Severing the lifeline connecting me to society

RAGBRAI

Since I've left Twin Oaks, I've gone through long periods of time where I haven't had access to a computer.  When I have had access to one, I've never been able to get on it long enough to update this blog.  Thus the lag in communication between me and you.  A lot has happened since I left Twin Oaks.  The first thing I did after leaving was to go to Iowa to visit my best friend in the fucking world, an amazing woman who goes by the name Bok Choy.  Then, I went to my hometown of Oberlin, Ohio, for a week.  Then I went down to North Carolina to visit an anarcho-primitivist commune called "Wildroots."  Now I'm back in Oberlin.  This blog entry will be about my experience in Iowa, right after I left Twin Oaks.  I'm sure that in the near future, I will write an entry on Wildroots, as well.  And, if I have time, maybe I'll write about Oberlin.  But for now, this is all I have written.  So here it is: RAGBRAI!

With Love,
-Bubble Fiddle

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"We sailed away a winter's day
With fates as malliable as clay."
-Joanna Newsome

Just a few days before permenantly leaving Twin Oaks, I contacted one of my best friends in the world; an amazing woman by the name of Bok Choy who was recently expelled from Twin Oaks for reasons which I will not get into in this blog.  I told her that I would be leaving the community in a week and embarking on travels, and I asked if I could visit her along the way.  She told me that I could visit, and that, if I came before July 20th, I could go on RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) with her.  Since July 19th was the time I was planning on leaving Twin Oaks anyway, the timing was perfect.  Over the course of the next week, I called Bok Choy almost every day to discuss logistics.  Bok Choy had an extra bike, and she told me that I could ride it for the duration of RAGBRAI.  I eventually ended up ride-sharing my way to Iowa with Casey and Kathryn (a cute, quiet couple from Twin Oaks), who were heading to a family reunion in South Dakota.  I convinced them to leave a day early (so that I could arrive in time for RAGBRAI) by telling them I would pay the extra day on the car rental.  And so, on July 19th, I said my goodbyes to Twin Oaks.  The last thing I did before leaving was to hang out with an amazing old badass known as Coyote, in his room (and, if you have ever hung out with Coyote in his room, you know why I chose this activity to be my last at Twin Oaks).

 

The car ride to Iowa was 22 hours long.  But it was not terrebly unpleasent.  Casey and Kathryn drove almost streight through the night, taking turns sleeping in the passenger seat.  We drove through Charlston West Virginia at around 11:30 PM, and to celebrate the fact that I had, at that point, successfully made it farther west during this trip than I had when I tried to hitchhike to the Rainbow Gathering, I drank the shot of marijuana tincture that a friend had given me as a going away present.  In addition to giving me a very enjoyable shift in consciousness, the tincture also knocked me out for the night (and I slept like a baby for the next eight hours).

 

The next day, we arrived at Bok Choy's house.  Bok Choy was, at that point, living with her father and her two sisters in the suburbs of State Center.  I found her sisters to be delightful (and, upon meeting them, I began to understand where Bok Choy inherited her insane, playful, child-like personality from).  I found her father to be an obsessively controlling, moody, right-wing, fundamentalist christian.  He treated me with respect because I was a guest, but I avoided him constantly because of how he treated everyone else.  My nickname for him (in my head) was "Control."

 

Question:  If control's control is absolute, why does control need to control?
Answer:  Control needs time.
Question:  Is control controlled by control's need to control?
Answer:  Yes.
-William S. Burroughs

 

Bok Choy and I went on a walk and got pizza, after I arrived.  Then, we went to a park and played music together (Bok Choy plays pennywhistle and accordian, and I play guitar).  We talked about how things have changed in each others lives, and how Twin Oaks changed after she had left and how things have gotten significantly more crappy and hard-assed, there.  At one point, she took me to the farmer's market, and we bought some sweet corn and ate it while we walked to the State Center rose garden (appearently, State Center is the rose capital of Iowa).  All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon.  And then I went to sleep at her house, eagerly awaiting the start of RAGBRAI.

 

On Saturday morning, me, Bok Choy, and Bok Choy's grandparents went out for breakfast.  We all held hands and recited a christian prayer before we ate (and I played along out of politeness, even though I am a commited agnostic).  After breakfast, we all hung around in the Hi-Vee parking lot, waiting for Team Road Show to show up.

 

Team road show is the RAGBRAI cycling team which Bok Choy is a part of.  They refer to themselves as the poorest team on RAGBRAI.  They are somewhat of a traveling circus, putting on a show in every town they spend the night in.  Most of them juggle fire, a few of them are unicyclists, one person does bizzare tricks with his body, and Bok Choy has the honor of being the only fire-hooper on the team.  Two of them biked RAGBRAI on unicycles.  Generally, after they put on a show, they will pass around a hat, and the audience will provide them with more than enough gas money to get to the next town.

 

While we waited for them to show up, Bok Choy told me that Team Road Show is always late and we would likely be waiting around, for awhile.  So I sat in the front seat of the truck, for about a half hour, reading Gandhi's autobiography.  Eventually, the Team Road Show van (an econoline with a mural of people juggling and unicycling painted on the side of it) pulled into the parking lot.  Bok Choy and I began to load our stuff on.  I asked one of the guys who was loading stuff onto the van if I could help, and he told me that the best thing I could do to help would be to tell some jokes.  So I did.

 

"What's yellow and can't swim very well?
A tractor.

What's red and bad for your teeth?
A brick.

Why did all the ladies love Jesus?
Because he was hung like this: (at this point, I spread my arms out to my sides as though I was hung on a cross)."

 

We moved all of our luggage and our bicycles into the van, and then lounged around for awhile.  I went inside the van and took a seat.  The inside of the van had the look and feel of a rock and roll tour bus.  There was a bed and a couch and a recliner (but no car seats) inside, and a seperate room in the back for our luggage and equipment.  It was very cozy.  I played guitar for a few minutes, pretending I was a touring musician.  After awhile, the other members of Team Road Show started to come into the bus, one by one, and they sat down.  I hung out with them for awhile and made small talk, before Kendra (the woman whose task it was to drive the van and our luggage from town to town so we wouldn't have to carry everything on our bikes) stuck her head in the door and said "So, who here has least amount of things to live for?"  This question made me feel uneasy, since it seemed to imply that one of us would have to die (or at least risk death).  I waited - slightly nervously - for some kind of explanation.  Appearently, there was a hole in the top of the gas tank and gasoline was spilling out all over the pavement.  The bus was our only vehicle, and we couldn't just cancel the trip.  So the idea was that one of us would try to start the bus alone, not knowing weather or not it would explode.  There was some debate as to weather or not we should rent another vehicle, or wait for the gas to dry up, or just draw straws, or etc. etc. etc...  Eventually, for god only knows what reason, we decided to try to start the bus with everyone in it.  I told myself that it would be a good way to die; here with Bok Choy, surrounded by new friends, embarking on an adventure.  Fortunately, though, the bus did not explode.  And we drove off to Rock Rapids, to start our adventure.

 

Appearently, the hole in the gas tank was not the only mechanical problem with the Team Road Show bus.  The breaks were faulty, the steering was loose, the air conditioning and internal lights were broken, the underside of the hood was a tangled web of electrical wires (from an amateur re-wiring job done a few years back), the lever that was used to open and close the passenger door had broken off (and we had to use rope and knots to keep the door from swinging open while we were driving), the spedometer didn't work, there was a huge crack in the outer hull, the bus would occasionally catch on fire (this had appearently happened about three times in the three years that Team Road Show had had this bus, and as a result, Team Road Show had placed four fire extenguishers in various locations in the bus), the carpet was starting to decay and smell of mold, and the gas milage was horrific...  Appearently, at one point, the bus had been crashed and put back together by amateur mechanics, and then used as a party shack for several months by the teenage children of it's previous owner.  However, Team Road Show didn't know any of this before they bought the bus for several thousand dollars.  So they pretty much got fucked over.  But it was a vehicle.  And it did move forward.  And that was what was needed to get us from town to town on RAGBRAI.

 

One of the more delightful features of the bus was the presence of a megaphone which was attached to the bottom of it.  One could speak into a microphone that was kept over the dashboard and be heard for several yards in any direction.  We made extensive use of this on the drive up.  When we were at a traffic light, Seager (who was driving us to Rock Rapids) grabbed the microphone and said "Okay.  Turn green...  Turn green...  Come on...  Green...  Alright, thank you!"  We passed by some pedestrians, at one point, and Seager anounced into the megaphone: "You are walking on a sidewalk!"  The pedestrians turned their heads towards us and looked slightly alarmed and confused, and then we drove off.  We passed by a harbor, at one point, and so Seager announced into the megaphone: "You are all in boats!"  Immediately afterwards, we passed a resteraunt deck which was overlooking the harbor, and Seager anounced: "And you are definitely not on boats!"  One could tell who was listening and who wasn't by their reactions.  My favorite of act of megaphone harassment was when we passed by an extremely tough and beefy looking man with a shaved head, a goatee, and a swastika tattoo who was taking his chiwawa for a walk.  Seager stopped the van beside him and announced into the megaphone: "We all love your puppy!"  The nazi skinhead looked infuriated, but we were faster than he, and we drove off laughing hystarically.

 

We arrived in Rock Rapids that evening, and parked the van at a very well-kept suburban house (which was appearently where we were going to spend the first night of RAGBRAI).  Being exposed to so much suburbia after living on a commune for a year and a half put me in a state of culture shock, but I delt with it okay.  I hung around the house, played guitar, and pitched my tent in the backyard along with the rest of Team Road Show.  Later on that night, a few members of TRS decided to bike into town and put on a show.  I decided to follow them in so I could watch.  However, on the way there, one of my pedals broke off.  Bok Choy and the others turned around to see what was up with my bike.  Appearently, the pedal was only screwed in half way, and my pedaling had ripped it out of it's socket, massacreing the threads in the proccess.  It was a problem that none of the members of TRS had the equipment to fix.  So, I would have to get it fixed by a professional.  Perhaps the most annoying thing about this was that I would not be able to partake in the first day of riding.  I would have to take the tour bus to the next campsite.  I was relatively okay with this, though.  And so, the next day, I rode the bus to the next campsite.  The slang term for riding the bus on RAGBRAI when you could be biking is "sagging."  I ended up sagging a total of four times during RAGBRAI, for one reason or another.  But I will get to that later.

 

Me and Kendra had breakfast at Hardee's, before taking off.  At one point, while we were at a gas station, smoke started coming out of the AC vents.  I stuck my head out the window and asked Kendra if the smoke was anything unusual.  I was concerned that the bus was catching on fire again.  Indeed, the smoke was unusual, so Kendra grabbed the microphone and called Seager over (Seager was driving one of the other Team Road Show vehicles) and had him come and take a look at the bus.  I grabbed a fire extenguisher, just in case.  Seager looked at it, and informed us that it wasn't a fire.  I think he said that it was a radiator leak or an AC leak or something.  Whatever the case, it wasn't life threatening, and so we just opened the windows and accepted the fact that the vents would have smoke coming out of them for awhile.

 

Whatever location the 20,000 RAGBRAI participants end up camping in on a given night is referred to as "Tent City."  We arrived at Tent City that afternoon, and set up camp.  We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around, drinking beer, and making small talk.  Appearently, excessive alcohol consumption is a central part of the RAGBRAI tradition.  In fact, while we were sitting around and chilling, someone found a joke in the funny pages of the newspaper about the top ten potential titles of the eighth Harry Potter book (which would appearently be about Harry going on RAGBRAI), and number one was "Harry Potter and the Inhibriated Muggles."  Every hour or so, I would take my bike to the mechanic tents and ask if they could fix it.  And, without fail, they would always tell me that their mechanics were still out on the road, helping the people who were still biking to Tent City.  I wasn't able to get my bike fixed until around 7:00pm.

 

At one point, during the day, I snuck off into a corn field to smoke some of the pot I had brought with me.  I didn't have anything to smoke it out of, though, so I carved a pipe out of a corn cob using a screw.  I returned to the camp merry and joyful and stoned out of my mind and ready to pig out on the overpriced, meaty food that was sold at Tent City.  I realized that trying to maintain my vegetarianism was next to impossible at RAGBRAI, so I decided to just not make the effort.

 

The next day, I was able to partake in the actual riding of RAGBRAI on a functional bicycle.  Bok Choy had invited me the previous night to ride with her and her sisters, and I accepted her invitation.  We got up around 6:00am and set off.  Her sisters wanted to take the long route (which involved a hundred miles of cycling) to the campsite.  Though I was a little intimidated by the idea of biking a hundred miles on my first day of RAGBRAI, I was exited about the fact that, by the end of the day, I would be able to know that I could do it.

 

The rules of RAGBRAI state that bikes must remain to the side of the road and stay in the right lane at all times.  But with 20,000 bikes on the road all at once, this was a rule which was impossible to abide by.  And so the entire width of the road was packed with bikes in a caravan that stretched out seventy miles long.  I felt sorry for any driver who found themselves having to use this road, for it would be next to impossible to maintain any speed which was faster than the bicycles (which were going at about ten miles-per-hour).

 

Bok Choy's sisters were a delight to be around, and I soon developed a crush on one of them (who went by the nickname of Chicken Leg).  We played games of make-believe for most of the morning.  We pretended to be secret agents, who were helping out space aliens in a war against the governments of the world.  Bok Choy's secret agent name was "The Nerdle."  Sandra's was "Shadow Segora."  Mine was "Bungalo the Hobbit" (and my bike was named "The Hairy Foot.")  I forget what Chicken Leg's secret agent name was.  During the game, we would always blame it on the government when the wind blew against us or when we had to go up a hill.  We would then exclaim something like "friggin' government hill!" or "government wind!"  We would try to decode secret messages that the aliens had written us in the patterns in the clouds.  It was a lot of fun.

 

At some point in the afternoon, I got a little ahead of the rest of the group, and got seperated from them.  This was because I was too busy flirting with a woman I met on the ride named Amanda.  I biked the rest of the way on my own.  I probably spent about $30 total on food, that day.  This made me realize what a commercial money-vaccume-of-an-event RAGBRAI is.  I was slightly disgusted by it.

 

By the end of the hundred-mile-day, my ass felt like someone had been pounding it with a hammer for hours on end.  When I got to the next Tent City, I checked my email at one of the computer trailers.  I learned that I did not get accepted for a visitor period at Dancing Rabbit (which was where I was planning on going after RAGBRAI).  And so, almost instantly, I had nowhere to stay after RAGBRAI ended.  And my life entered a state of turmoil.  This would not be the first time my life had been in turmoil, though, and I knew I would just have to pull it back together.  Considering that my ass and lungs and throat were in such pain from biking a hundred miles, and I wanted to be in good physical and mental condition to try and get my life in order, I decided to sag, the next day.

 

The next day was not that eventful.  I spent a lot of time calling WWOOF farms, as well as old friends, emailing people and communes; all for the sake of finding somewhere to stay.  None of the WWOOF farms picked up their phones, and I got answering machines when I called my friends.  No one responded to my emails before bedtime.  I didn't find any resolution on this day.  However, I did run into Amanda twice, while I was in town.

 

The next day, I recieved a myspace bullitan from Cait (a woman from Acorn who I was briefly involved with), saying that she would be going to Wildroots (an anarcho-primitivist commune in North Carolina) for three weeks in August and asking if anyone wanted to come along.  I immediately replied to her bulliton, letting her know that I would love to come to Wildroots with her and asking if that was okay.  And I began to wait anxiously for a response.

 

Later that night, I found out that Team Road Show was going to be performing in Tent City (we were camping at the house of one of the members of TRS, which happened to be in the same town as Tent City).  So, I decided to go with them.  We fit 21 people (who all wanted to come and watch Team Road Show perform) into the bus (which was more impressive than it sounds; since the "bus" was just a little Econoline van).  During the ride, we listened to the song "Mighty Mouse" by The Black Lodge Singers.  There is no way of describing this song to someone who hasn't heard it and doing it justice at the same time.  So I ask that you listen to it before you continue reading.  You can listen to a sound clip from it here.  Every time the Black Lodge Singers would sing "No!" everyone on the bus did too.  Every time they sang "Oh my gosh it's Mighty Mouse!  Hyaaah!!!" so did everyone on the bus.  I was absolutely taken aback by the brillience of it all.

 

The show was impressive.  It was the first time I had actually seen Team Road Show perform.  There was a lot of juggling and unicycle riding, and, of course, Bok Choy's hula hooping.  However, they were appearently not allowed to spin fire during their performance (which was a drag).  Bok Choy was quite upset about this, and so she set off (along with me and another guy from TRS) to find somewhere out of the way where she could spin fire.  We found a nice little park with no one around.  It was a beautiful spot for fire spinning.  And so Bok Choy lit up her hoop, and spun fire for her audience of two.  It was awesome.  However, right after she finished, three police cars pulled up beside us with their lights a twirlin'.  And I knew the shit was about to hit the fan.

 

Appearently, the cops were under the impression that we had been warned that we couldn't spin fire there.  This was not the case.  Team road show was told, as a group, that they couldn't spin fire at Tent City because of the risk posed to the audience.  However, no one was ever warned that they weren't allowed to spin fire in an empty park with no one around; least of all Bok Choy.  But appearently, the cops thought otherwise and wouldn't accept it when we answered "no" when they asked if we had been warned.  They took all our IDs.  When Bok Choy told them that she didn't have her ID on her, they didn't believe her.  And they said that they were going to arrest her for "interference" (whatever the fuck that means), in addition to reckless use of fire, if she didn't give them her ID.  She maintained that she didn't have it, and so they searched her bag, and found nothing.  It is worth noting that, the whole time this was going down, I had a cob-pipe and a bud of weed in my pocket.  There is no way of describing the tension that I felt.  I felt like I would pass out from all the adreneline that was rushing through my system.

 

After searching her bags and finding nothing, the cops had Bok Choy give them her information verbally.  She answered honestly, giving them her real name, address, phone number, etc.  But appearently, they didn't think she was telling the truth, because the computer said that there was no Jenell Nyberg living in State Center, Iowa.  They told her that, if she didn't start answering honestly, they were going to arrest her.

 

Eventually, by some feat of communication that I was too terrified to remember, we were all able to talk our way out of getting arrested.  We were all instructed to go directly back to the TRS bus (except for Bok Choy, who would be riding in a police car to her parents' campsite).  Bok Choy told me later that the cops lectured her during the whole ride about how dangerous fire spinning was and how they "can't believe that you kids would do something so stupid" and "didn't your parents ever tell you not to play with fire?"  It was all pretty infuriating.

 

As I walked back to the bus, I was scared for Bok Choy.  I didn't know at that point weather or not she would be arrested.  I was glad, though, that I wouldn't be spending the night in a jail cell.  When I got into the bus, I laid my head against the wall, and looked out the window, hoping that Bok Choy would be okay.  On the way back to our camp, we put the microphone up to the speakers and played Mighty Mouse through the megaphone.  Watching people turn their heads and stare at us, laugh at us, and wonder what the hell we were doing helped take my mind off of my worry.

 

When we got back to our camp, I called Bok Choy's sister's cell phone immediately, hoping to find out weather or not Bok Choy made it back okay and wasn't in jail.  But no one answered.  And so, I went to my tent and had an anxious and restless sleep.  The next morning, after leaving my tent, I saw Bok Choy on the front lawn, playing accordian with three little children.

There was no way of describing the relief that I felt.  Later on in the trip, I ended up just giving away my pot to a random stoner that I met on the ride.  I decided that it's just to dangerous to posess marijuana while traveling.  I ended up throwing my cob pipe into the latrine.

 

On Friday, I heard back from Cait.  She said that she would love it if I went to Wildroots with her.  I was relieved to have some kind of plan for what I would do after RAGBRAI, however we wouldn't be going to Wildroots until August 4th.  So, I still had to find somewhere to stay between the end of RAGBRAI and the start of my Wildroots visit.  I decided that, worst case scenario, I would squat in a tent on some rooftop in downtown Charlottesville for a week.  However, as someone who has never squatted or been homeless before, the idea was kind of terrifying.  I decided to go to the TRS show that night, to take my mind off of the chaos of life.

 

This was not the best of ideas.  I was still slightly traumatized by our encounter with the law, and the shock of being surrounded by suburban, midwestern, "normal-person" culture hit me significantly harder than usual.  Everywhere I looked, people were smashed out of their minds on overpriced miller light (the official beer of RAGBRAI).  And the sexism that men displayed during RAGBRAI was disgusting.  There were men who had removed their wedding rings for the duration of RAGBRAI, just so that they could hit on girls half their age.  I saw a sixteen year old girl walk into a restaraunt, during RAGBRAI, and a table full of thirty/forty-something men started making cat calls at her and hitting on her.  The military presence at RAGBRAI was very noticable.  It seemed that every branch of the US military had a RAGBRAI cycling team.  There were people everywhere wearing clothing that was in some way military related ("go army," "proud father of a US marine," etc.)  I wondered to myself how many of the people I was walking past had gone to Iraq or were going to Iraq.  I wondered how many of them had killed someone and gotten away with it, because it was in the name of "freedom" (whatever that means to republican fundamentalist christians).  I wondered how many of them were going to be killed in the name of that "freedom."  I wondered how many of the children I was walking past will die when the economy ends up collapsing, because they will know nothing about how to live with the land.  I had run out of coping mechanisms.  I could no longer hide from reality.  I had kind of a nervous breakdown.

 

I stopped talking.  I had absolutly no desire to fit in with these people, and I couldn't care less what any of them thought of me.  I wandered around, suicidally depressed, before sitting down at a playground.  I felt like I was on mushrooms.  My mind felt quiet; as though I had absolutely no thoughts.  I was quasi-catatonic for about five minutes, and then I got up and started walking around some more.  I felt enlightained.  I felt as though I could do anything I wanted because I didn't want to do anything I couldn't.  I walked around, singing "Subterranian Homesick Alien" by Radiohead to the faces of these suburban marines and housewives.

 

"And up above aliens hover
Making home movies for the folks back home
Of all these wierd creatures who lock up their spirits
Drill holes in themselves and live for their secrets
They're all so uptight, uptight...
Uptight, uptight..."

I found it amusing that I could walk around, poetically insulting these people to their faces, and they had no idea what I was talking about.  I went back to the parking lot where team road show was giving their performance and sat down, acting catatonic.  At some point, one of my friends waved his hand accross my face, in front of my eyes, and I didn't even blink.  I just stared ahead, and I didn't answer him when he tried to talk to me.  Eventually, Bok Choy sat down beside me and asked me if I was okay.  I simply replied "no" and left it at that.  She asked me if I wanted to walk home with her, and I accepted her offer.

 

Nothing was said by either of us for several minutes, as we walked to our camp.  Eventually she said, with slight irritation, "Is there anything I can do to help you, Bubble?" and I said "I don't know."  I left it at that.  After another minute or so, I said "I think I just had kind of a nervous breakdown, back there."  She asked me if I wanted to talk about it.  I told her that I'd just run out of coping mechanisms and couldn't hide from reality any more.  She asked if the reality I was talking about was the fact that the world is a terrifying place.  And I told her that that was probably what it was.  We spent the rest of the walk talking about what I was going to do after RAGBRAI ended.  I think it was because of her that I was able to regain my sanity, that night.

 

We spent the night together in our sleeping bags, next to the bus, without a tent.  It was nice sleeping on the ground, under the stars; maintaining some kind of connection to the earth in a world which seemed to shun it and rape it for everything it is worth.

 

The next day, I was still thouroughly depressed and traumatized.  I sagged, having absolutely no motivation to do something as pointless as biking seventy miles for the hell of it, paying upwards of $20 for food along the way (and by the way, I spent about $250 total on food, during RAGBRAI, because everything is so fucking overpriced and I did not yet know how to successfully dumpster dive).  I ended up calling two of my friends from Ohio (Brad and Farah), that day, and I was finally able to get through to them and not their answering machine.  I asked them if I could stay at their house for the period of time between RAGBRAI and my visit at Wildroots.  They said that they would love to have me visit.  And there was order in my life once again.

 

Later on that day, there was a little award ceremony for everyone in Team Road Show.  Everyone who was traveling with TRS got an award of some kind.  My award was "Master of Ambush Sleeping."  The reason I got this award was because, one night, when it rained and my tent got flooded, I slept in the front seat of Dennis's car.  This gave Dennis quite a scare, because he saw that someone was asleep in the front of his car and he had no idea who it was.  But he eventually found out it was me, and all was well once again.

 

That night, we all went out and ordered pizza and ate it on the bank of the Missisipi River.  I waded in and picked up a rock from the riverbed as a souvanir.  I had become accustomed to having Team Road Show around, and it was somewhat bittersweet to know that this would be our last night together.  I knew I would miss Bok Choy more than anything in the world.  So I tried to enjoy the last night of RAGBRAI, in spite of trauma.

 

On Sunday, we rode the bus back to Ames (which was where we would meet up with Bok Choy's family).  I snuggled with Bok Choy the whole ride.  And, after leaving Bok Choy for Ohio, I would have nothing which remained of my old life at Twin Oaks except for a few photographs and some journal entries.  Being close to Bok Choy only made me realize how much I would miss her when I left.  I pitched my tent in Bok Choy's back yard, when we got home, in spite of her father telling me repeatedly that I should feel welcome in their house.  I just couldn't deal with watching him constantly boss around Bok Choy and her sisters, and I didn't want to be around it.  I went on a walk through town with Bok Choy and Chicken Leg before heading off to sleep.

 

The next morning, Bok Choy drove me to the bus station.  The bus station was located in the middle of nowhere and doubled as a Route 66 gas station.  We arrived about an hour before my bus arrived, and I bought my ticket then.  Then, we went to Staples so that she could pick up some school supplies for when she goes back to collage in Hungary.  I picked up three bags of expensive chocolate (which, for some strange and unknown reason, they were selling at Staples), and gave Bok Choy one of them (the other two were for Brad and Farah).  Bok Choy and I held each other for several minutes, before my bus arrived.  And then, when it did, I climbed abord and  left for Ohio.  I don't know when (or even if) I'll see her again.

 

Since then, I have more or less fully recovered from the trauma of being in Iowa, and I have had a few more adventures along the way.  I suspect I'll write about them in an upcoming blog entry in the near future.  But I don't want to drag this entry on any longer.  If you want to see pictures of RAGBRAI 2007 that were taken by Team Road Show, click here.

 

Until next time.

 

Love,
-Bubble Fiddle

Posted by: bluelight at 03:41 | link | comments