now.  The sun has not yet risen.  I have awakened nearly every hour all night long…still agitated by the amount of adrenalin coursing in my stress-addled veins.  When this day finally arrives, it brings a new order,  a day in which time is no longer the enemy, but a delicious new freedom to explore and just be.  It’s about time.

T-17: OMG

The to-do list we’re working on is completely unmanageable. I move from obligation to obligation.  What has to be done right now?  What can be delayed a few minutes, a few days?  What is essential, what is not?  As I try to make sense of this, I feel as though I am in a haze.

Here’s a quick overview of the many strands of action I am managing:

Preparing the house for house sitting: getting rid of all the excess that needs to go the Salvation Army, beginning to store all our personal items so the house sitters can have space for their goods; purchasing dog and cat food ahead, making sure all the repairs are done; making sure the animals are up to date with their shots; preparing the “care and feeding of house and animals”  document; getting a debit card to pay for animal expenses; clean, clean, clean… repair whatever needs repairing.

Preparing the yard for our absence: get all the beds in order, weeded, mulched, and organized; prune the overgrown shrubs; replace the rotten garden timbers with brick; make sure the tools, mower, hoses, etc. are in good order.

You may think this sounds over the top. It is to a degree, but it is also defensive.  In the years we have been using house sitters, we have discovered that sitters will do and allow things that owners never would.  A case in point: one year, we left the seldom used basement toilet with a wonky fitting.  We told the sitter to make sure the valve re-seated if the toilet was used.  When we came home, we heard water running.  Sure enough, the basement toilet was running and apparently had been for weeks, given the size of our water bill.   Another example: rare oh rare is the sitter who will maintain the garden.  For renters and sitters, watering and mowing the grass alone is pretty challenging.  If we don’t weed, mulch, and prune, we come home to a jungle with aggressive plant likes grape vines and coltsfoot, circling and killing our perennials.

Getting ready for the trip itself: getting the bikes overhauled and prepared for long-term travel; making sure we have all the maps for the trip.  (We just received maps for our routes from Portland to north of Seattle where we join the Northern Tier route we will follow across the country.  We also received the maps from Portland, Maine to Boston at the end of our trip.  www.adventurecycling.org). We have joined www.warmshowers.com, which is a website that connects touring bicyclists to people who are willing to let you camp or stay at their house. 

We still need make arrangements to ship our bikes and BOBs from Detroit and Laramie.  We think through the pack again and again: do we have the right clothes?  Do we need better rain gear?  What safety and health preparations are prudent and which are extra weight?  We have a flight from Denver to Portland, but how will we get to Denver from our mountain cabin?

Driving across the country:  We will drive across the country to our cabin in Wyoming before leaving.  We have a whole variety of furniture, dishes, and other materials that need to be packed to take to Centennial.  We think we will camp across the country, but because we will need to travel fast, we better make sure we have reservations. 

Wes’ 60 birthday/retirement/bon voyage party: We are hosting a party before we go, so there are invitations to be sent, food to be prepared.  We will spend the weekend getting the backyard ready for the party.  (See above)

Getting our bodies ready:  We both have had extensive dental work and mine is still not done.  I am still trying to get to the gym (although I am supposed to be there right now as I write these words) to continue my strength training.  We have also been trying to get as many bike rides as possible before we go.  I should go to the optometrist, but it is looking like that will wait.

Making sure the retirement and financial changes are complete: There is a mountain of paperwork, new insurances, changes of accounts and more that have to be managed.  Wes has been nagging me for more than 3 weeks to get my IRA transferred.  I say, “soon, soon” and keep it on my to-do list.  We need to make sure we can pay all our bills online, something we have never done to date.  So far that is a “soon, soon.”  But time is running out and I regret we did not do this change last January.

Of course, these are ONLY the preparations on the personal side.  The to-do list for the company and for Wes to close out 30 years of teaching are twice as big and twice as complicated. 

Right now, we are like buffalo facing a vicious snowstorm blowing in from the east.  There is nothing to do but put our heads down, accept that pleasure is not going part of the picture for a while, and keep on plodding to our goal.

So, while we can see that our escape is coming, we are deeply experiencing the tangling bondages we have so tightly wound around our life.  The irony is nearly overwhelming.  We want the weaving to stay intact while we carefully extract ourselves from the weave.  So many threads to unravel, so many threads to re-weave.

---

T-68: Getting Ready--Technology Version



How many hours in front a screen?
 

I am still mixed about whether taking all this technology on the bikes is  a good idea.  In rides past, part of the beauty was being untethered.   For our last big trip, in 1998 (!), I don't think we even carried a cell phone, which were still novelties at that point. 

Now, however, screens are us.  I am on my 3rd smart phone.  There are many nights where I am on my phone, Wes is on the pad, and conversation is slight to none.  There is irony here.  We chose to give up television when it went digital at least partially to participate more fully in conversation, reading, and activities.  How ridiculous is it that we are now staring at our small screens instead.

I am also mixed about it because technology is never as easy as it seems it is going to be, as you want  it to be, or as it should be.  Inevitably, it takes me 20 minutes to figure out where that one necessary button is,  or because I cannot figure out how to do that one simple thing...like change the font size, or saving to a new directory...that I did in the previous version of the software or operating system.

Right now, I am struggling to figure out a new Nokia 920 Windows Phone, after happily using my tiny WebOS Veer for the past two years.  That is certainly going better than the fight I am having with this new Asus Windows 8 Zenbook.

I spent long frustrating hours trying to do something which was very simple on my previous technology...put a photo on my blog.  Blogger fights with Windows 8, so I can't automatically take pictures with the great camera on the phone, and put them on the blog.

This, of course, was my big idea.  I could use my great new phone to document our trip and preparations for the trip.   So no, I have to save to the cloud, then find a way to download it without tripping up the stupid blogger photo interface.

That is assuming that the more than a little erratic track-pad on the Zenbook isn't popping my cursor all over the page without warning.  Not only does it flip around without warning, because it is Windows 8, I find myself on the tiles, or on the previous page without ever having meant to go there.

So now I am wondering about the whole damn thing.  On previous trips, we were unbound and free.  Technology is looking and feeling like a tether.  About the last thing I want to do is spend my lunchtime and camp-time fighting with technology, instead of enjoying my surroundings, meeting new people, and losing my stress.

I do want to record my experience.  I do want to share my experience.  I know we are undertaking a life-changing challenge.  Why can't the technology be simple and seamless...like they promise?