While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for June 2009

Got insomnia? Ride your bike 62.5 miles.

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Heelya and I at mile 30

I’m going to try to update this briefly while I’m home. But let me warn you: my parent’s dial-up Internet connection is powered by a hamster on a wheel. It’s already crashed twice this morning.

I’m gearing up for my bridal shower, which will take place under a circus tent in the backyard. Only a handful of girls will be here, including my loveable aunts, PK, Heelya, Caroline (a frequent Lance commenter) and my Ro of course.

My father is heading out the door to pick up the boatloads of food my mom prepared for this event. She made so much food (for 18 people) that she had to store it at my dad’s machine shop one town over. As I’m typing this now, my Dad walked past and asked what I was doing.

“I’m updating the Lance,” I said.

“Ah. Well you’ve gotta switch into another gear when you use this computer.”

“I know Dad. It’s crashed twice already.”

To save on time, here is one picture from The Ride for Roswell, which I completed yesterday. Thank you to everywhere who donated. I raised $675. (All said the ride raised $2 million for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.) Ro, my sister Heelya, her boyfriend Brian and I rode 62.5 miles yesterday morning. We woke up at 4 a.m. Pedaled with no pain, without any flat tires or any mishaps, save for one 12-bike pileup five feet in front of us. It was a domino-effect type crash that resulted in one broken collarbone , three mangled bikes and one bloody face. Our team, thank Jebus, rode away unscathed. Ironically, the crash was caused by a flock of over-confident high-speed cyclists on $4,000 bikes, who were riding within inches from each other’s tires. The crash was so bad we all heard the guy’s collarbone break. Nasty stuff.

On that note, my bridal shower is in a few hours. I’ve gotta help my mom set up shop. I have much more eloquent posts brewing, but I’m saving them for later. I write better when I’m not distracted. But you all know that.

Bianchi almost got the boot.

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bianchi_nut

My stomach is in knots. I hate flying in commercial airliners. I never minded flying in my dad’s Cessna. But every time I take my seat in a commercial airliner, surrounded by strangers reading Stephen King novels and listening to iPods, I freak the frig out and watch in slow motion as my life’s happiest moments unravel while our plane plummets to earth.

I’ve literally got six minutes to write this, so here we go …

I’m heading to Buffalo for my bridal shower and the Ride for Roswell. Bianchi’s big hurrah. Joe dropped us off at the airport this evening and I’m not kidding you when I say checking this bike has been the most stressful airport experience of my life.

First: I didn’t know Bianchi had to be BOXED, so she almost didn’t make the trip. A nice woman working the curbside check-in wrangled up a cargo box for me. Twenty-five dollars and an hour later (yes an HOUR later) we finally had Bianchi in a box. Poor girl. She probably saw her life’s happiest moments unravel before her as I tore her front wheel off and wedged her head-first into a GIANT airport-issued cargo box. Her coffin.

Then, after I kissed my Joe goodbye, a TSA screener told me my wedding gown (which is in a GIANT green garment bag and coming with me on the plane) was “too cumbersome” for the overhead compartment. I told her it was my wedding dress and that I was told specifically by a Southwest attendant and by my bridal CONSULTANT (yes, I have a bridal consultant) that I could lug this thing on the plane. In fact, my bridal CONSULTANT told me I could hang it in a CLOSET on the plane. A closet. Like I’m Zsa Zsa Gabor. The miserly TSA screener let me go and here I am. Sitting at the terminal, waiting to board.

I’m nervous as hell. Like I said, I hate commercial airliners and I’m fearful for Bianchi. She’s somewhere in the hinterlands of airport security, hopefully being pushed across the tarmac as I type this, hopefully getting hoisted into cargo. Can you believe people send their PETS cargo? I’d lose my mind if the pug flew cargo.

I just looked at my hands. They’re covered in grease from ripping Bianchi’s tire off. Great. I’ll likely forget to wash them and end up licking honey roasted peanut dust off my fingers 30 minutes into the flight.

Anyway. We’re boarding. Wish us luck and see you in Buffalo!

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PS. I’m pretty certain the kind Southwest attendant who helped me box Bianchi took pity on me after Joe told her I needed the bike for a cancer charity ride in Buffalo.

Why do I blogger?

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A friend of mine likes to point out, whenever he gets the chance, that blogging is a total waste of time. That friend, in case you’re curious, is Zipper Boy and I’m going to continue to keep his identity secret because he is still dating Zipper Girl might get back together with Zipper Girl ended up marrying a MUCH BETTER zipper.

He likes to send me links to stories in the Washington Post or the NY Times that illustrate why blogging is profoundly meaningless. Fruitless. A few days ago he shared with me this link to a story titled, “Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest.”

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The tent diaries 6

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“On such a trip as mine, so much there is to see and to think about that event and thought set down as they occurred would roil and stir like a slow-cooking minestrone.” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

I was wrong about Wednesday’s post being my final tent diaries entry. I remember I wrote this kind of sloppy epilogue after I returned to Sarasota.

People who had followed my journey in the newspaper said I ended things so abruptly with no tidy conclusion or rewarding epiphany. Of course by then it was too late. I had hogged full-page spreads in the newspaper for six weeks. So for myself and my friends I wrote this, a little thank you note.

I was feeling pretty sappy and as usual, verbose.
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The tent diaries 5

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Just before I left Florida, my friend Ricci gave me a dragonfly, with this message written on the wings:

“All that glitters is not gold. All who wander are not lost.”

I’m sleepy now as I write this. Uninspired for the most part, sneezing in an auto repair shop, where I’m getting the oil changed in Joe’s car. It’s 9 a.m. on a Wednesday and I’m drinking Timmy Ho’s out of a plastic travel mug. Mechanic’s coffee is always too black and too dank for my taste buds, so I usually bring my own.

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The tent diaries 4

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Look at the pug’s face! Just look at how awe-struck he is standing at the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs in mid-June, his paws sinking into snow for the first time in his pug life.

After spending two weeks in the Midwest lavishing in the company of friends, good food and pillow-top mattresses, the pug and I started craving solitude again. Part four of this cross-country gallivant marked our return to brazen adventurousness.

Granted, I did stay with my cousin Erik and his wife Rebecca in Littleton, Colo. long enough to develop their cinnamon toast habit and to take a trip to Fairplay, a tiny town in a central Colorado founded during the Colorado Gold Rush and the setting for Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s scrappy/brilliant Comedy Central cartoon, South Park.
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Oh, wistful Regina…

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Hey. Let’s take a break from road tripping for three minutes and 17 seconds to watch Regina Spektor’s new music video. The song is called Laughing With and it’s off Spektor’s new album, Far. 

For more on this lovable songstress and why, if you haven’t already enjoyed her music  you should, read my future sister-in-law Leilani’s post on Creative Loafing’s excellent music blog, Tampa Calling. 
I definitely think you’ll like.    

The tent diaries 3

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Now onto part three of this adventure, in which Missouri and Kansas treat me well.

I regret not writing about Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain’s boyhood town. Folks in Hannibal say the town is the setting for Twain’s most famous stories. Tom Sawyer. Huck Finn.  Becky Thatcher. The whole wonderful lot sitting by the Mississippi riverbank in Hannibal.
Did you know the Unsinkable Molly Brown was headed to Hannibal when she boarded the Titanic 97 years ago on my birthday

Speaking of famous Missourians. I camped in Brad Pitt’s hometown of Springfield for three nights. It was one of my favorite (and largest) campsites, in a hayfield managed by KOA proprietors Scott and Diane King, off a stretch of rural highway, along the hot and dusty outskirts of town.

In Springfield, I met up with a friend of a friend for drinks at a Mexican restaurant. She loaned me a book about Albert Einstein and burned me two folks CDs that carried me through to Idaho. It was the first time we’d ever met, and we got along so awesomely I was sad to move on. Every time I opened the Einstein book I thought of how happy I was in Springfield, Missouri, drinking beer with a good conversationalist, talking about books, music and Mexican food.
Come to think of it, I did write about Hannibal but the story only ran in the newspaper.
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