Entries this day: Becky Bike Plans Rant Sarah maps

Becky

8:50am EDT Thursday 3 October 2002

Wow!

Becky has just given me the greatest approval/blessing of my grander adventure, saying that it's the greatest thing that anyone in our family has ever done.

I don't know about all that, but I certainly appreciate the thought.

9:04am

Becky believes that once Fred is done with his education, he wants to make a lot of money. I disagree, but I'm writing it down for the record..

9:58am

Becky and I have just been engaged in conversation about God and reality and life and death and consequences. Good stuff.

11:35am

Checked my email; didn't read livejournal. I would like to plan the rest of my trip, but the internet connection here seems pretty slow to do it via mapquest. I don't know of any atlases (atlii?) here to let me look up distances between cities. And no, I don't have any maps. Hmm. I wonder if there is a AAA office nearby-ish... They will give me free maps.

12:41pm

Becky called Barbie to see how to get to AAA, but Barbie said it's difficult and we'll get lost, so we're going to wait for Shane to get home and he'll take me. So now I'm going to go ride my bike around.

Bike

2:02pm EDT Thursday 3 October 2002

Rode my bike slowly around the neighborhood which is basically meshed with a golf course that seems well manicured and well used.

Got to the front of the subdivision where the roadway goes under a railroad tressel which goes over a river at the same point. I took the railroad tracks about 2.5 or 3 miles, assuming the posts numbered "7" "8" and "9" were each a mile apart.

I wondered how far I could take them. Which way am I going? Where would I end up? If only I had a support system of, say, maps donated by MapQuest, internet access donated by Kinko's, or maybe by some company that provides internet access via satellite, a digital video camera donated by someone, a GPS compass donated by someone... I think that would make a pretty marketable trek. Oh, and food donated by Ben & Jerry's. Oh and maybe some food besides ice cream.

I mean, shit, I could put a camera on my helmet, one watching what I'm watching and one watching my face as I ride. I wonder if that kind of bandwidth is available via satellite except for the government. Oh and one camera pointed behind me so no one could sneak up on me since lots of peeps could know exactly where I was located.

Plans

5:46pm EDT Thursday 3 October 2002

Shane just navigated me to AAA in Huntington so I could get maps of the next states I'll be visiting. We listened to nearly my entire Eminem tape on the way there and back. We are equally impressed with Eminem's rappin' skillz and rhyming ability. Wow.

Now I'm going to lay out all these maps and plan my trek.

Actually I need to call Steve in 13 minutes to chat about concerns that people have that I don't have a home church.

6:18pm

Talked a bit with Steve, who has been contacted by Jennifer Nichols-Payne, who knows that Steve is the main adult at San Antonio, and is also the chair of CYA (Committee on Youth Advisors) (I'm on the commmittee as secretary). JNP says that "people are watching to see how we handle this," so he wants to help me get to the rally in a way that does not jeopardize the CYA or himself or me or whatever.

He told me that he'd like to help me get there because he believes I add to the youth community. :-)

Steve asked about the situation with driving to Tulsa. I drove with Marta in the car, and Kate Dempsey and Jackie Purdy as well. We went separately because Jackie was unable to leave until after 9pm. The rest of the Plano group went earlier with Sean and Simon Barnes' dad driving.

He asked about my membership of churches, and I told him that I have never been more than a student member of Northwoods back while I was in high school. I have pledged money to Emerson, but I never signed their books as a member. I've been advisor at Emerson, and at Northwoods for multiple years.

I queried about membership in the CLF (Church of the Larger Fellowship) and he said that may be the way to go, considering I'm in a transitional period, etc. It's kinda silly to consider joining the CLF for just 4 months that I'll be in the country. I don't give a crap about getting the CLF newsletter or any shit like that. I pretty much don't want to give any money to them in such a ... can't think of the word... what is it.. in such a fine-I'll-do-it-your-way way. Just to fucking fill in some beauracratic line bullshit way to console some parents who are too fucking scared to talk to me face to face about this. Who are these people who are concerned? What is their real issue? I'm just trying to go to two fucking more rallies and then go to fucking Japan to inspire our beloved youth to do great magnificent things in the world!

Yes I understand the need for CYA to have rules and set guidelines and maybe all advisors should be a member of a church, even the CLF, okay fine.. but this issue came up because of me. me! Why?

7:43pm

So Steve and I tossed some ideas around, like me being co-advisor during the San Antonio Rally. I didn'tlike the idea of just creating a position for Rob to fill; that seems a bit like bending rules just for me. He agreed and invited me to think on it some, and to write a CYA policy as a recommendation for a guideline in the future.

8:51pm

This is bizarre. This cat (and I do mean feline, Joey) is licking the back of my ear and side of my head. Licking licking licking while I'm trying to write a recommendation for CYA's approval of advisors.

12:01am EDT Friday 4 October 2002

I have written the recommendation and emailed it to Steve. I think it's a good start for what we're trying to do.

Rant

12:02am EDT Friday 4 October 2002

There's a part of me that is so scared to let go of my connections to people in the world. Like I feel driven to read livejournal entries each day, and reply to all the emails I get (not all of them, but all of them that are sent personally to me), and I want to keep in touch with all my old friends from Houston and I just feel like I'm helpless to let *something* go, but I don't want to let anything go. And I want to write snail mails so I'll get snail mails back, and I feel bad for not going to see Anna Magwood in Florida, but I haven't even emailed her to say I'm not going to drive down there. And I want to go north to see my Aunt Madeleine, Joana, Abbey, Sford, Kniery Mom, and somehow have time to visit Cedar Point for a day or two, plus see where I was raised... It's like I'm *packing* all this shit into my life that's supposed to be a fucking vacation nowadays! What is up with this craziness???

I got the state maps I requested from AAA, but now I wish I had an overview map, one of the entire US, or preferably maybe just the north eastern states, cause putting all these maps together with their different scales and big paper boundaries around the map makes it difficult to figure out what's what. Plus I don't have a map of Indiana, and I didn't realize that Indiana is in between Illinois and Ohio. I thought it was the other way around.

Pooh. What's under all this? What's really bothering me? It's probably all the shit that's been up for the past month that I haven't written in my public journal. All the skeletons in my closet that are still closed up, rotting and decaying in my mind. I'm thinking of declassifying everything maybe 10 years after it happens.. by then people who might get pissed would probably not care anymore, plus I wouldn't make a big deal out of it; I'd just go back into my entries that are 10 years old and declassify them. No fanfare. Someone would have to just go back into the 10 year old entries to find out what *really* happened.... ;-)

No, this is not a hint that entries that are just now 10 years old will be suddenly interspersed with juicy bits. I don't think I really even have entries from 1992. All my shit was written on paper back then.

There are times that I'll write about 500 characters about what happened, but then write 3000 characters about the rest of the story. It's all slowly coming.

Patience. Faith. Growth.

- - - -

Part of it also is that I've grown accustomed to a speedy internet connection, and I just don't have that lately.

Sarah

6:35pm EDT Thursday 3 October 2002

Sarah and I are playing her running game, this time using a shower poof scrubby thing.

maps

12:18am EDT Friday 4 October 2002

Okay. So now I'm going to crack out these maps again and see what I can figure out.

1:36am

Okay, here are my estimated mileages between cities I plan to visit:

Barboursville, WV -> Columbus, OH: 132 miles
Columbus, OH -> Oberlin, OH: 130 miles
Oberlin, OH -> Kalamazoo, MI: 290 miles
Kalamazoo, MI -> Chicago, IL: 156 miles
Chicago, IL -> Bloomington, IL: 137 miles
Bloomington, IL -> Columbia, MO: 250 miles
Columbia, MO -> Springfield, MO: 160 miles
Springfield, MO -> Tulsa, OK: 189 miles
Tulsa, OK -> OKC, OK: 3 hours
OKC, OK -> Dallas, TX: 3 hours
Dallas, TX -> San Antonio, TX: 4 hours

I wonder if I'll be able to squeeze in a day to visit Cedar Point...

11:10am EDT Friday 4 October 2002

Okay, I have confirmed that my estimates were pretty close to what Mapquest suggests (I'm really impressed with all that mapquest offers free of charge, and how intuitive their interface is), and I've emailed my peeps in various cities I plan to visit. Going to go walk on the nearby mountain to see what I can see.

An hour ago I was feeling sorta trapped here, needing to get moving on my adventure. Now I'm more relaxed that I have a plan.