Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Happy Birthday America!

Day 31 - July 4, 9:05 pm
92 miles. Moberly, MO to Richmond, MO

Happy 4th of July!

The only thing i like more than a sunny day is having it be rainy in the morning and then turn to sun from there. The latter happened today. Lets face it, preparing for the worst and then having a pleasant experience instead is pretty sweet.

What isn't so sweet is helping out Colin Hood clean up trash only to realize its an assassin trap in disguise. Enough said, but a kill well earned on his part. Nothing like a healthy dose of deception and cunning to build character. Worked for Sparta right?

Other than passing by the world's largest pecan(?) (it was metal, boo) today not too much has really been going on these few days. Its mostly just riding which is a little of a downer because its the really random silly things like running through corn that totally make my entire week and keep me going. There were tons of cool trains passing by today though. Corn was still here but no so much. It seems the Pecans have been guarding their turf well.

One thing that did suck was a car throwing a small firecracker at us as it drove by. I saw this weird smoky thing in front of us only to have it explode and scare the hell out of us. Its kinda funny but mostly retarded. Honestly, I never ever thought i would be the type to get roadrage, and I still won't, but I legit wanted to throw a rock at this car if i could have and it scares me to say that. But it was such a messed up thing to do and could've actually caused an injury. Humans are probably as stupid as we are smart sometimes.

The riding itself was unbelievably quick today. Lunch at 40 miles came in only 3.5 hours, and felt like a snap. Though there were some hills and headwind we were just pushing along. I don't know if its my body or my mental attitude adjusting but I was just really not feeling the effects of the mileage at all which is great. I was thinking more generally today of what ridiculous riders we've become and reminiscing on the first week where i literally thought my body might explode at any second from all of the crazy adjustments. I'm totally feeling the groove physically and mentally now which is awesome and is the kind of character building i was hoping for. Even the initial rain didn't upset me that much!

Had a great conversation with Miranda about African drumming today since she has also done it in college. Major bonding ensued and we could hardly get over how much we both love it to death.

I'm on trailer crew this week and we get to fill up the trailer every morning with all 32 bags. It's honestly like real life tetris and kind of fun. Though having real live 8-bit Russian medley's probably wouldn't hurt either. Actually, wait, hold on, i just found a great tetris dance remix on my computer. Guess who's gonna jam tomorrow morning...!

Dinner was real fun today as i realized I am becoming decently knowledgeable on the different Protestant denominations. But mostly it was because i had a sweet conversation with this short little sweet lady named Joe Ann of the DAR. No she is not a member of the Duly Arranged Reptiles, but rather the Daughters of the American Revolution. What that means is that she can actually trace her lineage all the way back to an ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War. I don't know about you but that kinda blows my mind, especially coming from Queens, basically the Immigrant capital of the world. I knew almost nothing about them before and it was a great pleasure hearing her talk about the organization and her involvement.

Crazy cool randomness: super small door in the church next to a large one. Good thing it didn't throw us onto the Jersey Turnpike or into anyone's consciousness.

Now ass for the fireworks you've obviously only read this far for. Essentially, imagine cleaning your bike in a mortar field. No joke, there have been explosions left and right continuously since 6pm. Our neighbors might as well be trying to burn our church down. It got really sweet at 9 since we are on the top of a hill and can see the entire town's backyard fireworks. It was actually a full 180 degrees of sulphurous stimulation. We couldn't even decide which ones to focus on but we could all agree that Missouri rocks. Hopefully not too many children had their arms blown off today.

Finally we sat to watch the spectacular fireworks presentation a few of us has had actually spent two hours preparing. We couldn't decide whether it was the fireworks themselves or the military like precision with which the members were running around with torches yelling codenames like "Pink Elephant" and "Mortar Up" that was more awesome.

I even got to set off one of our 600 bottlerockets. It was my first firework ever since they're illegal in NY state and also since I'm terrified to death of handling them up close. However, the ensuing power rush more than made up for all of that.

Got really thinking today about the whole America thing. People were decked out in all sorts of red, white, and blue paraphernalia. I've never really identified super strongly with America and have always been kind of in an interesting place with my Greek Heritage being so strong and living in NYC which is a universe of its own. I feel that nationalism and localism in general are pretty silly but I think they are still essential to one's sense of self to an extent. This trip has really been interesting in terms of helping me appreciate the American side of my Greek-Americanness. Wish i had more fully developed thougths but i suppose just the fact that im even thinking about this stuff is good enough. There'll always be time for answers i guess.

Overall, solid day ridingwise. I'm excited to be feeling so confident on the road and with my (hopefully real and not just supposed) mental and physical toughness. Also, I've been doing a lot of practice lately with hands free riding and am making great progress. Definitely a fun goal to work towards on the way to San Fran. Not much else to do on flat 5 mile stretches.

Well actually, the other things i did do today was 1. calculate the fact that we'll have each pedaled roughly 2.2 million times by the end of the trip give or take 200,000 or so. Seriously, i tried keeping count for a while and that's just a big number.

2. My other thought was of why can't roads be different colors besides beige and black. Seriously how much more fun would they be! Think about it, you could color code different directions of traffic which means its at least arguably functional. And intersections would have cool blending effects making them pretty which is probably even more important. You could even have like a hometown's sports teams colors. Hopefully at least like 4 people take this idea somewhat seriously.

Off to bed in what is basically trench warfare between competing fireworks camps. Apparently more fireworks = more Americanism?

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