Flying Solo
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A Thousand Miles on the Bike
The day I hit a thousand miles on my bike, a friend asked me “are you getting the chance to ride much?” I told him how today was my thousand mile mark and I was celebrating a milestone. I had indeed done a lot of riding, from Islands to country roads, to river trails and Parks. I never get tired of being on the bike. It is like sailing, with the wind in my hair and the most beautiful scenery all around me.
As I write this I am closer to 1100 miles but I told you there would be a celebration at the thousand mile mark.
When I crossed the thousand mile mark I was on a gravel trail at Hovander Park in Ferndale, Washington. I recorded part of the 999 mile but found that recording on my phone while riding a heavy bike didn’t go well. The gravel was bumpy and difficult to ride with one hand, but I did it anyway.
I’ve had a lot of amazing rides this summer but I have to say Wenatchee, Washington gets the award for being the most biker friendly place I have visited. They have over twenty miles of bike trails along the river on both sides. That says a lot about this town. In its development it preserved that precious real estate for the community, instead of being private homes. And, the community is really out enjoying the trails.
Wenatchee, Washington is the Apple Capitol of the Country with every kind of apple, pear, cherry and other fruits and veggies that grow in abundance in this fertile community. Wenatchee also gets over 300 days of sunshine a year which encourages getting out on those bike trails. There is a confluence of the Wenatchee River and the Great Columbia river meeting right at the edge of town. And there is a State Park called the Wenatchee Confluence State Park with the bike trail going right through it, traveling the edge of the Columbia river.
I’ve really enjoyed riding the river trails. It is nice not to have vehicle traffic to deal with. And in some areas of the trail, heading out of town along the Columbia river, on the way to Lincoln Rock State Park, I had the trail pretty much to myself.
I’m not finished yet. My journey continues.
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Settling In
When traveling in an RV the main idea is that we go to all these places and do all these things that we feel inspired to do. But after three months of traveling, I am spending the last month just staying in one place, well mostly!
After my San Juan Island biking adventure I went to visit family for nearly two weeks and then back to the RV park near Bellingham that I loved so much. However I stopped off at friends house for a couple days first and they invited me to park on their property rather than the RV park. I decided to go back to the RV park for my work week and do another couple biking ventures in the Whatcom County countryside before settling in with friends who are walking distance to the beach. I’ve spent so much time alone on this journey and have really enjoyed the solitude but felt it would be nice to share the journey for a while.
So rather than being “on the road” I will continue to enjoy Whatcom County and all it has to offer. I consider this area to be my second home in so many ways and there is so much beauty and awe here.
When people ask me “where do you live,” I tell them that my main home is in Arizona and my second home is a camper. That has been so true and I love having my second home. No matter where I am, I am home!
What I am loving now is that it is harvest time for so many beautiful fruits and veggies. The farmers markets are loaded with colorful baskets of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, huge heads of kale and romaine as well as many other veggies. For all who know me, I am a foodie, for sure. My fridge is always stocked and I always cook at home.
One of my RV neighbors was telling me that there wasn’t much in the way of good food out here in the County where we are parked and I couldn’t really relate because Safeway had enough organics to keep me going in between my stops at the Coop and farmers market. When I was at the Farmers Market with my friends we decided to eat at one of the booths that offered Indian food. As I sat with my big plate of Vegetable Curry, I said “you know this is the first time I have eaten out all summer.”
We are nearing the end of August and Fall will soon be arriving here in the Northwest. I notice the temperatures are starting to fall and the nights are colder. But the days are still warm and beautiful. There has been some drizzly days that encourage staying indoors, curled up with a journal or a book, and a nice cup of tea, and then there are those bright, warm days that send me outdoors to the beach or on a bike ride. The blackberries are in bloom and the scent always draws me in. I have yet to pick berries for later. I just pick and eat.
As I settle in, enjoying the end of summer in the Pacific Northwest, I am grateful for the abundance, for the bounty of all that is offered. With all the crazy going on in the world right now, I retreat to the simple life and learn to live in gratitude for what is good and beautiful! I have no control of the insanity “out there” in the world, but I do have control over my own inner life and know that being here, now is the only way to truly live. I will let the past fall away and the future unfold as it will! For now, I am going on a bike ride….
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Biking the San Juan Islands
This past week I set up camp in the land of my birth, Anacortes, Washington at Washington Park, a very awesome place to spend a day, a week or even two. For me it was five days, which is all I could reserve for back in May when I made my reservation.One of the days I had plans to take my E-bike on the Ferry to Lopez Island, one of the most popular biking Islands because, although not flat, it is less “hilly” than the others. Although cold and foggy in the morning when I climbed aboard the Ferry, it cleared up nicely and ended up being a really beautiful day. I biked through meadows, farm lands, and long country roads with amazing views of the Bay. I brought my lunch and ate it on the far southern end of the Island at a little park overlooking the Bay and then headed to Lopez Village, hoping to find a little coffee house to have a cup of tea and linger for while before the evening Ferry arrived. All the shops were closed by 3pm and so I went instead to the State Park near the Ferry Terminal and hung out on the beach until it was time to go catch the Ferry.
By the time I got to the Ferry my battery had only one bar and it was flashing, alerting me to the unhappy reality that I may not have enough battery power to get home from the Ferry. I had biked over thirty miles with some hilly areas where I used more of the pedal assist and thought I was doing okay, except when I was on my last stretch, the reality of my battery life hit me.We deal with batteries on our phone’s and our laptops and it is never convenient when a battery dies, but with a 72 pound E-bike, trying to ride without pedal assist is near impossible, when there are hills involved. Fortunately I had met a group of people who were also biking Lopez on their Rad E-bikes, but they didn’t ride nearly as far as I did. So they had more battery life left. As I was leaving the Ferry Terminal, with my one flashing bar, I realized I wouldn’t make it back. A couple in the group said to me “why don’t we lend you one of our batteries and we will come to your camp after we get our bikes loaded and swap it back out.” I jumped at the opportunity and had plenty of battery to get back to camp. They arrived shortly after, we switched out the battery and said farewell. It was nice to know I was being looked after. And I learned that I can’t always trust my “bar reading” on my bike. I needed to be more careful in the future.
I spent the next day working and boarded another Ferry the following day to Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island. I decided to bike to Lime Kiln State Park, the best Whale watching place in the area, which was only an 18 mile round trip, but had some really long, steep hills. I felt confident I would have plenty of battery power for this trip. It was a beautiful ride, once again through farm lands, berry fields and amazing views of the water. I was a little embarrassed as I quickly rode by bikers, who were obviously very seasoned bikers on bikes that were NOT electric. At one point, going up a long hill, I passed two men on bikes and they looked at each other and started laughing. Yes, I was cheating, but it was so much fun. I always wanted super powers, and now I had them.
I spent an hour at Lime Kiln park, starring out over the water, hoping to see a pod of whales, or at least a whale, but no such luck. A friend told me they were spotted in her area near Bellingham, a week or so earlier, but today wasn’t the day. So I took the nine mile ride back to Friday Harbor, again thinking I would grab a coffee and chill. But the shops were all closed once again. I found a little park at the Marina where a Marimba type band was setting up for a concert. I waited there for the Ferry and enjoyed the music and Island culture, talked to Island locals and enjoyed the beautiful day.This time when the Ferry arrived back in Anacortes, I had plenty of battery power to get back to camp.
It just so happened that the next day was an annual art fair in Anacortes, where the main street was blocked off for many blocks to accommodate the rows and rows of art booths. I met with a client for a coffee that morning and we decided to check out the art show, which was fun. After that I stocked up my groceries and went to Deception Pass where I made breakfast and chilled for a couple hours before heading to the Port Townsend Ferry where I would be going to the Olympic Peninsula on the long road to my Sister’s house.
This week was a lot of Ferry’s, beaches and long country roads. It was a trip I was really looking forward to and very much worth the journey.
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The Girl on the Bike
While in the Bellingham area, I connected with an old boyfriend whose band was playing at the Vineyards that I ride my bike past every day. I hadn’t seen him in ten years or so and he texted me from the stage asking “are you the girl on the bike?” He ended up coming over to my camp after the show and I made us dinner and then we took a drive to Birch Bay to watch the sunset. He told me that if I wasn’t the girl on the bike, he was wondering who was that girl? It wasn’t where is Kaleah? It was “who is the girl on the bike?” Funny how some things don’t change in twenty years.
We talked about life, our relationship from the past and what went wrong. Being emotionally detached, it was easy for both of us to have that conversation. There was no longer a charge for either one of us where we couldn’t tell the truth without being triggered. We were just honest! Ironically, we didn’t have the same story or remember things the same way at all. We both were living in two completely different realities when it came to our past relationship. Perhaps this is how it is for so many couples. They live in their own story about what is happening, and their stories don’t match up.Maybe a great relationship is one where the couple can live in the same story together. Maybe they can be detached enough from triggers to always tell the truth about their individual stories and find a way to really create a great story they both can share in.
I realized in my past relationship with this man, we had very different stories, although he did tell me he takes full responsibility for the things he said and did that were hurtful and destructive to the relationship and he jokingly promised he would never do it again. I found myself telling the story about where I was, on an emotional level back then, the things that really effected me, and eventually caused me to walk away.My story was that he was unphased by our breakup, went on to the next and never looked back. His story was that he always wondered what really happened between us and why I left. He joked about how many years it took him to get over me. He said he learned a lot from the relationship and when I asked him what he learned, he couldn’t tell me. He seemed to feel it was too complex to put into words. I told him our relationship changed my life; and that was true. We had a connection that seemed to span lifetimes and even though we have gone our separate ways, and that needed to happen, we have never forgotten what we were to each other and the child we birthed, in the form of a beautiful musical CD.
As we were driving in his van we were singing songs from our CD. We would start to sing a part of a song and get so far and forget the words and start laughing. We talked about the profound lyrical messages and how they really depicted the beginning of my spiritual journey. “From the Shadows” was a collection of songs I had written that was, at that time, more about being in the shadows and not knowing how to get out. I told him how at that time in my life I was more the caterpillar who had no idea the process I would have to go through to become the butterfly. I said that only now am I really beginning to emerge from that cocoon.An important part of my journey was in walking away from relationships where I didn’t feel loved, honored or respected. This was how I loved, honored and respected myself. I talked about how I just didn’t have the confidence in myself back then that I do now, and he said “You were pretty confident then. You never took shit off anybody.” We both finally found a place to put the past with each other and recognized, through all our differences and all the conflict we had together, the love and the connection would always be there.
I suppose in the end, love is the only thing that matters, and the only thing that is real. Everything else just brings us the lessons we need to learn to heal the pain, let go of the trauma and live our best life.When all is said and done, and we have healed the pain and the trauma from past relationships, the things that mattered so much at that time, don’t matter at all anymore. It is all water under the bridge, and in the end, I am just the girl on the bike.
(you actually get to see photos of me this time, because my friend took them while we were at the beach.)
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Arrived at the Beach Just In Time For the Party
One thing I love about my camper setup is that I can choose beautiful places to park and I have these really wonderful views. It doesn’t matter where I camp at night. During the day, I can take advantage of the State Parks, pull outs, and other parks.
As I write this, I am backed up to the beach at Birch Bay State Park in Washington. I came here this morning with a hankering for pancakes and so made pancakes at the beach. The best restaurants I have visited on my journey has been my own home cooked meals in my camper. In fact, I haven’t been out to eat once since I left home. I have felt no need. I have a great kitchen and good size fridge.When I first came into town a week ago, my friends Bern and John had a beach party for his retirement from over thirty years as a UPS driver. I parked my camper at their place, under the tall cedar trees. The beach where we had the party was very artistic with lots of interesting carvings of wood faced creatures.
The weather is much cooler on this side of the mountains, only a couple hours North of Seattle, near the Canadian border. It is in the seventies every day and doesn’t drop too low in the evening. I turn my heater on for about five minutes first thing in the morning which takes the chill out of the air, and then I am comfortable the rest of the day without heat or air. It is a nice change from East of the mountains where I was during the Northwest Heatwave. I had the air running most of the day.
Biking has been my favorite past time. My E-bike is the best investment I have made, next to my camper. I have put well over four- hundred miles on it since I began my journey. Yesterday, while biking through the Countryside I came as close as I ever have to running out of battery power. My Rad City E-bike gives me around 40 miles of battery power if I keep the pedal assist at about a 2 out of 5. But lately I have enjoyed having my pedal assist on 3 which allows me to sail down the road effortlessly, while still pedaling strong the entire time. I headed out without fully charging my battery, as I had taken a trip into town earlier in the day. I probably put over twenty-two miles on the bike and noticed the battery getting low. So, I brought the pedal assist down to 2 and worked harder to get back to camp.Birch Bay is a great beach town for biking, with miles of beach front to ride. I’ve ridden so much that I made an appointment next week to have my bike tuned up by a pro bike shop in town. I’m also getting my truck tuned up and getting a haircut next week. It is time for maintenance.
On a deeper note, I continue to immerse myself in healing work as those long hours of alone time bring up the shadows. I continue to discover things about myself, my fears and my traumas and remember that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. There are times I feel that what is emerging from the shadows very well might kill me. But then the insights arrive that are so life changing and powerful. I awaken to another day, take another breath and celebrate another day of life on this planet.Here is a video of the Beach Party and Birch Bay
