Northward

My slight southern detour through Idaho to skirt the mountains ended, I headed north once more for the first time in some while today as I traveled the short distance from Mountain Home to Boise. Of course, after blowing from the southwest the whole time I've been headed south, the wind had to change directions out of the northwest to mark the occasion... But I'm finally getting out of this Idaho valley, and hopefully its wild winds with it.

I ended up camping last night at an RV park last night, because my host had some military training exercise he forgot about. I thought about trying the classic door to door asking for a yard or porch to camp on routine that has worked out well for me in the past, but I saw a rather foreboding "No Unauthorized Soliciting" sign as I entered Mountain Home that made me not want to risk it. I was a little disappointed to be camping for $20 (the same cost as to be in an RV with electricity, water, and cable by the way), rather than sleeping in a bed. But so it goes. After getting settled in, my would-be host texted me to say the training had been canceled and he could host me after all if I hadn't found somewhere. Go figure...

But I slept alright, and there wasn't too much rain water to clean off my tent in the morning. It started raining again as I biked through Mountain Home and I figured it would be good to get some breakfast somewhere inside while waiting it out, especially considering I didn't have far to go today. Sadly, pizza places don't open before 11, so I ended up going to a coffee shop. Coffee shops are great friends to the bicycling vagabond. They open early, provide a mix of the calorie rich and nutritious (I had a rice crispie, cinnamon roll, fruit smoothie, and an egg, cheese, hash brown wrap), offer free wifi and outlets, have comfortable seating, and don't give a damn if you sit around and wait out the rain. I really ought to be using them more often than I do.

After that, I headed off for Boise. I hadn't made it too far down the interstate when I realized I had a flat. Now there was a time when I would have been really distressed by this, but today, I just said, "Oh, well that's inconvenient." It was the patch I put on way back in Gillette, Wyoming. After 700 miles, mountains, Yellowstone, and everything else, it finally just gave out. I think that's a real good run myself. I got out my tools, and on the shoulder of the interstate, in the light wind, and some decent wind, I changed my inner tube. It was all good. Funny enough a guy in a truck asked if I needed help just as I finished.

Then I made my way on to Boise. There was a spell of some more serious rain, but it only lasted long enough for me to sing a few Creedance Clearwater Revival songs. I must say, now as my second time biking on interstate (and I will be for most the way from here), it really isn't bad, and better than most highways in many ways. There's a nice big shoulder guaranteed. The traffic is going faster, but at normal highway speeds they'd kill you just as dead if they hit you either way. The divided road means that all traffic is going with you, which also means when semis pass they're always pushing you forward and not blasting you in the face. Though there are definitely difficulties. Exits and entrances can get a bit hairy. And all the debris on the shoulder (mostly blown apart pieces of tires, plenty of various trash, some boards with nails, and for this stretch a lot of pieces of wood and bark) often requires making use of all that space to avoid it. It's easy for the bike to dodge, hard for the trailer. ...Oh yeah, and when you're coming into town and there's a sign saying the shoulder is going to end due to construction, that's rather scary, until you discover you can exit before that. But all in all, interstate seems decent.

I like Boise. It reminds me a lot of Lincoln, large enough that there are businesses available and things going on, but still having a small town, quiet feel to it. I spent some time chilling out at a nice public park with a little lake for my host to get off work.

Then I came here and got to meet my rather remarkable host of the night. I got showered, laundered, and then he took me out to a really neat little pizza joint in town called The Piehole and generously paid for my meal. He said he was happy to, paying back kindness he himself has received. He has a saying that the road provides, that when you're traveling like this, there's a way of stumbling into the right experiences and people when you need them, that your energies attract you. I'm not so mystical about it, but I do know what he means. And he's a man who has certainly seen his share of the road to form the notions he has of it. Coincidentally enough, he's actually from Seattle, where I'm headed. But he's lived for some span or another just about all over the country. And he's seen a hell of a lot of it by bike. Just the few of his adventures and experiences he's described to me belong in a book, and I would live to be the one to write it. He actually wants to live as a bike vagabond full time, calling nowhere home, heading South for the winter and North for the Summer, working his trade as a carpenter across the country to pay his way, the real deal. I'm starting to feel like in taking this trip I've stepped onto a precipice where I'm staring down into a whole other world, an entirely different way of life, populated by an entirely different sort of people. And I'm afraid that merely by looking over the edge, I've already started to fall. I know I can go back to normal life, and I know that I do indeed want to. But I can't ever go back from seeing this vagabond world, and knowing it's only a sidestep over in my mode of thinking.

I asked myself today, this morning as an idle thought, and again tonight thinking about my host and his incredible stories of the road, why it is that I write this blog. As I see it, there are two very simple possible answers to that. And then of course, the ever present, usually truer, third option, the combination of both. The first answer is that I write it for others to read. It's an obvious answer, writing down what happens to me so my friends and family can know what's going on, without me telling each of them individually.

The second answer is that I do it for me, that this blog is like a diary, a way to organize my own thoughts about my day. I get to narrate my own life, make a story out of it. Because life isn't a story on its own, much as some may say otherwise; it's just a series of things that happen. It becomes a story when you tell it, when you shape the events into a tale, when you give it human and personal emphasis and emotion and notions of meaning. Most of my day is spent staring at the same sort of scenery while listening to some song in my head to the rhythm of my ever pedaling legs, or fulfilling various procedural tasks of all sorts like anyone else. But then, at the day's end I get to compress and concentrate the endless, unmeaning events of my day into some sort of story, take the continual and turn it into the momentary, tell about what happened by making it into what it never was. And there really is a profound enjoyment in that, making yourself out as more interesting than you feel. I really think more people ought to try it, whether they're crazy bike adventuring or not. Everyone has a story to tell.