Human Power, Superstars, and the Throat-Punch of Winter

The snow pounds the windshield, then suddenly drifts away. The wet road left behind.

It came again and again. Flirting with me. Coy.

Worn out rusty chains on trucks, flat on one side from years of being squashed under heavy loads. Rattle rattle rattle, they say.

It takes three forevers to get over the mountain and toward Santa Cruz and we can’t find a Starbucks which is the weirdest thing in the world and it’s been 7 hours and I really have to pee.

Laughter fills the empty spaces in the car and uses up all the oxygen and we have to roll down the window to breathe and we feel our tummy muscles ache with joy.

I’m on the road again. My bicycle all pleased with itself, strapped to the back of car and ready to ride from the U.S./Mexican border to Redondo Beach, CA. Another checkbox to be checked in my attempt to cover the perimeter of the United States by human power. My mom tucked into the passenger seat, preparing herself to drive our gear around. Our support crew. I grin at her in appreciation and note again that no one’s mom is as awesome as my mom. Girls’ adventure. Out in the world. Just us.

Bubbling clouds and friendly rain and Ice-Plant blooming and green things everywhere and the ground squirrels sit up to look at us and then run back in the house because they forgot their umbrellas.

Jennie runs out of her home, a cozy co-housing unit right downtown Santa Cruz. We leap around and cling to each other and scream a little bit like we were twelve, and who knows, maybe we were for a minute. Time is a continuum and doesn’t really exist and everything we experienced in life in the past is the same we experience now and age is just a number. Unless you’re an old person and marry a super young person and that’s weird but whatever.

The bottom of the bike rack scrapes terribly getting into the parking garage and we all cringe but the bike is okay. We eat corned beef and cabbage with all other cute little co-housing people and talk about biking and traveling and college and life experiences. Their faces go back to another place in time and there’s a twinkle in their eye as they talk and their faces soften and maybe they’re also twelve.

You gonna carve up? Some lady asks during dinner.

I’m not sure what she means. I look at Jennie, hoping she’ll answer.

Jennie looks at me, hoping I’ll answer.

We say nothing and we both stare awkwardly at the woman.

Pretty soon dinner is over.

We walk downtown Santa Cruz with its lovely stores specializing in socks, gluten-free pastries gleaming in windows, live music drifting from this store and that. So many coffee shops I lose count. Everyone inside dressed to play the part.  Caffeine laden at 9pm, playing on their laptops, looking very studious. Taking themselves very-very-very seriously. Really looking at social media.

Homeless people singing and chanting and rapping while facing only their reflection in empty store fronts. Superstars in an alternate Universe.

We stay in the co-housing building in rooms cleverly named The Music Room and The Craft Room. Guest rooms so named to avoid the legal issues that come if it were labeled a hotel.

The Grand Escape from the Throat-Punch of Winter.

I put on my jammies-with-the-pink-hearts and my down slippers and snuggle into The Craft Room, lulled to sleep while someone in the shared living room down the hall strums a made-up version of songs by the Beatles.