The Post Trip Fog

After that 2002 trip down the Pacific Coast, I lay on the couch outside our house for weeks.

I watched the traffic go by along West Alemeda Street, then slow, then pick back up as the sun rose. I lived in a house we called the Crow's Nest – I was in a Pirate Phase – a small ranch style house with a gravel lot for a front yard. It took me a long time for secure that housing. I had been an RA for my college as a way to have my room and board covered, but my freshman year leveled me with a collection of assaults, none of which by fellow students but one by someone who worked for our security company. It's a story for another day, but that violation the semester prior, coupled with the long-distance but verbally and emotionally abusive relationship I'd found myself in, had left me paranoid. 9-11 happened the morning of an RA meeting, the planes took off from the airport where my dad worked and crashed into the city I almost moved to instead of this bizarre New Mexican hamlet, and processed the swirling news in real time with my floor mates who also had east coast connections.

I spat blood in wads. My tongue turned white. I was sick with stress. I could barely leave my dorm, nevermind protect my girls on my floor, so I felt I had no business being their guardian.

I quit the job, and had nowhere to live or money to recalibrate.

When I finally got a job at a market, I was able to move into this little house with three amazing guys: Dan, Phil, and Angelo. Slowly, they moved out and new people moved in, stationing me as the anchor tenant. We started hosting Food Not Bombs, then art shows, then metal shows, then doing late night tattoos with a handmade ink gun on local miscreants to supplement a roommate's apprenticeship. I tried to re-domesticate myself with a home, but instead turned the house feral.

As the shows and dreams got bigger, the furniture was rotated as needed: turning into outdoor furniture once the spills became smells, and into garbage once the smells became homes for critters. The outdoor couch was pergatory for ferality, a perfect place for me.

I had already spent some nights before the trip sleeping out there, an ache in my chest too big for a bedroom, bursting out of me each night to fill up the sky. I counted back and forth the three stars of Orion's Belt, poured myself back and forth between the Big and Little Dippers, eventually spilling out into Milky Way dreamland in the process.

But once I got home from the coast, I had a hard time going inside. A hard time with walls. A hard time with hard ends. I also found it challenging to do anything else. A friend of mine once said of prison that he liked the structure, not having to think about when or what to eat or when to brush his teeth, and that just getting out of bed as a "free man" gave him too many options. On a bike tour, you have one goal – to pedal – and everything else fits into that objective. With no objective, there was just empty space except going to work at the bike shop. All I could thing to do was sit and stare at the street as th cars passed and then didn't, lights turned off and then on again, people came by to visit and then left.

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I got home from the Arthritis Foundation's California Coast Classic (CCC) ride around 1 a.m. yesterday morning and have been grasping at structure. I did laundry, picked up the CSA, made hearty meals, created an Instagram Reel of the trip. I also pulled out my laptop to do work but couldn't think of what to do, sat in on a workshop but failed to pay attention, and spent a good amount of time scrolling Instagram (I had downloaded it on my phone for the trip and have since deleted it, remembering why I don't keep it on there) and staring into space.

I can feel the swirls of uncertainty trying to cloud and distract me, but I have many more skills today than I did when I was 20, and systems in place to keep me moving forward. And while I may be too foggy to think of those systems that are currently running in the background (hopefully), I can attribute them to three truths I lean on:

1) I don't begrudge my slow re-entry into civilian life or inability to jump immediately back into work. My body has been through a lot, not just with the many miles and insufficient training (though, I gotta say, if my body knows how to do anything it's pedal a bicycle and I was surprisingly unsore and ended each day with energy for more miles) but with travel, poor sleep, shifting nutrition and hydration needs and irregular eating patterns.

2) While it was a fun time, it was also work and it's OK to need a day or two off. I was "on" for a week, interviewing riders, volunteers, and organization leaders about what the CCC means to them and the impacts they've witnessed during their time participating. I represented my brand, and kept a curious ear open for any new angles I hadn't thought of while also paying attention to anyone who may be aligned with the stories I was already forming. That is a lot of mental load.

3) The cure for exhaustion is rest. The cure for thirst is hydration. If I deny myself these basic needs by ignoring their solutions, I only prolong my brain fog. So I might as well get nappy, not push myself, and drink all the herbal tea I can. Whatever it is I need to take care of beyond that can wait, and will have to whether I try to force it or not (besides feeding the dog; her hunger waits for no one).

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