Transamerica Cycle 2013, travel day 3

All my muscles are sore and we haven't even started cycling yet! Carrying my panniers around on my shoulder in-between trains is what did it, I think. My neck, upper back, shoulders, and arms are feeling it now (good thing I've been working out with my dad and getting stronger before this...). My legs are also a touch sore in weird places because of all the walking yesterday in cycling shoes, but the blisters are better.

I make coffee while Jenn and Dan walk down to the bike shop (turns out it's just across the street!) to get a new skewer and finally put his bike together. Free motel coffee, yum. Put my off-day clothes in a plastic bag to keep them from stinking up the rest of my stuff and go about getting ready. How exciting, you guys. I'm in Virginia.

It takes a while for us to pack up our gear and get started 'cause there's adjustments to make on our bikes and such and so on and so we don't actually get going till like noon. It feels really good to cycle in cycling shoes instead of walking in them! We ride thru downtown Richmond to get on route 5 toward Yorktown. My gears are super maladjusted... I make them worse by fiddling with them while riding, then make them better, then make them way worse and we have to stop and flip my bike over to mess with them more. They are still off somehow but manageable; we'll get a pro to look at them in Yorktown?

The roads are mostly wooded, lots of waterways, traffic is okay but there's no shoulder. The amount of snake roadkills around does make me a little nervous for camping, tho'! One thing I'm definitely missing about Ireland--not so many creepy crawlies. We're going an average of like 10 mph. At some point we meet a guy from Australia on his way across America from D.C. and he tells us to eat at the Courthouse Grill, which is in Charles City. We sit in the AC and have water and cokes and I talk to the chef to figure out something safe for me to eat (we go for steak wrapped in foil on the grill and plain green beans).

Dan's knees hurt him so we go a bit slower for a while. Turns out his bike wheel is a bit out of place and making trouble for him. Due to our late start it's getting dusky already; we stop at a small country store (filled with gnats and weevils... ugh), grab some canned food for breakfast tomorrow, and keep going. From here until the James river it's pure woods, swampy from time to time, very soggy, and the air cools down and the wind, which was in our faces pretty much all day, lets up for a while.

There's a campsite just on the other side of the James River so we stop here, as it's getting dark, take showers and set up camp. I brought a bivvy bag but this one has a bug net at least.

Tomorrow we want an early start. It's a bit over 20 miles to Yorktown from here, so it'll *basically* be a rest day once we reach it. Then, tomorrow, we meet the rest of the Handlebarbarians and begin in earnest.

pax.

Transamerica Cycle 2013, travel day 2

Today we reach D.C. in the afternoon and bid goodbye to our awesome teddy-bear-carrying seat-friend as he goes off to his conference. Our next train doesn't leave for like six hours and we want to see some of the capitol so we go looking for lockers, only to realize because of 911 and the whole this-is-the-capitol thing there aren't any. There is a paid left-luggage place, but it's $48 for our bags for the day! We despair about that for a while then pay it and go 'cause there's no way we can carry everything all day and waiting in the station for six hours would be really boring.

After chow, we head down to the Lincoln memorial 'cause it's the farthest away, something like 3 miles from Union Station. On the way we see the Wellington monument (some call it the Washington monument but we all know what it's really about), which is under construction, apparently? 

And the big World War II memorial. 

Walking so far in cycling shoes is really uncomfortable. The soles are too stiff and the cleats crunch in the gravel. It's also really hot. Ah well. Lincoln is huge and iconic and it's good to have seen him. Jenn almost cries because she just read Gone with the Wind and the memorial brings it all to life for her.

After Lincoln we head back thru the Korean War memorial, past the big reflecty pool, thru a sculpture garden, and into the Air and Space museum. We only have something like 45 minutes before it closes but we look at all the planes on the ceiling and the solar system exhibit. There's a picture of the actual surface of Venus which is one of my favorite things ever. Because it's like, that's real, that exists on another planet, and the probe that took it promptly melted and died because Venus is basically hell. It died for that photo. I just like it, idk.

The train ride to Richmond is pretty short. I finally get a window seat. Dan sits next to a really nice old man and they talk about tennis. The staff on this train are my favorite so far. We disembark at Staple Mill Road, then panic a bit because our bikes weren't on that train--but they came early and all is well. Except it isn't because as we put our bikes together we realize that the skewer (axle) for Dan's front wheel is missing... a call to Mama confirms we left it in their garage. The motel we have reservations at is only 2 miles away, tho', so we walk our bikes there in solidarity with Dan, him rolling it wheelie-style and Jenn holding his wheel. It smells, and sounds, like my childhood here. Hard to describe. The flowers are all familiar, familial, the insects humming and chirping my memories in the fields. Virginia. We're here.

The motel is decent (showers and beds always appreciated) and they go out to eat and I go to bed and tomorrow we start cycling, guys!

pax.

Transamerica Cycle 2013, travel day 1

We board our first train (California Zephyr to Chicago) in Denver... arriving late to the station with 30 seconds to convince the baggage guys to accept our bikes, considering they are already boxed and we are ready to pay in cash and all (they were literally about to close check-in as I walked in). Thank you, baggage guys! It seems everything went smoothly, so our bikes ought to be waiting for us in Richmond when we get there. Here's to hopin'.

Sleep is fitful in the rattling coach for the night, but on a train you have plenty of room to stretch out at least. I'm in an aisle seat next to a stranger, however, which can make it a bit awkward and create unique aches and pains due to leaning on one side only. I did acquire a little pillow, at least, which makes things easier.

We reach Nebraska in the wee hours of the morning and Iowa in the afternoon. The fields rolling by are green as anything, wooded, rivered, beautiful. I love riding on trains. Even if it takes a touch too long to reach one's destination and even if other methods of travel would technically be cheaper, I still love it. Maybe it has to do with my childhood in Japan. I dunno. I hate planes and I hate driving so I guess it's my only other option? (besides cycling, of course! which we'll get to)

Turns out the lady sitting next to me is really cool. We have a lovely conversation about all sorts of things while she sews a little "mug rug" as a graduation gift for a friend, whom she is going to visit in St. Louis. She also does a bit of independent publishing--y'all should check out her and her husband's e-book "Rail Tales" (by Brian Green), a collection of funny and charming facebook statuses written whilst on public transportation and collected later into book form. She also talks about her goal of learning 7 languages on her lifetime... cool stuff like that. I think she's working on number 4?

We land in Chicago in the afternoon, where we have to transfer to another train. We have two hours to kill before that, tho', so we walk down to see Lake Michigan and a few fountains and gardens, then pop into a liquor store to get some wine, as well as pick up some strongbow cider and candy (well, in my case, freeze-dried fruit) for our next long train ride. From what little I saw of it Chicago seems like a pretty cool city--certainly had a decent amount of public transportation in the form of aboveground trains. As I have friends who live here, I'm going to come back to visit Chicago someday with a few days to kill instead of a few hours. It's on my list of cities to possibly move to just-for-the-hell-of-it so I should scope it out at least. Could even take the same train there from Denver next time. Jenn is sad because we walked too much and now she doesn't have time to get a proper Chicago-style pizza *in Chicago*. The locker we put our stuff in for walking costs $10 'cause we're a few minutes later than an hour back.

Back on the train to D.C. (to union station from union station thru union station...). Whoever did the assigned seating was a little confused 'cause mine's already taken so I sit next to a guy holding a teddy bear 'cause he seems cool. Turns out he totally is! He's on his way to a feminist conference in D.C. and we get to talking about feminism and gender issues and intersectionality and families and embarrassing stories and just about everything really. We hang out, the four of us, in the cafe lounge car and drink our cider and wine and eat dinner and sugar snap peas until something like midnight. What good luck with seat partners! (Btw he writes for a blog called Queereka; you should check it out if you're into that kinda bloggin'.)

Time for sleep in another rattling metal tube shooting eastward. Tomorrow we'll have a layover in D.C. -- then, Richmond ho!

pax.

p.s. our group has dubbed ourselves the HandleBarbarians. Meet our mascot:

(thus follows a picture of a viking-like man with his mouth open, shouting; backdrop is a bike shop)

Leaving on Tuesday

Okay, so forget about all the emo posts below this one. My adventure is starting soon so this blog is going to be dedicated to that from now until it's over.

Me, my sister, and my sister's fiance are leaving on a train from Denver to Yorktown, VA this Tuesday evening. From Denver we take a train to Chicago, from Chicago to D.C., and from D.C. to Richmond, where we will disembark, re-assemble our bicycles, and cycle to the Atlantic Ocean to touch the water before we head off to the Pacific to touch the water there. In Yorktown we will meet my cousin, her boyfriend, and her brother, so there will be six of us going.

This trip is far more ambitious than my Ireland one. Probably won't be as beautiful, nor as convenient (hostels ftw), but it will nonetheless be amazing.

Here's to adventuring.

HandleBarbarians Cycle Across America, Summer 2013

COAST TO COAST OR BUST!

...

following the diet they gave me was supposed to make me feel better.

I'm depressed again. My muscles have a constant, low-key ache that worsens but never stops. I'm closer to tears than usual. I'm tired, always tired, like I've always been my whole life and that never changes.

I'm scared and feel like my life is mostly aimless. I guess nowadays that's always part of being in one's 20s. . .

Insomnia and

time crawling swiftly by
swollen eyes sliding over each excruciating second
inside each strand of muscle seeping molten lead
hardening into long slugs of
weaponized
ache
lye-filled stomach (is it lye? the one that melts flesh?)
recoiling from a day's work
clamoring for raw materials to violently reject
ah yes
inside that skull is certainly a mess
of aggressive radiation
held tightly inside by leaden skull
(stand back a bit, though, you
never know with these things)
these nerves are surely faulty
screaming at me like this, nonstop
i'd like to return them please
no, no receipt
they were supposed to be a gift

Intelligence in the Google Era

Random musings of a headachey mind.

Intelligence seems, to me, to be made up of two discrete parts: memory and critical thinking. Without a good memory, one's critical thinking will never have enough data to make accurate deductions; without critical thinking, one cannot make sense of what's stored in the memory.

I've always had a pretty good memory, just naturally, which I'm thankful for. I think my personal intelligence is built primarily on that--while I'm fairly good with basic logic (so my performance on geometry proofs in high school would seem to testify), and always did well with things like reading comprehension, mostly I just remember a lot of things. So when a topic comes up, there's something related I remember that I can bring to the table. I also could, in school, pick up languages' vocab without tons of specific studying, provided I practice enough, and could memorize text fairly quickly.

But more and more those skills are fading in me--in the world, too. Google is becoming our memory. With my android phone in my pocket, what need do I have to remember random facts or dates or exact quotes of things when I can just look them up right away?

Some people will say google is making us dumber. I'm not sure about that, though. I do think the cloud can impair our memories, as we grow more comfortable forgetting what can easily be recalled later, externally. But critical thinking? Figuring out what search terms to use to pull something up can be an example thereof. Googling a problem and finding people with similar-but-slightly-different problems and parsing through the results for a unique solution...? Critical thinking. Piecing together various blog narratives and arguments into one cohesive whole? Trying to separate fact from fiction, deal from scam, exaggeration from understatement, in a world where every voice has its own slice of cyberspace to shout in? Requires critical thinking.

Intelligence is becoming less and less about who can memorize the biggest swathes of Shakespeare or Homer and more about who can better sort through a flood of information, fishing out the valuable and ignoring the rest.
Just some thoughts. Memory is, of course, an invaluable asset, and I've got it in mind to try new techniques to improve mine as I see it slipping into disrepair. But memory is not the only important aspect to intelligence.

Pax.