January 31, 2008

Today's miles: 37.6 on bicycle

It was water-bottle-frozen cold this morning and I got up after the sun, hurriedly packed up the bike and rode down the road into the freezing air. I stopped to add layers, including the little booties that Richard lent me. It was amazing: within 10 minutes, I could feel my toes again. On Hwy 66, still in the deep countryside, I stopped to have cereal on a grassy spot by the road and meditate on the rising sun and my fabulous breakfast.

Last night, as I listened for the approach of dog (or human) footsteps, cold in my tent, I thought really carefully over what I am doing and just stayed curled up in a ball, my finger encircled in the hematite ring I was given yesterday. I thought about standing in that Gem Shop in the valley, the weight of the book (“Melody’s book”) in my hands, the type jumping off the page like proverbs, like the lettering on church signs- those Fortune cookie-length benedictions, advice, and even witticisms to-go. Especially for the transits, like me. “Aspire to inspire Before you expire”. And that man in the Gem Shop in his flannel and jeans looking at me reading, probably with no idea of the thoughts going through my head.

Somedays, you need to believe in the strength of crystals.

Pilot Mountain zoomed in and out of view as I cycled up and down mountains. I stopped at a gas station to ask for water and found 4 men with lots of hair (in hair, moustache, or beard form) in Carhartts, camouflage, and blaze orange gear. I talked to them for a little while, and then pushed off the last few miles into the town of Pilot Mtn, to grab a cup of coffee at a local establishment and pause and check on the weather. Those men had warned me of “weather this way tonight,” namely an ice storm. All day in my head, I heard the Indigo Girls’ lyrics, “the same sun that warmed that corn will suck those gutters dry; with everything its opposite, enough to make you wild or to keep this whole world spinning with a twinkle in its eye.” Everything out here seems ying and yang, positive and negative. Sunny and cold, busy roads with trucks but no dogs, ups and downs, nice campgrounds with strange abandoned sleeping bags…

In Pilot Mtn, I biked to the public library and settled down at a computer while the kooky “substitute librarian” fixed us our elevens (of coffee, not whiskey). I made a reservation at the Surry Inn, then peddled across the small town on my route, to mail the letter I wrote. I didn't stop much until got here to the Surry Inn. I talked to the lady at the desk a little bit, she was really friendly. She said that Dobson is expanding and that it recently opened to franchise business. That the vineyard has wine tours and classy dinner. That there is indeed lots of farming around here – a couple of tobacco farms, a pig farm, and a dairy farm. And she told me about this man from Canada who comes down here every year for a month, rents out the same room, and keeps his BMW and flat screen TV parked at the hotel and rides his bicycle up to Stone Mountain. Very Strange. I wonder what he does for a living, and what he gets out of the Stone Mtn bicycling.

I spent an hour at the diner connected to the inn, feasting on an odd combination of French fries, coffee, grilled cheese (white bread, fake butter and American cheese) and some homemade German chocolate cake.