Roughing It in Potosi

I live close enough to where I work to ride my bike in, and this morning was no exception. I was waiting for a light to change at an intersection when a cyclist rode by. The sleeves of the cyclist's jersey were poking out from under a fluorescent green vest, and I instantly recognized them as the 2008 Bike & Build jersey. The light changed about three seconds later, about a second and a half after I had resolved to chase this mystery rider down. I was already pedaling my heart out when I started to process it in my mind: it was definitely a dude I was chasing, and it wasn't Skip, Amol, or Oliver, so he must have been a rider from some other route. I still wanted to catch him just to say hello. I followed him over Longfellow Bridge, and the adrenaline was wearing off before I was halfway over. I didn't see where he went at the intersection on the Boston side, and seeing as how that intersection goes in about 6 different directions, I figured it would be useless to try to find him now. "Well I'll be damned if this isn't a metaphor for real life," I thought to myself as I pulled a U to go back over the bridge.

A few highlights between Bloomington and Potosi: in Lawrenceville, IL, we celebrated the birth of our nation by checking into the Gas Lite Motel. (Actually, Lawrenceville has no 4th of July festivities. WTF?) Butters and I were chilling in the first of the 10 rooms we had when KRud rolled up with 5 footlong subs hanging from his neck. He had gotten them donated. Butters and I sat in that seedy little motel room watching King of the Hill and munching on some subs. She didn't believe me when I told her that that was exactly what my life was like in Texas. Hilary and I were blazing the trail into Salem, and I wasn't holding anything back, but she stayed with me the whole time. The day we got into St. Louis, a few of us went to go see the arch. They have these little egg-shaped pods to shuttle people to the top, and they only seat five, and we were seven. By this time we had already formed close, personal relationships, so it was no big thing for the seven of us to cram into that pod.

One of the things we would always try to do on the road was get donations in any form we could. See, there's this big Bike & Build pot of money, and all the trips draw from this pot, and whatever is left over after the trips (usually around half) goes to affordable housing organizations. Monetary donations were always welcome, but we also welcomed donations of food. See, for every meal we can get donated, that's a meal we don't have to draw from the pot, so that means more money for affordable housing. Some of us really had a knack for getting donations. KRud made a name for himself that way. Skip worked his magic a few times. But Lenny was the king of getting donations. A few of us were already at lunch on the day into Potosi when Lenny rolls up in the van and presents us with a garbage bag full of food that he got donated. Apparently a local grocery store was about to throw this stuff out because it was approaching its expiration date, and he convinced them to give it to us. Going through that bag full of goodies, I felt like a kid after Halloween.

After lunch it was Jose, Jane, Butters and me in the front pack. Eventually Jose and Jane started taking it easy, so it was up to Butters and me to blaze the trail. We got a call from the leaders about three miles after a turn telling us that the turn was wrong on the cue sheet. I wasn't too happy about that, but then I knew if I flipped my lid every time something didn't go my way I'd never make it to the Pacific.

We were almost back at the intersection where we had made the wrong turn. Butters was in the lead, and a car turned right right in front of her. I remember that she came so close to hitting the car that I said, "Whoa!" And then she hit the car. She wiped out, landing on one side. Afterwards people would ask me why I hadn't chased down the car. I suppose I could have, but that would have meant leaving Butters alone. She instinctively pulled herself out of harms way, and I stopped to pick up one of her water bottles from the middle of the street. On initial inspection she seemed mostly okay except for a gash on her knee. She was also a little shaken. The sight of the blood coming out of her knee didn't help. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" she said over and over as she cleaned the blood off her knee with water. She asked me what she should do. We had about 10 or 15 miles to the campsite. I said if it were me, I'd tie a bandana over it and finish the day. But that's me. She called Jose, and it turns out he and Jane had stopped at a library a short walk away. There Butters washed her wound in the bathroom (She refused disinfectant.) while Jose expained to me the deal. The cut was pretty deep, she would probably need stitches, so someone would have to go with her to the clinic. I volunteered.

First we went to what we thought was the clinic. There they gave us directions to what was actually the clinic. And at the clinic they told us they didn't take walk-ins and kindly directed us to a nearby emergency room. When they called her name, I gave her a hug and told her to be a big girl. I was actually a little relieved when Butters was gone because I could finally stop pretending like my eye wasn't killing me. (We had enough problems as it was; I didn't want to start up with mine.) The problems I had been having with my eyes on the day into State College didn't stop there. My eyes were constantly bothering me. Some days they were fine, but others I would have rather torn my eyeballs out than dealt with the pain. The day into Potosi was closer to the latter. I only had one contact in. (The other eye was so bothered that morning that I didn't dare put a contact in it.) I tried washing it out, to no avail. I was so desperate to make the pain stop that I just took my contact out and threw it away. I was blind.

Butters came back out with fresh stitches in her knee. She said she was good to ride, but we called the leaders anyway. They said she had to take the van in for the last few miles. Never before that day did I get the slightest hint that Butters cared about her membership in certain clubs within the trip, and nor did I ever get that feeling after that day, but in that emergency room in Missouri, Butters was seriously upset at the prospect of having to ride in the van. After we had called the leaders, Butters told me I could go, but I said I wasn't leaving until the van picked her up.

I gave Butters a hug and bid her farewell as she climbed into the van. 15 or so miles left in the day, it was about 5 o'clock and I hadn't eaten since lunch. I was tired, hungry, blind, and worst of all, alone. I can't emphasize this enough: I have really bad eyesight. Without glasses or contacts, I can't read road signs until I'm right next to them, and even then only barely. I have to lean over until my face is three inches from my handlebars to read the mileage on my cyclocomputer. Vehicles aside, riding blind and alone was scary because I could easily become lost and unable to find my way. I pedalled cautiously until I was out of the city, then easy once I was on open road. I'm pretty sure I was looking for a sign and a right turn onto a dirt road. I slowed down and squinted at everything that looked like it could have been a sign or an intersection. I started feeling weak, because I hadn't eaten since lunch no doubt. Eventually it got to the point where I had to pull over to collect myself. Even with only a few miles left, I took some Shot Bloks, knowing full well that they probably wouldn't start to take effect until after I got to the camp. I continued, and as my mileage creeped closer to the mileage for the turn into the camp, I started to get nervous. What if I missed the turn? How far do I go before turning back? What if I don't go far enough? A rush of relief came over me when a turn and the sign for the Boy Scout camp came into view. When I pulled up to the camp, people were taking down tents. Deep down I guess I was hoping for a hero's welcome, but most people didn't bat an eyelash.

I helped take down the tents. Apparently the plan had originally been to sleep in them, but we were supposed to get a thunderstorm that night, so instead we would hole up in this seriously creepy half-finished house next to our campsite. And there was, I kid you not, a graveyard right next to the house. Showers were a hose, dinner was burgers and hot dogs from I know not where, and I'm pretty sure it was somebody's birthday because we had like three cakes. A bunch of us were sitting at a table devouring the cake just as the light was starting to fade, and I remember thinking to myself, "It's just me and like seven girls at this table. This is awesome." The sky just before the storm was a sight to behold. We rushed to get everything inside, making it in a nick of time - Sophie, in nothing but a towel, was the only one left running for the patio when the initial cloudburst started. We watched the rain, discussed the day's events and the trip so far, wrote in our journals by flashlight, and were the best of friends.