97 rides again

well, the times are in from last night.

i'll save you the trouble and tell you that this season i bumped up to the two-lap category, which was my race before i got sick and started sandbagging.

...except i guess it's really not sandbagging if you're, you know, too sick or too being out of shape from being sick to go the whole distance but you'd rather die than not take your start or even not make your finish, so you go out anyway in a shorter race.

at least that's what i did.

so i got out on the course last night entered in my proper division and it was maybe my slowest time EVER, but at least i was on the course. the wreck of the old 97.

there's only one way to get your conditioning back tough, and that's to take it by force.

so that's what i'm doing.

there was a little crisis yesterday afternoon; usually lucy sets aside my number so i can pick it up, but this year i showed up and they had just given it to someone else.


who is he? i asked. how much does he want for it? that last thing was silly, because i don't have the money to buy my number back.

but i know the guy, so i called him up and asked him if he'd trade, which you still can do before the opener, and he was willing, so i got my number. you know, the one i've had ever since my very first race?

if i didn't get my number, i was going to cry. right there in the shop. i may be all tough and sleep in my car in remote locations and race mountain bikes and stuff, but if i can't get my number, i will cry. right out in the open.

today i'm packing my bags and tomorrow morning i'm going out on the road again.

this time it's a vacation. it was maybe going to be the end of peregrination, but last week i came in from that and my campsite's paid for, so i might as well go back out. the weather will be moderately nice and the area pretty and come church sunday i'll be among friends.

it's hard to beat that.

if you want to follow me, you can come along with this spiffy little number.

where i was

i know you're dying to find out exactly where i was while i was out on the road.

i got started on this little project because cr asked for an itinerary and maybe a map, which only made me giggle, since i never know where i'm going until i get there, but i vary gamely figured out how to work a google map well enough to at least mark where i'd been, so if you want to follow along and look at the pictures, you can:


View may 2010 in a larger map

a little late

hey, i know we're already most of the way through may, but i've been kind of busy being out on the road.

and it takes time to organize all those pictures.

but here's april from my thirteen project. i can't believe it's already time to start clocking may!

accidental witness

have you ever been an accidental witness to a big moment in someone else's life?

maybe the worst moment of their life?

a moment in which you really hope this is the worst moment, because if they've lived anything worse you're not sure you want to know about it?

two days ago, sunday afternoon, i went out to look for a geocache and i stopped to take a picture of a pretty field with dandelions. i only mention it because i was looking up in an area of the sky that would become very interesting a few minutes later, when a little farther down the road i noticed billows of black smoke rising up in that same clear patch of sky.

black smoke is nearly always a structure fire or a big trash burn. wood burns clean, mostly. plastics and such burn black.

and i remember hoping -real hard- that it was a big trash burn.

please, oh please, please, please, don't let it be a structure fire.


and then about ten minutes later i started to hear all the sirens. right off i saw seven engines from two towns, and then more engines, and a lot of guys in pickups and SUVs driving the way only firemen do.

that has to be a structure fire.

well, part of what i'm doing is looking for a geocache but also part of what i'm doing is sitting in prayer, because i have a friend who's doing important and difficult work at this time and i want to be with her in that, and ask blessings on that.

so now i have this fire to add to that mountain of prayer. somebody just over the hill is having a very bad day.

i still hope it's a trash burn.

and then i'm on my way out and i can see the fire from the ridge, and all along the road cars are parked watching the fire and engines are still coming from surrounding towns. there's a lot of flame and i can see in my scope that it's a house. a nice one.

at this point i'm hoping that it's just an outbuilding, but it looks like the house is going up.

this morning, tuesday, i was back over there looking for an earthcache and i went by hoping to see a charred outbuilding and a standing house.

instead i saw the still burning ashpile, nothing left standing but the narrow chimney.

and the guy (i assume it's the homeowner) is sitting beside the smoking rubble in a lawn chair, reading the paper. his mailbox is still standing, and i guess they still deliver his paper.

it is so sad my heart will maybe break.

let me clarify...

i kept having dreams in which i have to go to princeton, maine.

so i packed up my car -for real- and went to princeton, maine. now i am travelling without itinerary or plan, and maine is a very big place. for the last two days i was up in the deboullie unit, which was recommended to me by four park rangers and three employees of north maine woods.

i woke up in ashland and noticed that the regional office for maine parks and recreation is there, so i thought i'd just drop by and ask them some questions. they were very sweet.

so i went up to deboullie.

it's very remote up there.

very.

i'm kind of relieved to be back in a town, even if that town is fort kent.

never, not once in my life, did i ever think i would be approaching caribou, ME from the NORTH.

still, i'm having an interesting time.

here's a view of my campsite first thing in the morning.

in dreams

weeks ago  i started having dreams in which i have to go to princeton, ME.

i have no idea why i am here, but i am in princeton, ME. i have found a campsite somewhere nearby and this afternoon in calais i found a place that served up a pizza so good that all i could do was thank God for a creation in which such a thing could exist and a life in which i might be present to eat it.

it was a fourteen inch pie (i have some left over) with garlic sausage and onions, so good that it boggles your mind and under twelve dollars.

it is not my habit to endorse products or businesses here, but a pizza that good and that cheap deserves mention, you know?

key

i was too busy being dead to have any heart for cleaning up the mess.


but last week i finally went through my key ring and took off the keys i know i'll never use again: the key to an apartment that my last ex sold years ago, the keys from my job. my file cabinet, the storage locker from two classrooms ago, the outside key that only worked on that one door, the elevator key and the 10 key i had to fight so hard for.

funny, but when i left i turned in my 19 key (the first one given to me) and my key card, but nobody asked for the rest of them.

life's like that sometimes, i guess.