Day 56 - D-Day

We've all been waiting for this day. Another milestone in this trip. I'd already ridden my bike through 10 states (ok, I was in Maryland for under an hour but still...) and the District of Columbia; I'd hit the 1, 2, 3, 4,000 mile markers; 25, 50, 75, 90% of the entire trip was under my belt; the 5 or 6 discrete mountain ranges (O, the mountain ranges!); the pelting rain and hail, the wind and humidity; the days with no fresh produce. All without my partner in crime. If i could upload a graph here (and i probably could but i'm not going to) of loneliness, i would have peaked at the end of week one, with semi-crippling exhaustion and paranoia catalyzing that heightened state of solitude. But as the miles wore on, and finishing seemed probable, i plateaued. And the sadness of being without Donny shifted toward ever-growing eagerness and anticipation. The pup in me, the Antennaed One one who hears his master's car two blocks away, woke up in my cottony feather nest - nose in the air, ears erect - on Day 56, the day when the Graph of Loneliness dropped off into irrelevancy.

I was alert but tired. I had only ridden the last 6 days in a row but they had been long days overall (averaging 100 miles per day) and i was glad it worked out that I'd have a full day of rest and fun with Donny before setting off for the final 3 days journey. I wandered into the main house wanting the latter B in B&B. It wasn't quite ready so i skittered back to Towanda to filter my camping gear and rid myself of any excess to make room for Donny's gear. It was an unquestionably beautiful sunny day. The post office was walking distance - what isn't at this point? I ate the modestly-sized yet tasty breakfast cooked by Suzy with the other Sanitarium relief-seekers which included a TV writer and her friend and a half-LA/half-Richmond VA couple. The couple were especially nice, she in med school, and he works as an assistant to a self-involved, semi-abusive therapist who sees child celebrities and rich people's kids. LA felt closer than ever. Another breakfast-mate was The Innkeeper. I can't remember his name; "The Innkeeper" is clearly more memorable.

The post office was a snap. Unlike most of my experiences in Los Angeles with DMV-level-of-caring postal workers who slam down "NEXT WINDOW PLEASE" as you gingerly step up to the plate, my small-town USPS interactions were all pleasant and old-timey. I said goodbye to my tent, mat, sleeping bag, camp pillow, one my my 2 remaining t-shirts and one spare tire. Figured the chance of blowing both tires was unlikely at this point. Not the most cautious thing to do, but i'm a rebel.

Donny and i had been texting since before he got on his bike (inappropriately named Rupert Stiltskin as a movie nerd reference-partner to Whitey Jackson) to Union Station in downtown LA to catch the train to San Luis. He was due in at 12:30 and had been alerting me as he passed each stop, starting with Glendale and Van Nuys, then Oxnard, Santa Barbara, the ghostly town of Guadalupe. And finally San Luis Obispo. It was a 30 second gallop to the station as i heard the whistle. I'm already feeling aware of the possible over-sentimentality of recounting this moment but i suppose it's unavoidable. Most important to note that the high expectations were met. Mary Ann wrote in a facebook post something like: the music swells and the camera circles around them. And it did, i swear it did. But privately (it's only self-aware looking back on it). He saw me first. What a rush. Tears. And comfort. It was hard but it was worth it.
...

I was very excited to show Donny the Sanitarium and our big comfy bed. We took iphone pictures of each other and immediately and shamelessly posted showed them to the world on facebook. He was hungry. We went to get sandwiches (saving half of each for the ride the next day) and took a walk through downtown. Donny, who can be somewhat of a cautious overpacker, had over-heeded my pleas to pack light and had basically brought nothing but his bike, toothbrush and his contact lens deal, the clothes on his back and a pair of cycling shorts. That's all ya need, right? Well...As it turns out, he hadn't taken into account that he might need something a little warm to ride in. Looking back on it now, i don't know why - in San Luis Obispo for godsakes - we didn't think to find a cycling store. I guess we didn't want to spend any time thinking about it, so we ended up super-reluctantly - for both of us the first time in our lives - darkening the doorstep of... Abercrombie and Fitch. We were accosted by life-sized cutouts of white preppy body-geniuses. Donny and i quickly selected something we could cut the telltale tag off of immediately and he self-consciously paid the young shopwoman for the I-Bought-This-Cuz-I'm-Gay Sweatshirt. "No one will know we were here," i reassure him. The shopwoman looks at us like we're very very old.

Bagless (of course) we exit the establishment shaking off the Chinese-child-labor willies and duck into a movie theatre. The cinema! Only my second time in two months - which is still probably twice more than all my friends with young children. But this is something that Donny and I do together. What was the movie? That Johnny Depp gangster film with the French actress who won the Oscar a couple years back where Johnny plays Neither Jesse James Nor Billy the Kid and she plays an American convincingly. It's ok. I impress Donny with my choice of peanut rather than plain M&Ms. Our yellow bags kiss; it's like we're even closer now.

We eat dinner in an outdoor café next to a group of women in their forties who are Letting Loose, ordering more merlot than you can imagine, and they are spilling onto us. The waiter is practically a robot. I like my food more than Donny likes his. Some things haven't changed in 2 months. We nest as early as possible in our white-white room with the vibrant painting of grotesque children swimming above us. Tomorrow we don our lycra and get busy fighting crime down the coast!