[Cross-country bike trip thread continued from Day 31.]
Going up mountains meant we biked uphill all day sometimes at 2-3 mph for several days in a row. And going down mountains meant reaching speeds of 55mph and arriving at the bottom in a matter of hours, tears dried on our cheeks from going so fast. Because we were biking all day, that meant we also had to eat around 6000 calories a day. This was not a problem. At all. We were eating voraciously and constantly.
Once you get into the groove of biking, you don’t always want to stop. Especially if you are in the flat middle parts of the country where you see nothing but a silo way ahead on the horizon and you know it’s a couple of days away on a straight road. So I learned how to do everything in motion. I could get dressed and undressed while biking to control my climate, take photos without missing a beat, and rotate and switch my water bottles out seamlessly. The major lesson learned here was that from within the depths of our being, strength arises when we are determined, focused and we know what we want. Even if at some moments, all you can see is the goal in the distance, you always know where you are going.
The bike route I took was frequented by cyclists throughout the year, so people opened their homes and towns to us. Some people had special annexes for bikers to camp on their land, take a quick shower, rest in a bunk. One woman was called the “cookie lady” because she always had hot cookies ready for any bikers coming through.
We took turns cooking food. During our bike ride during the day, the two designated cooks for dinner would pick up whatever ingredients they could in whatever stores we passed.
Our meals usually consisted of pasta (for carbo-loading) with some kind of meat (for protein), fruit, salad and a dessert. Pie is available in abundance in quaint cafes across the country and we took full advantage of this as you can see from our stop in the photo here. Every time I saw some place that sold pie, I stopped for a slice or two, or three. We all did.
In addition to places to stop and eat, post offices and 1-hour photo developing places were our best friends because we could send home film we had developed as we went along. I took about 100 rolls with mostly disposable cameras as this was before digital cameras were really available.
However, because you also try to purchase supplies when you see them, since you never know when you’ll see a store again, we also stockpiled on certain supplies. For me, that was film. So now I have a plethora of unused film, and whether the film within is still useable, who knows. It is a project waiting to happen.
So on Day 32 of my 365 Release, I am letting go of film that I have kept refrigerated for 10 years. I know of just the photographer that would be able to experiment with these.
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