Overstimulation

photo by joeball

It’s pretty amazing what you can pack into a mere 18 hours on two wheels: beer on a patio opened just for you and your friends; a ferry boat ride with more than forty fully-loaded cyclists, all of whom are cleared from the “poop deck” by the power of Derrickito’s crop dust; something remarkably similar to bike touring on country roads past naval bases on a peninsula; then up and up to a vista point that really afforded one some swell vista, and all this before setting up a campsite where beer and spirits far outnumbered water, and many, if not most, stayed up way beyond the horses’ bedtimes; afterwards, come morning, there’s still plenty of time to roll downhill, make a return boat, and be showered and shaved at pretty much the same hour you would have anyway had you never experienced the entire whirlwind in the first place.

Many a rule was broken, notably the one about not following the Angry Hippy up a mountain, but it turned out to be well worth it, even if coming down meant a snapped front brake cable for the effort and since you learn something new every time you go bike camping, the lesson here is twofold: first, bring a spare when you go to the woods and second, in a pinch, you can substitute a gear cable if you jam the leftover end of the broken wire into the lever socket to keep it from slipping.

I lay in my tent with the sound of a screech owl behind me and a lilting chorus of Karadactyl squawks, Botorff bellows, and TicToc gongs towards the front—animals and humans in the wild, making their own presences being heard.

Somehow, if you’re lucky, you may even get forty winks in before dawn breaks, but if not, it hardly matters, since, like Fancy Fred, you remain in a waking dream state with all that happens at the speed of bike.