February 20, 2008

Today’s miles: 5.4
To Folk Art Center with David Peacock

I have resigned myself to it: I will not be finishing the MST corridor this winter. I want to kayak the Neuse River, but it isn’t fair to subject my dad to something he sees as dangerous and on his vacation too. Instead, it seems like we will spend some time in Durham, and during the day local-adventure (I mean that as a compound verb).

Yesterday, I woke up early after a restive night in the bed, rolling around trying to get comfortable and shedding and pulling on covers. I spent the morning partly sitting with MK in the living room, then transitioning to the public library to get some internet work done. I felt really productive, sending a resume to the Echinacea prairie research project in Minnesota. And then after getting kicked off the computer an hour later, I walked back to the house and we ate lunch.

Later in the afternoon, after I had talked to my saturation point and searched through the job database to my limit, I went for a 4 mile walk down the road and back, shaking up the clutter in my brain and hoping that (for once!) when the pieces fell back together, it would be like the watchmaker complexity. And only then I went to a coffee shop, and sat down and sketched out a plan for my trip, and then we all (MK and the Peacocks) loaded into their car and drove 45 minutes away to Hendersonville, to a Japanese woman’s house for a traditional meal. On my, what a crazy crowd gathered. Michika, the crazy Japanese woman host, on a tourist visa for 3 months. Dayle, a sweet, reserved, well-traveled Lithuanian-descended woman from the US (friends with Michika). Elizabeth, this nutzo lady who ran a nearby B&B and kept referring to her “travels abroad.” As Deanne said on the way home – “she’s not real.”

We stuffed ourselves with food, had some disjointed conversation, and a few folks (me and MK teetotalled) liquored up on wine.

Today after lunch, I went on a hike with David to the Folk Art Center, walked to the library and grocery store, cooked dinner, and saw the lunar eclipse! It was like an egg to an eyeball transition.