GITAP Day One

This is the first day of our ride. We started at the high school in Seneca and finished at Shabbona State Park. The total mileage was 51.43. I am really tired at this point and would really like to change into my regular clothes but my tent is not completely set up and can’t take a shower yet because I left one of my bags at Mary Chin’s house.

Last night was nice in terms of staying at Mary’s, seeing the kittens, having a nice dinner, and just relaxing. It wasn’t so nice when I thought I had lost the nose piece to my CPAP machine. With all the stress over the last few weeks I got really upset. I did find it in the end using my flashlight. It had blended into the white bedspread. But this was after two hysterical calls to Peter and a complete ransacking of my duffle bag.

The ride itself was ok but there was quite a bit of wind although the route was relatively flat. I chose to take the paved route into the park, which was much longer than I expected and more uphill. If I had realized that, I might have chosen the gravel. In any case we got settled in, had dinner and then Sue, Bob and I participated in the first Velosophie session, discussing essays by John Muir and Annie Dillard. Muir’s essay on the wind was really all social Darwinism and very much in the style of everything is always good, always progressing. I can appreciate his prose but I can’t really enjoy his sentiment. Dillard’s essay on seeing a full eclipse must have been written early in her career. It is all over the place in terms of the writing instead of being more tightly controlled as in her later works. She has some interesting ideas and imagery but the piece is unsatisfying in the end, at least for me.

I am rapidly discovering, if I didn’t already know it, that camping is not going to be one of my favorite things. I hate the bugs, the inconveniences of tents, cold showers, wet clothes, etc. I am meeting great people but I am definitely not an outdoors person.

When we got back to camp, I got ready for bed, which is a little difficult by flashlight in small tent when you have to set up a CPAP machine. And so to bed on the air mattress in the sleeping bag.