The Final Word on G20

"Radical marching band playing on steps of cathedral, and riot cops continue to launch smoke bombs at them."

-- Twitter update from Thursday night protest

Okay, a few final words about Pittsburgh before I continue on my way. First, some might wonder why one would want to protest against the G20 summit at all?

Simply stated, the G20 is a group of the twenty most powerful leaders in the world who get together to make economic decisions that inevitably impact the lives of the other 6,000,000,000 people on this planet. These leaders are mostly white, almost always men, and most certainly wealthy, and as such, represent only a very small slice of the world's population. Protesting the G20 summit is an attempt to make sure that other voices are represented and heard as well, many of whom reject capitalism, globalization, free-trade, and other values intrinsic to the G20 economies. For these beliefs, and to show solidarity for others who feel marginalized, I chose to protest the summit by helping to bring music to the streets, to provide a backdrop for the message that so many thousands of people had to deliver, which I think can be succinctly boiled down to this: money can't be given more importance than people's lives or liberties.

Tuesday

I arrived in Pittsburgh last Tuesday evening, just as the sun was setting, and high-tailed it to Jessica's house, the clarinet player in Breakaway Marching Band (and a real charmer if I've ever met one), where I would stay for the rest of the week. I spent the evening with her roommate, Rob (trombone and melodica player in BHB), and Matt (sousaphone), who showed up from New Orleans later in the evening. I stayed up until the 2am tomato canning project got started, when I decided my efforts would better spent sleeping after my 97-mile day, and went to get started on the first of several nights of too little sleep.

Wednesday

The band headed down to Carnegie Mellon University by bicycle, where we played in a student march, protesting the profiteering of universities from education. BMB happened to have a beat-up but perfectly playable baritone for me to play for the week, and I just stuck it in my saddle bag, sans case, bell sticking out the top. After marching, we stayed outside the library for a spell to run through our repertoire for the week (which I had never played before). Right as we finished our impromptu rehearsal, the sky opened up and let loose like a fire hose. We rode our bikes home through the downpour, only for me to find a pool of water collected inside my horn, and a sizeable puddle in my saddlebag, my poor, poor camera floating helplessly at the bottom, sealing its fate.

After drying off and warming up, we headed back out at night to downtown, where a free protest concert was taking place (Joan Jett!). Our ranks swelling with the addition of Ben (mellophone, New York) and Stormy (percussion, Humboldt), we led a crowd away from the concert and went caroling through the neighborhoods, singing and playing traditional protest songs. Toward the end of our route, we found the road barricaded with a battalion of police in full riot gear. At this point, many in the band decided it was too early in the week to get into trouble, and slipped away down a side street, to live another day.

Thursday

Several of the folks in the band are involved in the production of a radio show for Pittsburgh's IndyMedia station, and for the week, their show and studio space transformed into the focal point of all independent media in the city. Their were at least a dozen people at the studio at any given time, people calling in live to give updates about police activity, people checking police scanners, and lots of folks working to constantly update their website (www.indypgh.org), which collated various updates, Twitter feeds, videos and more from all over the city. It was a fascinating perspective to be continually plugged in to media which provided such a drastically different perspective to the newspapers and news channels. On Thursday morning I got to check out the studio space and watch the action unfold through the mics and headphones.

In the afternoon, we biked to Arsenal Park to play at a march that was quite distinctly not sanctioned by the city, and that everybody was expecting to be the flashpoint for the week for the mounting tensions between police and protesters. This proved to be more or less the case, though certainly not the worst of what the week would have to offer; riot police quickly informed us over loudspeakers of our impending doom if we did not immediately disperse, followed rather quickly by lobs of tear gas and the deployment of the LRAD system, a sonic, eardrum-shattering weapon that can be focused at crowds (and, somewhat flatteringly, was also the first time it was ever used in this country). The black bloc retaliated with dumpsters used as battering rams, and a game of cat and mouse ensued through the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, with the crowd continually splitting up in different directions and reuniting a few blocks later. We ran around and played until it seemed wise to leave. On our way home we stopped at a farmers' market, where we saw several battalions of cops armed with rubber bullet rifles pass through toward the fleeing crowd, police tank in tow.

After dinner back at the house, several of us decided to bike up to the north end of town to watch a mock trial of the G20, accompanied by lectures and speeches. Most unfortunately, Stormy's bike chain snapped halfway there. Faced with the prospect of being stranded a few miles from anywhere we wanted to be, no open businesses in sight, and a long uphill walk back home, we opted for the most ridiculous yet practical option: Jessica and I rode our bikes with Stormy on the broken one in between, and we pushed her uphill all the way back home. Resigned to missing the trial, we decided to fashion some costumes for that night's protest, Bash Back, a reclaiming of the streets in the name of LGBT rights. We ended up making pink bandanas by dying strips of bedsheets with beets.

Bash Back ended up being a rather thinly veiled guise to, well, bash back at the police for all the day's activities. The crowd quickly headed to the location of the G20 welcoming dinner, leaving the streets strewn with broken windows and flaming dumpsters in their wake. They rendezvoused with another group outside the G20 building to block the exit, and all hell broke loose with the police. They were out in full force, more than a thousand of them, and wasted no time in throwing tear gas every which way, tackling people, beating people, arresting people. The band retreated to the nearby steps of the Carnegie Mellon cathedral, where we utilized the archway as amplification into the scene of chaos unfolding before us. Tear gas canisters bounced off of Stormy's tom, and I distinctly remember blasting one back into the army of police with my mighty lungs after it landed in the bell of my horn, but I'll admit that my memory may depart from reality a tad here. We ended up having to run around the streets for hours hiding from the storm troopers, because the police had barricaded the road where we had parked our car, and after watching a protester get smashed into a brick wall by a cop in full-body armor about twenty feet from the car, we decided we could wait until the coast was clear. The streets raged into the night, well past me returning safely home and into bed.

Police by the hundreds.

Sadly, many innocent students got swept up by the police in the process; I later watched a disturbing video of a skyway full of students being gassed, and the police refusing their pleas to be allowed to exit, even from a young girl who was bleeding from her neck.

Friday

The day of the officially sanctioned protest saw several thousand people turn out from all walks of life: union workers, socialists, Code Pink, raging grannies, Tibetans, anarchists, you name it. We took the stage at the beginning to send off the march, and then joined in the fun. The march was surprisingly and pleasantly uneventful, at least as far as conflict goes. Afterward, we went to the city jail to play for the protesters who had been arrested over the course of the week.

"Free Tibet Before Free Trade"

I spent that evening at home, quietly listening to the night's events unfold on the radio. There had been a plan to have an anti-police brutality vigil that night, but as a small crowd gathered, so did a number of student onlookers, and the police came and unleashed another night of arrests, gas and physical violence on the innocent bystanders. I think Friday night was the worst of it, which isn't terribly surprising to me; after a week of thousands of police being given all kinds of special riot gear, and holding it all week long without getting a chance to use it, it doesn't seem like a stretch for them to look for any excuse to get to use them when everything is finally over. This viewpoint may seem unfair to police and their professional demeanor, but I disagree; I saw so many unnecessary and blatantly excessive uses of force this week against completely
innocent people who posed no threat, it's hard for me to sympathize with their position. Intimidation and unmitigated violence is no way to protect and serve.

Saturday

I woke up at 7:30am, after several days of five hours of sleep per night, ready to pack up and hit the road. As I looked blearily out the window into the pouring rain, though, and back at the comforts of my warm bed, I quickly concluded that nothing was worth getting out of bed at that moment, and ended up taking a much-needed full day of rest. By Saturday evening, protests seemed to have died down to a couple of diehards standing off with the police with a Wu-Tang sign, and some students playing hackysack.

Sunday

Back on the road again, finally, despite all weather reports telling I should do otherwise.

In closing, I can't say that I can condone the actions of some of the protesters, such as the breaking of windows (even if it was a McDonald's), but any wrongdoings that I saw by protesters are thoroughly overshadowed by the policies of our and other governments that continue to rape and pillage the environment and cultures in the name of economic "progress". When one tries to live the best one can, being morally and ethically responsible to one's fellow beings, I can understand and sympathize with the feelings of frustration and futility that arise from a lifetime of oppression and marginalization. I do hope, though, that this week's events can start a conversation that focuses more on how we can start doing things right for each other than what it is we're all doing wrong.

Okay, I'm off my high horse now. I'm curious how many people actually made it all the way through this post; if you did, please send me an email with the words "Wu-Tang" in the body: scott(dot)rinnan(at)gmail(dot)com.

La Revolucción, en Fotos

"This is so cool. I mean I know the riot situation and everything is harsh, but a friggin marching band? That's just awesome."

-- response to a YouTube video of BMB in action.

The last four days have been an intense mixture of music, emotion, tear gas and crowds. I've been trying to write about my experiences here at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh every day, but every day, as now, I've found myself at a loss for words. Until something comes to me, I thought I'd just post some pictures instead.

My "war tuba".

Storm troopers at the ready.

Five minutes before the police barricaded and teargassed the skyway with the students inside.

The bombs bursting in air.

Students fleeing from tear gas.

A press photographer getting his eyes flushed.

Jail solidarity for the arrested protesters.

Protecting the jail.

The Breakaway Marching Band in action.

A very happy horn player, indeed.

Reporting to You Live

After Toledo's relatively poor welcome to the Buckeye State, it was a refreshing change of pace to arrive at Oberlin College, buried deep amidst the drabness of Ohio's agricultural heartland. I literally know a dozen people in Seattle who've graduated from Oberlin, and thought I should stop by and check out the Midwest's most dependable hipster factory while I was passing through. I stayed with a great guy, David, fellow outdoors enthusiast and all-around good guy, who helped to introduce me to the campus' extensive student co-op network, and, in the process, about half the student population. The night I arrived, David and his roommates were having a triple birthday, in the form of a curanto, a traditional "barbecue" from the island of Chiloé in Chile. The rather elaborate dish involves digging a large hole in the ground, heating up several large stones in a fire until red-hot, placing them in the hole and piling alternating layers of cabbage leaves, clams, beef, pork ribs, chicken, sausages, onions, potatoes and garlic, and covering it all up to let cook for hours as a sort of pressure cooker. To be sure, the karma that one will enivitably reap from the destruction of so many creatures' lives for a single culinary dish is outweighed only by its sheer tastiness.

After my meat-filled visit to Oberlin, it was back on the road for a very drizzly, muggy two days travel through the hills of eastern Ohio, and into Pennsylvania. The hills surprised me, both in their existence (I guess I didn't really know when Appalachia began) and their scale. Miles and miles of the steepest hills I've ridden on this trip passed underneath me; if it hadn't been for traffic, I'd've easily been able to cross the elusive 50 mph threshold. I followed the ups and downs all the way into Pittsburgh, which is where I am now, and will continue to be for the next couple of days.

I've met up with some local brass band brethren, the Breakaway Marching Band, and together we aim to fill the streets with music for as much of the G20 protests as we are able to. Today was my first day playing with them; we took part in a student march and rally at Carnegie Mellon, and went "caroling" this evening, leading a crowd of people in protest songs, parading through the downtown area. It poured buckets and buckets of rain earlier today (mostly the bike ride back home), to the point where I ended up with a large reservoir of water inside the bell of my baritone and the contents of my saddlebag immersed in a pool at the bottom (including my poor, poor camera). The next two days (the actual dates of the G20 conference) are filled with more parades, protests, dances and workshops, and I'm planning to attend as many of them as I can.

The police presence here is obscenely huge, and it seems as if everyone is gearing up for conflict, no doubt exacerbated by relentless media reports of nonexistent violent protesters. Tomorrow's major protest and march, beginning at Arsenal Park, is distinctly un-sanctioned by the city, and everyone is looking to that event to be the fuse that sets everything off. I expect it'll be largely peaceful, but we'll see! I'll try and keep this updated if there ends up being anything fun to share.

How Not to Handle a Situation

"C'mon, buddy, what'd you dump?" the police officer asks me again, as I stand there, legs spread, hands on my head. He pats me down from head to toe, and everywhere in between. My eyes are locked on his partner, who stands idly by, eyeing me back, his right hand resting none too surreptitiously on the butt of his taser gun. "Nice one, Scotty boy," I think to myself. "Real smooth."

I ended up leaving Ann Arbor a bit later than I would have liked to, mostly due to errands, correspondence, and an enticingly comfortable couch that lulled me into a skewed perspective of the passing of time. It was no problem, though; I'm in no particular rush right now, and I've been riding pretty fast lately. I just wanted to make it through Toledo by nightfall, and I'd be fine.

Cruising through back country Michigan farmland, I found myself thinking about the miles passing underneath me, and my trip as a whole. I was impressed that I'd made it this far without getting into any kind of accident, especially given some of the harrowing roads I've been on with no shoulder and RV after RV trying to run me off the road. Evidently, it would've behooved me at that point to jump off my bike and find some wood to knock on, because not five minutes later, I swamped my front tire in a deep pile of gravel in the middle of an intersection. I went down into the gravel quickly and gracefully, with all the efficiency of a raptor in mid-dive. It wasn't too bad; my bar tape and right arm was a bit shredded, but, more consequently, also broke the camera that I bought specifically for this trip, thus reinforcing my belief (for the fifth time now) that I am simply not meant to own digital cameras.

I picked myself up, reattached my saddlebags, straightened my handlebars, and walked to a nearby graveyard to sit under a tree for a spell and wait out the coming nausea (I've found that whenever I get a strong rush of adrenaline from something bad, it's quickly followed by feeling sick to my stomach). By the time I'd sufficiently recouped myself and was ready to get back on the road, I'd noticed that a little more than an hour had slipped by because of my stupid wreck. I looked at the map, and quickly realized that this would likely put me smack dab in the middle of Toledo by the day's end, which was most undesirable (finding a good place to camp in big cities is generally challenging). I noticed a state park just past the edge of town on the shore of Lake Erie, and decided to set my sites for that.

I pedaled and pedaled, doing my best to emulate the wind, that omnipresent antagonist of cyclists everywhere. As I entered the outskirts of town, though, with a rapidly dropping sun and its waning light at my back, I realized no, I would not be making it out of Toledo tonight. Having just crossed the border into Ohio, I didn't yet have a state map, and thus no knowledge of the layout of the town. I decided to aim for the waterfront, reasoning that I would likely find some park along its edge if I followed it long enough. My reasoning led me into the heart of the industrial district, reeking of a fetid, toxic soup of ag/industry runoff (though in retrospect, the whole town actually smells that way). Miraculously enough, though, sandwiched between the factories and the lake was a small neighborhood of projects, with a couple of adjacent parks. Success!

I pulled into a parking lot that turned into a mooring dock at the far end, and was bordered by a swath of trees. I found myself a suitably acceptable place tucked well back in the bushes, set up my sleeping space, grabbed my headlamp, my book and a beer, and headed back to the waterfront. I took a bench overlooking the water just in time to see the sunset. In my last hour of riding, I'd been pushing hard and fast just to get to this little spot, and I was exhausted. Oh, how good it was to just sit.

I sat there until dusk had passed, and the stars began to appear. Everyone else had already pulled their boats out of the water and gone home; even the bats had come and gone. I sat on the bench reading and nursing my beer, when my tiredness really began to hit home; it was time for bed.

I got up and started walking across the parking lot back to my bushes. As I was walking, though, I noticed a car's headlights behind me, beginning to pull into the lot. I continued walking forward, but as they got closer, decided it would not be a good idea for me to disappear into the bushes in clear view of another person. Instead, I decided to veer a little to my right, taking aim for a Port-a-Potty that was just ahead of me. Just as I arrived at it, the car pulled around to the side of it, and right as I was opening the door, I noticed it was a police van. For some inexplicable reason, I still continued on into the bathroom, and as the door shut behind me, the thought sank into me like a ton of brick: "Oh, shit. I just did about the stupidest thing I could've." I immediately walked right back out of the bathroom, but it was too late. Two officers were rapidly walking toward me, their flashlights out and directly in my eyes.

"What'd you dump in there?" the first cop asked me immediately.

"I promise you, nothing." I reply weakly.

"Put your hands on your head, please," he instructed, with superfluous courtesy.

"Any poky objects or anything that could hurt me on you?" he asked. Except for the book in my hand and the (cringe) open beer in my pocket, I don't have anything on me: no money, no i.d., everything is back, out of sight and out of reach, in the trees. I realize the difficulty of the situation; without anything to identify myself or verify my story, I need to somehow convince the cops to let me wander off into the bushes, after just making myself appear suspiciously criminal. Much like my collection of lost or ruined digital cameras, this was the fifth time on this trip that I've had to deal with the police, and I like to think that I know how to conduct myself. These, however, were cops on the beat in the projects of a crappy city, and, though I had none to offer, knew they would take no guff.

He had me take off my shoes, not so much to search them, I suspect, but more to prevent an unlikely attempt to run. I got to work explaining myself, how I'm just passing through (quite true), how I was planning on camping out (quite true), how all my stuff was back in the bushes (quite true), how I would never try and camp somewhere if I thought it was illegal (not quite true), how, excepting the half-drunk bottle of beer in my pocket, I didn't have any drugs (quite true). They ran my info through their system, and it came back to them squeaky clean (of course). They absolutely did not believe me that I didn't dump something in the bathroom, but they had no evidence to go on. They promptly evicted me from the park, as well as all other city parks, but, most pleasantly, did not give me so much as a warning for being in the park after it was closed, for having an open container of alcohol, or for camping illegally. They waited while I disappeared into the trees to gather my belongings, and followed me until they saw I was out of the park and back on my way down the street.

As soon as they were out of sight, I stopped to evaluate my situation. I resigned myself to riding all the rest of the way through the city and to the state park I had originally hoped for (another eighteen miles), when I noticed that my rear flasher had just run out of batteries, and I had no replacements.

"That's it," I thought, "I'm not going anywhere tonight." I promptly ducked right back in to a park that was adjacent to the first one, and quickly buried myself back along a tree line, this time a little farther away from the parking lot. As I drift off to sleep, the smell of rotting sewage wafting on the wind, I ran through the laundry list of the day: bike wreck, broken camera, hassled by cops, evicted, lost my beer, no tail light. Knowing full well that that whole stupid experience was nobody's fault but my own, I couldn't help but think, "Man, Toledo sucks."

A Lake is Not an Ocean

I've met several people around here who compare the Great Lakes to oceans; I will certainly grant them that they are quite large (a sincere understatement, to be sure), but I suspect that anyone who makes such claims has never actually seen an ocean, or at least, not the Pacific, or at least, not the Pacific of the Northwest. It is quite true that the Lakes are unbelievably massive expanses of water that you can't see across, but as far as I can tell, that is where the resemblance ends. An ocean demands your attention from the minute it enters your senses, and indeed, it enters them all; the taste of salt on your lips, the smell of decaying seaweed, the mist of spray on your skin, the constant din of the ebbing and flowing waves, the sheer magnitude of sprawling sea from horizon to horizon. It shapes the land and ecosystems for miles inland; scarcely the bystander, it creates the weather. An ocean is something to be feared and respected if you have any sense at all; never before have I sat humbler than on a beach on the Olympic Peninsula. Lake Michigan, by contrast, approaches you with an unassuming splendor, to the point where you can miss it behind some trees if you don't know it's there. I feel incredibly lucky to have ridden along its shores for several days, but there was never, not for so much as a second, confusion in my mind as to what lay before me.

Lake Michigan: not an ocean.

The U.P. was not quite what I was expecting for pristine wilderness, at least where I was. I get the impression that the inland and northern areas are more untouched, but they are not really accessible by bicycle or car, and I'm okay with that; that's how it should be, really. I expect I'll get back there someday and explore Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore by backpack.

Traveling through the U.P., though, was well worth it, in that it enabled me to explore the northwest of Michigan proper. Following the Lake Michigan shoreline, I traveled down the Tunnel of Trees scenic byway, a narrow (and largely-abandoned, post-Labor Day) road that meandered through hills and forest. The forests were filled with squirrels blacker than night, certainly blacker than they have any business of being, and giant puffballs, a mushroom larger than a basketball (that I later found out to be both edible and delicious).

Giant puffballs (note the quarter for size reference).

I then hopped on a bike path that circumnavigated Little Traverse Bay (and apparently has done so since before the invention of automobiles). Traverse City led to Cadillac which led to a 100-mile rails-to-trails that took me all the way to Grand Rapids, through Lansing, through Hell, and finally to Ann Arbor. I've taken a rest day here, exploring the town and campus, visiting my dear friend Sarah (a transplant from Seattle who inexplicably decided to return to her native Midwest), and even taking in the new Harry Potter movie. Ann Arbor, in as many words, is way too hip for its own good, but it seems like a plenty nice enough place. I'm going to see what its dumpsters have to offer tonight, and then it's back on the road tomorrow.

Contrary to popular belief, it's actually paved with asphalt.

Looking at a map, it's crazy to realize that I don't have all that much farther to go before I get to Boston. Again, that's not necessarily the end of my trip, but anything after that is just icing on the cake. 1,000 more miles is looking like it ain't no thing (and that's not me bragging, I promise).

The Food Chapter

Number of miles: 4,013
Estimated average number of Calories consumed per day: 3,850
Number of times I've eaten meat on this trip: 6
Number of times I've had to resort to shopping at Wal-Mart: 0
Number of times I've resorted to stealing from Wal-Mart: 1

I'm sitting in a restaurant, empty plate in front of me, mildly sad that my meal disappeared so quickly. I don't think I remembered to chew. I eye the couple eating next to me, and note the woman lightly picking at her plate. Yes! Conditions are perfect, the only trick is working the timing between when they're done but before the waitress comes back. I wait until I see her pick up her purse. At that cue, I lean over and politely ask a question I already know the answer to: "Excuse me, are you finished eating that?"

Up until just a few weeks ago, it would've been accurate for me to say that I'm always hungry. Surprisingly enough, though, I've recently noticed a slight decrease in food consumption. Maybe my body is reaching some sort of equilibrium of efficiency.

Given the sheer amount of energy that one must consume in order to counterbalance the amount spent on a trip like this, it's very easy for food to become the focus of attention all the time. I constantly daydream about meals that I can't have (oh god, my kingdom for a Paseo sandwich); I think about what I'm going to eat next, what I can afford to buy, how to maximize calorie per dollar ratio whole still maintaining some semblance of nutritional content. Unfortunately, real food is also extremely hard to find while on the road. I don't know when was the last time you tried to do your grocery shopping at a gas station or mom 'n' pop hole in the wall, but almost everything readily available is processed beyond belief (and no, it really doesn't have to be this way). So, I do the best I can within these constraints and my relative lack of a kitchen, and sometimes just have to rely on the fact that whatever crap I put into my body right now will be sweat out within a couple of hours.

I'm carrying a little pop-can camp stove that I use to cook my dinners, and to that end, I always try and keep well stocked in the staples: olive oil, salt, chipotle powder, lime, onion, and garlic at a minimum. I usually have some vegetables to add to this, most often tomatoes, zucchini, avocado and carrots (yes, I know some of these are fruits). All that is needed now is a can of the best thing to ever happen to canned food, and the possibilities are endless (and yet, somehow still end up coming out the same every time anyway). It might be a bit extravagant to carry all of this around, but it makes such a big difference in quality of life to have something resembling real food every night; besides, I burned myself out on macaroni and cheese six weeks ago.

Some other staples: tortillas (in place of bread), nut butter, some type of jam, cheese, dried fruit, nuts, cereal, and any fresh fruit and vegetables when and wherever possible. Some things never get old; I could probably eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day for the rest of my life and die happy. Likewise, dried pineapple and crystallized ginger will never go out of fashion. Other things get old fast: good as it is, I don't think I'm going to be able to eat Indian food again for a while.

Dinner in the works.

I rarely go out to eat, but when I do, it's either for something local that I'll never be able to have somewhere else, or for something fatty and deep-fried as possible. The local food can be kind of iffy sometimes (I stayed away from the Rocky Mountain oysters), great others, uninspiring and repetitive others. (I swear on my life that all people eat in northern Michigan is smoked fish, fudge, maple syrup, wild rice, ice cream and pasties.)

One of the hardest things has been missing out on the benefits of a garden, though I've still been able to do some foraging along the way. Right now there are apples everywhere, little native blackberries if you keep your eyes open, even mushrooms if you know what you're doing (I successfully identified and ate my first ever mushrooms just yesterday, the robust laetiporus). There are often little farmers' stands selling whatever is in season, and even tables set near the roadside of rural houses, piled with free extras.

My biggest craving has been for any kind of fermented food: yogurt or kefir, sauerkraut and kim chi, beer (of course), kombucha, I haven't been able to get enough of any of these. More than anything, though, I crave more of an investment with my food. I dream of spending long hours in a kitchen sweating over tedious projects: baking bread, making sushi, pies with lattice tops. When I'm done with this trip, I expect I'll spend a few days living in a kitchen to make up for perpetual snacking that has become so routine. In the meantime, though, let's hear it for handfuls of dry cereal!

Companionship, solitude and loneliness

In writing this blag, I have consistently shared my experiences in the first-person singular, because this blag is meant to be just that: a first hand account of my experiences and interactions with the world at large as I pedal my fool self through it (with me pretending all the while that people care what I think). There have been times, though, where it has been a stretch to maintain this singular account of my journey, because in truth, I often am not cycling alone. I have ridden with friends (both new and old), lovers, strangers and acquaintances, other cyclists out for a dayride or in it for the long haul, a priest, children, turkeys and more. My path has intersected many a time with that of another traveler, all the better when we happen to be headed in the same direction for a spell. It gives us all an opportunity to share and contrast information, stories, warnings, and I've often learned something invaluable, such as the existence of a spectacular bike path that parallels the route I was planning to take.

My most recent traveling companion was Shannan, a friend from Seattle who has spent the summer (more of it than me, actually) on a bike trip of her own. We had the good fortune to rendevous in South Dakota, and the better fortune to be headed in the same direction for a spell. She recently ended her trip back in Stevens Point (alas, graduate school beckoned). I mention her specifically because I found her story to be inspiring (certainly more so than mine), given that she had never ridden a bike much more than around the city before hopping on and pedaling for a good 3,500 miles or so. Good job, kiddo.

Shannan was headed to Stevens Point for a friend's wedding, which I was fortunate enough to be invited to last minute (literally the day before), when it turned out I'd be in the neighborhood at the right time. I was planning on going to the wedding ridiculously underdressed in my Chacos, a longsleeve plaid shirt and a $1.50 pair of Goodwill jeans I had just bought for the cold. (They were both dirty, rumpled and smelled of campfire.) In fact, the groom himself lent me a decent change of clothes to wear. All I did was fashion a highly unfashionable belt from the shoulder straps of my saddlebags, and I was ready to go to the first Catholic mass of my life (at least, that I'm aware of).

The wedding itself was very, um, Catholic, to say the least. But! It was also very Wisconsin-y; at the reception, the bride and groom were playing a game of corn hole before a toast was even made. The opulence of the reception, the four-course dinner and free-flowing booze, the music and the shaking of my behind and the fancy hotel room (albeit shared with five other people, and me on the floor) all stand in such stark contrast to the minimalism and simplicity of biking that it was a bit jarring to my system. It was fun, and great to be welcomed by such warm and inviting people, but also good to be back on the road the next day.

It's getting late in the season now, though, and I'm seeing fewer and fewer people on the road in non-car form; I'll probably be riding alone from here on out. I haven't seen another cyclist for a week, and I haven't even had so much as a conversation with someone in three days (to be fair, I haven't seen many people at all), excepting a cop last night who asked me if I was planning on sleeping where I was. I enjoy the solitude, but the loneliness that can often accompany it is hard to bear. The rural isolation here coupled with the ever-shortening days, and I'm suddenly finding myself with hours of free time every evening between when the sun goes down and when I'm ready to sleep (hence, for example, this overly long post).

Well, enough then. I squandered my extra hours this evening running around town trying to accomplish things I never got accomplished, and lost a biking glove in the process; I'm just grumpy and feeling sorry for myself, and ready for this day to be over.

Happy 60th anniversary, G&G! Happy 21st birthday, Amy! It's about time. Love to all...

A Slight Change of Plans (with hyperlinks!)

One evening as I was on my way to Milwaukee from Madison, I found myself in a fantastic brewery (a 9.5 on the Rinnan scale) in Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin.  Leaning back in my chair with my paws wrapped around a pint of bourbon barrel brown, I reflected upon the days ahead of me, the roads yet untraveled, the cities yet unvisited, the untold opportunities that will inevitably grace my path, and I arrived at a simple and unassailable conclusion: fuck it.  Ain't no reason to battle the sprawling 'burbs of the Windy City when I have the time and ability to explore the U.P., everyone's favorite non-Olympic peninsular region.

So!  No Milwaukee.  No Chicago.  No Three Floyds brewery.  No brassin' it up with Environmental Encroachment (at least, not till Boston).  No Bean.  And a hearty yes! to autumn-coloured deciduous forests aplenty, isolation and funny accents.

I've spent the last few days taking a ridiculously circumlocutious route through Wisconsin, in a brazen attempt to hit every bike path and brewery between Madison and Michigan.  I'm resupplying in Stevens Point, and then headin' out to the nether regions of the Midwest.  Sorry, Chicago, maybe next time.  Frostbite awaits!