Santa Claus on a Harley trike leaving the Walmart near my mom’s house. If I were a big old man with a bushy snow white beard, would I wear a red thermal under my overalls when I went out for a ride on my hog?

A huge semi truck stuck under a bridge on Ashland, near Cortland, with about half of its roof peeled back like a sardine can, just like in the cartoons. Insulation was hanging out everywhere, and I think the cut was about six inches deep. The truck looked so big and the bridge so short compared to it, I’m surprised he even tried. I wish I knew how they got it unstuck. If I hadn’t been on my way to work, I would’ve liked to stick around and watch.

A huge man at the doctor’s office in Kenosha wearing a black concert T-shirt, which, upon closer inspection, said, “One night only! Coming to your town! Santa Claus!” When he turned around, I saw that, on the back of the black bowling shirt he wore over the Santa tee, was an airbrushed picture of Al Pacino from Scarface, lording over two piles of cocaine. Being airbrushed, the mounds of blow could have passed for clouds, but they were at the bottom of the picture. And two friends I mentioned this to later, who have both actually seen this movie, confirmed that the character is a coke dealer. And since this man made quite a large canvas, the piles were each about the size of a slice of bread. Seemed excessive to me.

Willie Nelson in concert! My friend Bob, whom I have known since the first grade, is a harmonica player, and has made the acquaintance of the harmonica player in Willie’s band. That’s Bob’s story to tell, but suffice it to say, Mickey offered Bob comp tickets to their performance in Waukegan at the gorgeously renovated Genessee Theater (I’m also sorry I don’t have pictures of that!), and I was lucky enough to be invited along. Willie Nelson is a cultural icon! And relatively current in the news! And who doesn’t love On the Road Again?

So, Willie is pushing 80, we think, but he still looks just like Willie, scraggly grey braids and red bandana rolled up around his forehead, and he still sounds gravelly like Willie. That kind of voice just gets more so as it ages.

Willie would start out most songs on his own, so he sort of sounded like he was talking, maybe telling a story, but then he’d strum a chord, or whatever it is guitar players do, and then the band would jump in and you’d realize he was singing, not chatting. Bob had mentioned the band had been playing together for some forty years, and they don’t rehearse. I wondered if they also don’t play with a set list. Maybe they just knew the music so well, Willie would just start a song and they started playing when they knew what it was, which was quickly.

Whether that was the case or not, they barreled through his songbook! Sometimes it sounded like he hadn’t finished one song before he’d start another. He didn’t even pause as he’d tear off his red bandana and toss it in to the audience, nor when he replaced it from a small pile of pre-rolled and tied bandanas sitting in front of the drummer.

On the way there, I told Bob I was excited to see Willie, as he is a cultural icon, but I felt bad that I couldn’t call to mind too many of his songs. But when he played, I pretty much knew them all. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know most of them. I’m certain that I never had heard the one with a chorus of, “Whiskey for my men, and beer for my horses!” before, but by the end of it, I felt like I’d known it forever too. (Though the story of that song seemed to be valorizing vigilante justice, which I do find questionable.)

Summer nights and thunderstorms. Spring was awesome! It came early. Everything bloomed early. I’d forgotten how green and beautiful it is, and how wet and fertile spring smells, and how the smell of spring rain makes everything else smell better, too!

So summer’s early as well, and it’s amazing. Especially when it stays warm at night and you can bike around and play in the park, and between the city lights and the longer days, it takes a really long time to get dark, so the sky just gets deeper blue. I did try to get a picture of this:

On our first weekend out, two older women stopped by to see what was going on. Terry, in the green, was disappointed not to be able to try the trapeze, due to her health. She mentioned that she always loved to do out of the ordinary things, like bike across Europe!

She told me how she rode around Europe in the 1950′s for 5 months. She had such a terrific adventure. Of course, her mother was sure she was going to be kidnapped or murdered. But everyone she met was so friendly. Many people invited her to stay in their homes. Most were very excited to meet an actual American.

I told her how my mother thought the exact same thing when I decided to start traveling by bike. Of course I meant to write down our whole conversation right away, but I waited a few weeks, and now I’ve forgotten most of it. What remains is how awesome it was to meet a kindred traveler.

To which I would also like to add: Look mom, she was doing this in the 1950′s! She’s way crazier than me!

The changing of the seasons was one of the things I most looked forward to in staying in Chicago, and it did not disappoint. I loved it! Every day that I rode my bike, especially, the crisp air and the colored leaves filled my heart with joy! The yellow leaves in particular enchanted me, and the way they stand out against the sky that only gets that color blue in fall.

Is there something about the air quality in fall that makes it look blue in that way, or is it only because of the contrast with the yellow leaves? I kept trying to take pictures to capture the colors, but they don’t really do them justice.

Whether it was the thrill of living in a new place, after 15 years in San Diego, or a remembered imprint of the weather where I spent the first 23 years of my life, autumn felt right to me. October was the first month where finally I stopped telling people that I would probably be gone by the end of the month.

I kept busy in September and October working in the office at the Trapeze School New York in Chicago. When I wasn’t there, I was probably doing Acro Yoga. You can still find me every Monday night at class at Urban Lotus.

Practicing “Mermaid” on Mondays

The outdoor trapeze season came to an end at the end of October as the weather became wetter and more unpredictable. We packed up the rigging and stored it away for summer.

Meanwhile, progress on getting the school set up in an indoor space continues to move forward, albeit at a glacial pace. As of this writing, we will be opening soon in the Armory on Broadway, though there is no date set yet.

The most notable thing, however, that happened in October is that my nephew, Travis Jax Melnick, was born! My brother Ben and his wife, Becky, are proud parents of the cutest baby in the world, and I get to be the weird aunt!

TJ and I on Halloween

It’s pretty terrific that I am living this close to this much of my family for the first time in years, just in time for this momentous occasion!

Well, where have I been since I left off? My dad handed me off to my sister, who took me to her home in St. Joseph, Illinois. That would have been mid-May. It’s a tiny small town just outside of Champaign-Urbana, where Katie and her husband Jared work at the University of Illinois. I spent my time chauffeuring their cat Mackie to the vet, cooking dinners for all of us, getting to know local yogis, biking around, sewing, and shopping.

Almost immediately, I found a skirt at the local farmer’s market that had been thrifted and appliqued. Katie and I both loved it. I bought it and announced my intention to make more. Katie and I rushed to the thrift store and found a pile of skirts I was going to spend all my time transforming. At the fabric store, I tried to judiciously pick a few fabrics for the project. I knew I had everything I needed already, just in storage in San Diego, where I was on a self-imposed fabric-buying restriction.

Katie eased my mind by deciding that if she bought the fabric, I wasn’t breaking my restriction. But having a stack of beautiful fabric is a tricky thing. When you make something, you have to take the risk that it won’t turn out exactly as you envisioned it. Sometimes that’s enough to keep me from starting. I did make a few bags, my fall back project, and two skirts. But it wasn’t quite the burgeoning industry I imagined it might be.

Katie had finally gotten the go-ahead to hire someone in her chronically understaffed office, and if it had been at all possible or appropriate for her to bring me on but not let anyone know I was her sister, I would have happily stayed. After fifteen years on the West Coast, it was so wonderful to spend so much time with my amazing sister. I know I could learn so much from her professionally, too. And I hadn’t even begun to explore all that her university town had to offer.

From my own college experience, I love the idea of Midwestern college towns, with coffee shops, thai food, foreign films and visiting authors and artists mixed with rural landscapes. But I wasn’t ready to stop yet.

As I started planning the next leg of my journey, I tried to figure out how to bike up to Chicago. Having difficulty finding good places to overnight, I felt like my bike traveling skills were already getting rusty. I decided to take a day’s ride to Bloomington-Normal, where I had attended Illinois State. As it happened, Jared was driving to a meeting in Bloomington the day I meant to ride, June 1st, so he drove me and I rode a few miles across town on the Constitution Trail, rather than sixty across the state.

I arranged to stay with Terri Ryburn, an inspiring former professor who has, since she’s retired from ISU, become a stand up comedian, published several plays, and bought an old gas station along Route 66, which she is rehabbing to create a bed and breakfast and historical center.

A little more information about her project is available here: http://www.route66world.com/tag/sprague-station/.

Besides being generally amazing to be around, Terri gave me a tour of a dramatically changed college campus. My old dorm, Walker Hall, has been replaced by a shiny new recreation center.

Here I am with all that’s left of the former Honor’s Dorm and International House.

There are more, taller apartment buildings around campus, and a big hotel and a traffic circle in the uptown, formerly downtown, area of Normal.

They also have some new, very smart signage!

The Coffeehouse looks exactly the same, except for the new part, which doubles it size. Other campus buildings had been upgraded or were under constrction, and we finally had some ivy growing up the side of one of them.

Avanti’s, with its cheap and sweet Italian Bread, had expanded, but was just as busy and delicious as I remembered. Since the advent of Facebook in particular, I’d been taunted by alumni friends passing through town and posting that they stopped to eat at Avanti’s. Now I was there, too, my belly full of glorious carbohydrates! I later realized that I forgot to have their pizza bread, too. I’ll have to return!

I left Terri’s with a bag of vintage buttons to help with my sewing projects, and feeling energized as a writer as well. That I am only writing this out now is an indication of how quickly I moved in both of those directions. It’s hard to feel bad about accomplishing so little, because I feel I have continued to fill my time so joyfully.

We arrived Sunday afternoon in significantly colder weather. Yvonne’s son Mike and his wife Veronica live in Jacksonville with their awesome kids, Myka, Megan and Luka. Luka was wearing a ninja outfit to greet us. “You can call me a Chinese bad guy,” he said.

Monday I biked around town to get my bearings and to try and find some warmer clothes at thrift stores. Between a Goodwill and a Salvation Army, I found two pairs of pants, two long-sleeved shirts and a sweater, though no socks. If I was going to buy some, I wanted to get some striped knee socks, my favorite. This more than doubled the amount of non-cycling clothes I was now carrying with me. As someone who tries to be conscientious about “stuff,” I was pretty amazed how quickly I started accumulating more of it, as soon as I knew I wouldn’t have to carry it with me anytime soon. And how much I wanted to accumulate more.

Jacksonville is small. I put in about eight miles going from one end to the other, including a couple of times around the town square due to confusion. But I was excited to find a yoga studio!

Tuesday, I went to lunch with Dean Welch, the Wandering Wheels cyclist I met on the trip who had also been on O2K with Ben, and his wife Judy. We started out at the Three-Legged Dog cafe on the square, but moved on to the BBQ place a few doors down because it was so crowded. It took a little while, because Dean, who was the Jacksonville pharmacist for year, knew everyone. It turned out he also knew Yvonne from when she had been a nurse at MacMurray College in town, years ago! What a treat to visit with him and talk long-distance cycling, and to hear the news of the rest of the Wandering Wheels trip! It was also fun to visit their beautiful home. They have many lovely art pieces, and many from around the world that remind me of things Ben brought back from O2K.

Later, Dean and I went on a 24-mile ride through the farm country surrounding town. He was great tour guide, filling me in on local industry and local color. We rode past a home where the owner had made his own versions of several war memorials, including the Vietnam Wall and the group raising the flag at Iwo Jima. They were really well done, but one had a little rip, and it looked like they may have been made out of duct tape wrapped around foam!

We returned just in time for me to run over to a yoga class at Inner Harmony, which was great. Then after dinner, Dad and Yvonne and I walked over to the square to see the Clydesdales that had arrived to set up for a weekend festival. Dean and Judy were there, too, making me feel like a local after just two days in town!

During the day on Wednesday, we visited family graves at the cemetery. It was interesting to see some of the older markers. A number of very old ones had also been more recently replaced with modern stones, perhaps due to wear or damage. Unfortunately, now they look less historically intriguing. I took pictures of these two large monuments from a prominent local family, the Strawns.

I later found out they are indeed relatives of my friend, Megan, in Seattle!

Wednesday evening, we drove to Decatur to meet my sister Katie, both for dinner and so they coud hand me over to her, so she could drive me on the next leg of my journey, to her house, in St. Joseph, Illinois.

She was running late, so Dad and Yvonne had plenty of time to fiddle with new smart phones.

This smart phone stuff is serious business!

Myself, Katie and Dad.

I had a wonderful time in Jacksonville. I could imagine living there, at least for a while. Though, so far, I feel I could be happy living practically everywhere I’ve been since November. I enjoy aspects of big cities, and others of small towns. Knowing a few people in town already certainly helps me feel comfortable with a place, as well as finding a yoga studio. So far, I guess that’s my criteria for finding a place to live. That doesn’t narrow it down very much.

Well, Tuesday, I slept most of the day. If you’d rode your bicycle most of the way from San Diego to St. Pete’s, you’d be tired, too!

My dad helped me patch my three flat inner tubes, and now I feel like I’m pretty good at that, too. He also took apart my camp stove, cleaned it, and put it back together. I hope that will reduce the excessive flaming when I use it. I also got a hold of the company that makes my tent, and they are sending me a new tent pole to replace the one that broke.

In the evening, I visited my stepsister Erin, in Tampa. Her partner, John, is very nice, but of course the main attraction is her wonderful six-month old, Fiona! She is lovely, adorable, good-natured, and looks cute in a tutu. She also knows Glee is the best show on television. What more could you ask?

Erin and Fiona

Me and Fiona

Both of us and Fiona

On Wednesday, I went for a 23-mile bike ride out to Ft. Desoto, which is at the end of a spit of land with the bay on one side and the gulf on the other. The fort was closed for repairs, but the snack bar was not, so I had ice cream for lunch. Luckily, it was hot day, or I might not have broken a sweat riding without all of my gear. What a lovely feeling! Speeding along, winding my along a twisty bike path, whoosh! Whoosh! But other riders still passed me.

With some conscious effort, I realized I could actually ride faster. My body still is acting like I’m riding a weighted down bike, even when I think I’m not. So that was fun, to be even a little more speedy. I know I’ll never be a racer.

In the evening, I went to a Vinyasa class at a local yoga studio. There was an awful lot of stopping and taking breaks for a flow class. But the space was calm and held good energy, and I’ve certainly been doing yoga long enough to make up for any teacher’s lack of instruction. It seemed like this teacher just needed a little more confidence to adjust students’ positions. At least it wasn’t a hot yoga class, as were most of the local classes I could find. I enjoy a hot yoga class now and then, but not when it’s already 90 degrees and humid outside.

The last time I was at my dad’s house, I accidentally ran through their screened door and knocked some of my grandmother’s china off the wall. This time, I managed not to break anything, and on Thursday, Dad, Yvonne and I headed to Lake Istokpoga to pick up the fifth-wheel trailer from it’s seasonal, bass-fishing home.

One of Larry’s friends stopped by to chat as I was packing up this morning. He’s a recumbent cyclist, so we talked shop a bit. Larry laughed and laughed about my raccon-eyes tan from my sunglasses. I guess you can see it better in the daylight. I hiked up my bike short leg and he nearly choked laughing about that dramatic tan line. “Oh, we’d see you coming in a bikini!” he chortled. “Other people notice, they just don’t say anything to you about it.” I’m pretty sure that’s true.

We sat down for a minute, and Larry said a beautiful prayer for me to send me safely on my journey. We said, “See you later,” and I went on my way.

I wasn’t too far out of Chiefland when I caught up with a cyclist. He was wearing a backpack and had little other gear, so I figured he was local. Ronald, it turned out, had gotten here from Cinncinati in ten days. Today he was taking it easy.

He was riding sixteen hour days, all the daylight hours. He was mostly fueled by coffee and Pepsi, and he was guerilla camping. At 43, his kids were grown and successful, in Sweden studying water treatment systems on a grant from New York City. He was divorced, retired from the Navy, and a master electrician. He heard there might be work in Tampa, and if that didn’t work out, he would head to Miami, where his mother lived.

He’d had his bike basket and pump stolen on Atlanta, and been stopped by the police “for questioning” pretty regularly on this trip. He worked at a Waldorf school when he was younger, and spoke German and Spanish. He said he was from Germany, though his accent sounded Spanish-speaking to me. He had a metal rod in his arm, from when it had been blown off by a grenade. He’d served in both the first and the second Gulf Wars.

We rode together for most of the day. We talked about being free on the bike. You’re not in any kind of a box. You’re not in a cubicle, not in a car, not in a house. You’re not addicted to TV. We stopped at a gas station, where we told our stories to a woman with a Boston accent and her chain-smoking mother, and a man with a growth on his nose. They were amazed. Everyone agreed that I must be carrying too much stuff and that I had the biggest calves anyone had ever seen. Ronald had on long pants, so we did not scrutinize his legs.

I had a peanut butter sandwich by the side of the road, while Ronald drank more coffee. As we went to get back on the road, he saw my front tire was totally flat. We went back to the little spot of shade and I started pulling all my gear off the bike so I could change it. He offered to help, but understood when I said I needed to practice doing it myself. It was way easier to change this tube than the last one. I have no idea what made it so.

We both checked the old inner tube, and couldn’t find where air was escaping, so I ran my finger along the inside of the tire and found a short piece of wire sticking out. Good thing Ronald was with me, because he had a pair of pliers, which the police in Georgia almost took away from him (!), and I did not. Done and done.

Of course the last five miles to my campground were hotter and windier and harder than the rest of the day. The sun was at its peak. We stopped more in those last five miles than we had in the previous thirty, but we finally came upon River Road. I went to check in and Ronald went on to find a cool place to rest before getting back on the road til dark. He’d heard the police in Citrus County, which we’d just entered, were bothersome, and he wanted to be through it before night.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m white, or a woman, or it’s my energy, or because I just look like a recreational traveler with my brightly colored gear, but I do not get stopped by public safety personnel. The few times I have interacted with them on this trip, they have been asking if I’m OK. Even though Ronald’s encounters with them tended to end with, “Sorry for the inconvenience; thank you for your service to our country,” the idea that he does get handcuffed and his gear searched on a regular basis made me uncomfortable on a number of levels.

For one thing, they say they don’t profile, but they do. But at the same time, I don’t want to be around if it is happening. I know I have a lot of unearned privilege that allows me to move through life with relative ease. I try to appreciate that, because I like being under the radar. A lot of variables have to line up for me, nearing 40, to be able to traipse around the country generally unimpeded. I feel very lucky that I am in this space.

Connie, who manages the RV park, has been “on sabbatical” for about a year, since she gave up her job in the mortgage business. “Everyone hates you by the time a deal is done,” she said of that work, “what kind of a way to live is that?”

She has time to read now. She’s held some amazing women’s retreats out here, with meditation and beaches and massages. Like Ronald, she found that money doesn’t mean anything if you’re not happy. We talked about what we did with our stuff. It just didn’t have the same importance anymore.

“Take this desk, I could burn it tonight. I wouldn’t care. And I could probably replace it tomorrow with something from a yard sale twice as cute.”

I thought about Ahni telling me in Seattle that I would find my tribe wherever I go. I don’t even have to look for them!

Connie offered me a ride to Spring Hill tomorrow, which is a day’s ride for me. When I was setting up my tent, one of my poles snapped.

See the pointy part of the orange pole? It’s not supposed to look like that.

I think it’s a sign that I should take the ride.

For a few days now, I’ve been heading south to my dad’s house in St. Petersburg. I had been planning to meet him at the I-75, around Gainesville, because I didn’t think I could get all the way to St. Pete’s in time for his deadline. When I meet him, we’re going to head up to Illinois in his RV, and he has a timeline. As I got closer, I realized I could easily make it all the way to his house, and with this ride, I’ll probably be two days early!

Really, I’m ready for a break.

I thought I got a late start yesterday, finally getting on the road about 9am due to crossing into the Eastern time zone. But today I didn’t even get up til nine! After doing my laundry and Scott and Laura feeding me oatmeal and cantaloupe, I headed out at 11:30. Scott and Laura accompanied me on their tandem for a few miles, but they had to get back to open the shop at noon. Of course, there’s no way to thank them enough for taking such good care of me! I’m so lucky I ended up at their bike shop!

They had pointed me in the direction of a grocery store, because I was out of electrolytes for my water, but of course I wanted to eat everything there. They, sadly, also had no macaroni and cheese at their deli, but they did have yummy breads and rolls and couscous salad.

After the store, I headed for St. Mark’s Trail, a rails-to-trails trail. The first few miles were being resurfaced, but I was eventually able to get on it. What a lovely trail! It was wide and smooth, and they paved over driveways, rather than up to them. This meant fewer bumps! There were also bathrooms every few miles, and a few parks, parking areas, benches in shady spots, and drinking fountains.

Every trail should be so nice! Also, at most of the roads it crossed, car traffic had a stop sign and bike traffic had the right of way!

Unfortunately, I had to leave the path to get to Wakulla Springs. This might have been the first
time I went deliberately off route to a sight-seeing destination. Five miles out and five miles back! It had come highly recommended from several sources, plus I was taking a short day anyway. And there were alligators!

It was a beautiful day, but not quite hot enough for me to swim in 69 degree water. I enjoyed looking at the beautiful blues of the spring,

and the water was amazingly clear. I took the boat ride, a slow nature cruise down the spring fed river. We could see the bottom the whole time. There were alligators,

frolicking deer,

Suwanee Cooter turtles,

Anhingas and Anhinga babies, Osprey, Wood Ducks and Wood Duck babies, several kinds of herons, egrets, Cormorants,

and other birds whose names I can’t remember.

At the lodge, I had a Ginger Yip, which is basically a vanilla milkshake made with Ginger ale instead of milk, and looked at a very large stuffed alligator.

It was a very enjoyable afternoon. I rode the last ten miles to the Newport County Park campground, and set up camp. Jim Russell, his fiancé Connie, and his son, Grayson, came out to see me for a short visit.

Jim is a distance cyclist from Tallahassee who heard about me from Carl and Sallie, the brother and sister riding in support of MADD, whom I had met a few days ago, so he contacted me through my blog. Jim is on the FSU police force and does a lot of work to reduce drunk driving as well. He has put together a six hundred mile bike ride in Florida, and one circumnavigating the state. He is really interested in supporting long-distance cyclists, and someday hopes to do RAAM himself. He brought out snacks, water, a regular bike pump, (so much easier to use than my smaller road pump–a treat!), and, perhaps most imoportantly, bug spray. The noseeums at this campground are pretty intense. I would have liked to talk longer, but the bugs made it difficult.

Jim said that a cyclist is only as good as his crew, and between Jim and Connie’s appearance and the amazing folks at the Bicycle House, I must be doing OK. And that only takes into account the people who have helped me since yesterday afternoon!

Dan from Alaska, Coach, and I

I said goodbye to the Wandering Wheels this morning after breakfast. They’ll be riding about twice as far and, of course, twice as fast, as me from here on out. They are a religious-inspired group, and at their breakfast meeting they discussed their responsibility to take care of the sojourner. I felt very lucky to receive their generosity and their friendship. They also kind of reminded me of The Circus Kingdom, the circus group I traveled with in college that was headed by a Methodist minister.

After being so burned out yesterday, I was looking forward to a short 30 mile day. All the locals had said it was going to get up to 98 degrees as well, so I wanted to get off the road as soon as possible. My first five miles, to the town of Wenden, went super fast, at 13mph! I stopped for water at the only thing that appeared open.

I guess there’s a lake around here somewhere!

I slowed down from there, encountering a small headwind on and off. I stopped often in patches of shade.

There weren’t that many patches of shade, so I tried to stop when I found them.

I pulled in to Aguila about 10:30. I mailed home one pound six ounces of stuff I don’t need. It might not seem like much, but it’s worth it to get rid of it when I have to carry it all.

I’m currently spending the afternoon in the bustling Aguila, pop. 600, library. There’s a lot of hubbub surrounding a girl, maybe 10 years old, who’s on crutches because she jumped off her roof. Everyone knows everyone here.

I feel surprisingly strong, so I’m considering going another 24 miles after it starts cooling down again.