Memoirous

About this time last year I was prepping for my trip to Switzerland/Germany/Rhine River Bike Ride— This year, my bus trip to Traverse City and biking around Sleeping Bear Dunes. I’ve always maintained a nature shelf. My daughter now has one for both her children. I change things out as the seasons change. I can see from the mementos on the shelf and various ephemera bike trips I’ve made through the years. In 2016 I made a fall trip from John of Groats in the northernmost of the UK down to Land’s End in Cornwall. In 2014 I made a trip over to Sweden to visit friends, which included a hapless backpacking jaunt and biking around Gotland—an island off the mainland. I love looking at my postcards and small finds. The word souvenir comes from the French meaning a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event. to remember, come First recorded in 1775 as meaning “a remembrance or memory,” the noun souvenir stems from the French souvenir “to remember, come to mind.” A ...

Last fall I rode my bike up the Rhine River from Cologne into Switzerland. It was a GREAT trip. See links. I used Warmshowers  as an option for where to stay and trip planning. In the famous town of Strasbourg in northeastern France I was lucky in finding a host. Florian answered yes and we arranged where and when to meet up. I cycled to his apartment building outside the historic city center and waited beside my bike. Within minutes Florian showed up after his evening commute. Later—after a warm shower—we sat around a table and ate a wonderful lentil salad and a baguette because . . . I was in France! I saw on a bookcase over his shoulder a whole shelf of Harry Potter books. He was of that generation, same as my daughter who just turned 35, who grew up reading Harry Potter. Their whole childhood was comprised of Harry Potter. Every year there was a monumental publication, the subsequent hoopla, the launch event, the completive reading, marathon, then the waiting for the next ...

Hello, kids! How is it that for months you lay dormant, scrubby, blah—and then, open? I saw activity about a month ago in bleak January when it was cold but snowless, a little snow, always cold: There were brimming buds. Of hope, I thought. This is new, my heart said. Ah! There is only so much I can do to beat back the blanket of depression that falls on me in weak light, dark mornings, early evenings, a day that never ripens but stays a leaden gray. I light candles, turn on my grow lights over the spider plant, eat comforting hot oatmeal, get a Netflix subscription. I plan a garden and reread my blog where I ride my bicycle . . . everywhere. For example, last year at this time I was dreaming about my upcoming  Rhine River trip .  Five hard little buds formed at the end of what appeared to be a dead stem. (I never know whether to trim them back or tack them up.) I did a bit of research. Orchids like cold nights and warmish days; they love sunlight but not direct light. So ...

I went to see the fictionmentary: Origin written and directed by Ava DuVernay based upon Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: Origins of our Discontents . It takes a particular skill to adapt nonfiction to the screen; you’re actually telling a couple stories at once and most or all of it has to be TRUE. On a personal note: I couldn’t stop crying through the entire viewing. Am I highly emotional? Maybe, but I’m the kind of person you want in the middle of a disaster because I tend to keep my head without panicking. But once you start intuiting a lynching—I’m gone, and the movie opens with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the young man/teenager who was killed merely for walking home in the rain on a dark night wearing a hoodie. You know the end of this story before it even begins, and you get a sick thud in your belly just watching the Skittles slide across the convenient store counter. It’s all going to go so bad. It is a complicated story to tell, weaving the history of black oppression in...

Lately I’ve been exploring transcendent moments. I’ve tried to let go of the strictures of dance, override the bodily chemical reaction of fear, the memory of shame that surrounds the times I’ve allowed myself to move and react with a whole heart to a spiritual impulse. But it’s hard. Since my divorce I knew if I wanted to travel, I’d have to go alone. It’s okay, I almost prefer it, then I don’t have to worry about if someone else is hungry, overtired, their feelings. I only have to worry about me—and getting lost. When I traveled this past fall, I’d already overcome many anxieties that come from traveling solo—with a bike. I managed to get me and my bike on the train to Berlin despite the fact that it seemed I had no real seat assignment, despite a fellow passenger telling me in English that I must have a valid ticket to ride. Thankfully, when the person coming through the cars asking for papers scanned what I produced from my backpack, all was settled. Then at the Berlin station, h...

Ever since I got back from my Rhine River Ride all I’ve wanted to do is eat. Ever since I got back from Europe all I want is a big salad. Everywhere I stayed I was eating salad, so that now it is a muscle memory. Ravenous. A kind of craving. Perhaps, it’s post-trip depression. Either way, I’m eating salad and dreaming of my next bike trip.

I watched the Netflix release, NYAD, about the endurance swimmer Diana Nyad’s attempt(s) to swim from Cuba to Key West. I found the main character to be annoying, narcissistic, and one-dimensional. Like most exceptional professional athletes. If this were a man we’d think nothing of it— She was driven by internal, psychic forces to do this incredible feat not for any monetary reason, but only to prove to herself that she could. Of course, she had to bring others into her over-achievement orbit and hold them there in order to accomplish her goal. There is a certain tension in the film of how she viewed relationships. Yet, she was fully human; we saw her warts and all. I think what made me keep watching was that she and I (in the film) are close to the same age—and I, too, feel a sense of wanting to get things done, or at least attempt to. My Rhine River Ride (search here at blog for posts) portrayed this: Despite rain the first day, I had to do 100 km to Koblenz and 100 the next d...

After a restless sleep, and not enough of it, I awoke to having to buy toilet paper, restock the fridge and pantry shelf. The water tasted different, the slant of light. The trees were further along into their descent into winter. The whole world. While gone, there was Israel and Gaza and new wars. New perils. The garden had gone to seed. The peeling paint more distressed. I wish I were somewhere else. Is this the letdown after a trip? The low following the high? A reckoning? Not that the trip was paradise—more an interruption to real life. A fourth dimension, a slipstream that I folded into for a little over 3 weeks. That vaguely familiar routine of pedaling, a kind of Zen, where I feel at home within my body, my mind elsewhere, living in the moment. The moments of awestruck pleasure over the most sublime scenes. The hush, the color of the sky, a certain sense of well-being, of not being lost, of getting somewhere, that adventure awaits. The first few weeks were Indian Summe...

My last full day in Switzerland I mostly sat and chatted. There were logistics to deliberate. Like how the bike and were getting to the airport. One of the reasons I went back to Untervasser was because I left there my bike box. But how was I alone to manage this--on a bus and 2 trains? It was decided, I would buy a bike box at the airport. Then I had to cut up into little pieces the cardboard box my friend had saved. I felt a bit stupid because it took an hour and then it cost to deposit into the town trash receptacle. At one point when nearly done destroying the box, Monica asked if I was okay doing this. Before I could answer (because it was way to late to change my mind) she clarified: Continuing to tear up while she fixed dinner? We also looked into my ticket to get to the airport. I would either have to put the box or tix on my CC as I was running out of Franc. Anyway, I couldn't buy the ticket at the office, something wasn't working. They said to get it on the bus. My jo...

Depending upon which country you're in, the spelling for the river changes. Sometimes it is Rhine, Rhein, or Rhin. No mattet, it has been quite the journey. Like most trips I've done, I'm going in the wrong direction. Most people start in the Alps, at the source of the rivet and make their way DOWN, to the Hook of Holland. Also most people go in the summer, though, to my thinking, this is the perfect time. Not too hot. Only just now has the weather turned and there's a nip in the morning air. Also no crowds. Mostly in mornings and evening fast-track commuters. I've seen very few cycle tourists. Occasionally I see a rider with one or two small bags ostensibly going hotel-to-hotel for one or two nights on an eBike. Bot hardly any fully loaded tourists, and none going my direction. Last night I was exhausted. I was tired of getting lost, being at hyper alert for signs, and all the language/communication difficulties. Also my legs were sore from the climbing recently in...

Last night Tobias offered to ride me into Basel. We left around 8 a.m. with all the other commuters. It really didn't take long, but that's the point: anything I do takes twice as long as I have to check my phone and map to make sure I haven't messed up. In Switzerland I follow the red signs. After Tobias left me I followed my paper map to turn away from the Rhine toward Muttenz. I then saw the signs and followed them, ending up in Liesel, where I had to course correct to Prattein. Everything looks a bit industrial. It takes a while to leave the outskirts. I head to Augusta Raurica where there are Roman ruins.  At Rhinefelden I have a choice of how to get across to Mumpf and Stein. My paper directions have me staying close to the river while the other looks like it crosses the interior. I opted for Rhine thinking it might be less hilly. There have been some gut-wrenching steep inclines. A lot of up and down. Straight away I began a climb into a forest. The trail was gravel....

I arrived in Freiburg on Friday and spent Saturday off the bike. Good thing, as it was stormy. There's been a shift in the weather, more autumn like. I spent a large part of Saturday just relaxing and playing games with a four year old whose ability to speak 2 languages was one greater than mine.  Back in Strasbourg my host had suggested that I stay on the German side of the Rhine; there was no reason, aside from my paper instructions, to come back to France. He said the signage was better on the German side. So that was a change in plans. I quickly checked a map and saw the town Weil am Rhine and thought I should try for that town.  I mentioned this to my friend Maren whom I was staying with in Freiburg. She said my brother lives in Weil and, in fact, I can ride with you and then take the train back. I was beyond thrilled. Yes! So we left this a.m  at 9 under cloudy skies. The streets were wet from a recent shower and the forecast called for off and on showers all day. T...