The Grotto Of Redemption

The Connection Keeps Us Going

I had my one and only mental meltdown in an Erie, Pennsylvania gas station parking lot. I’ll get into the details of that later, but the short version is that I wanted to just lie down on the pavement and not get up. Ever. But as we know, I am not still lying prone in a corner of a gas station. Though it took over two hours to muster it up, I did finally stand up, pull on my gloves, and pull on my helmet.

I stood, straddling the Vespa, letting it run stationary beneath me. I focused my mind away from the way I was feeling, away from the loneliness, away from the frustrations. I forced myself to focus on the noise and commotion surrounding me, to focus back on the ride. And as my attention focused on everything going on around me, everything going on inside of me began to recede.

I maneuvered slowly through the parking lot and pulled out into the road. I leaned into the left turn and my connection with the Vespa took hold. I felt the revolutions of the engine build, the gears shift. This is what endures.

Wide Iowa

When The Going Gets Tough

The roads I had chosen from Geneva to Buffalo looked on the map to follow the edge of Lake Erie, but they do not. They are slightly inland. They cut through strip malls and suburban sprawl. The immediate surroundings are ugly and characterless, but the route is close enough to the lake to receive the cold, damp air that sweeps in from across it. It is colder here on this straight, semi-urban thoroughfare - or cold in a worse way - than it had been in the Jackson fog or the Montana rain. This is an insidious chill, it is subtle and more painful, the way it whispers itself into me and seeps through my core.

Road construction makes this ride a frustration. Orange diamond signs mark each stretch: Road Work, Motorcycles Use Extreme Caution. The noise from jackhammers and earthmovers and heavy machinery is penetrating - insolent noise that I cannot escape. Huge sections of pavement have been removed, sliced away to create a sharp ledge that drops three inches to the base layer - graded cement raked in an undulating wave pattern of ridges and grooves, haphazardly dusted with gravel and sand. On two wheels, tires can get trapped in these grooves; gravel and sand corrupt ones ability to maneuver. It’s rough riding, and my collarbone is sore and pulses - an old break that never healed properly, it throbs when jarred consistently. After traversing each missing stretch, I must jump the Vespa up the ledge of pavement back onto smooth road.

Over and over again, the pattern repeats - the orange diamond signs appear, broadcasting their warning; the sharp smells of construction filter in to reinforce them; the pavement ends; the Vespa lowers with two blunt jolts as each wheel takes the drop; forearms tense to burn as I slowly navigate a wavering course; my body hardens and there is no enjoyment.

Lake Erie

I Was So Proud Of Myself That Night

After a long, gorgeous day of riding, I pulled into a state campground on the shores of Lake Erie just as dusk was falling and the collecting rain clouds were deciding if they would unleash themselves or not. The park cop told me I was welcome to spend the night in the laundry room since I didn't have a tent, and I thanked him, thinking that sounded like a nice plan.

I parked the Vespa at the campsite I had paid for - a lovely spot, the only site with a tree - then walked down to the laundry room to check it out. It was home to a terrifying mass of the largest spiders I have ever seen. I will ride a Vespa across the country but I will not sleep with giant spiders. I returned to my picnic table and my tree and decided to make a shelter. It was dark at this point, so I tucked my mini maglite into my bra strap and set to work.

I tied the rope I had brought (because you're supposed to bring rope on trips like these) to two branches of the tree and stretched it diagonally above the picnic table, which was too heavy to move. I draped my tarp over the taut rope and used hair rubberbands to secure it in place, and with that, created a funky shelter. I avoided the spiders, though several moths flew down my shirt, attracted to the flashlight in my bra.

Milkshake Break

Thinking (Wyoming)

It's about now. We so easily get wrapped up in thoughts of then (be it past-then or future-then), we miss out on or ignore or are blind to or rush past the gifts of now.

Connecticut Dawning

I take the dirt road out of town, through woods and fog, past stone walls half-hidden, slowly overtaken by brambles and moss. Mist hangs in the air around me, obscuring the definitions of things so that they are felt more than seen. Colors are soft and muted; silver-blue sky blends delicately into a silvery-green meadow, silver-barked trees look leafless and glowing, semi-obscured by the mist. The mist rises from the earth and settles in from above - one can't tell from which direction it originates, only that it meets everywhere and everything becomes part of everything else.

Mississippi River