The Bucket

February 2, 2016

Our rest day turns into a grab-assing around the tent day. Even though we're only a few hundred yards from the beach the fog is so thick we can't see it. The fog hangs around all morning and into the afternoon, making even the houses just next door pale and white and vaguely defined. It continues despite strong winds, despite heavier winds, and despite the driving rain of a thunderstorm. It's not just fog out here, it's Super Fog.

Paul rolls out late in the morning but a few hours later he's replaced by Mason, a younger guy from Denver whose long red beard drips water from its end because of the rainstorm that just passed through. He's headed west to Florida from California but can't get across to the other side of the bay because the fog is too thick for the ferry to run. Mason's been all over North America: Florida to Alaska, both coasts, the Northern Tier, the Great Divide, and now across the Southern Tier. Twenty minutes later Wayne arrives. He's a Brit from Manchester who's been even farther, from two dozen countries in Africa to all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and now America. In the spring he's on to Mexico and then through to South America for the next year or more. He tells us how he's been away from home for all but about ten weeks over the last six years. Six years! I wonder at what point home ceases to be home.

Paul shows back up ten minutes after Wayne. They're all stranded until the ferry gets going again. Between the five of us there's at least 100,000 miles of cycle-touring experience huddled away from the chill of the wind in the lee of this house. It's proof that once you start traveling like this you'll keep doing it until some immovable life barrier gets in your way and forces you to stop. It gets in your blood. It alters your perspective on the world in a deep and fundamental way. Each of us was once a normal person living a normal life: a businessman, a librarian, a Marine, and so on. We're homeowners and landowners and car owners still, but in absentia. Bicycle travel changed us and never again will we be the same.

And yet out of anyone in this group I think I'm the biggest winner of all. It has nothing to do with how far I've ridden or how long I've been gone or how great my thighs look. I have what no one else at this house, or in this state, or in this world has. I have Kristen. I get to ride all of these new places and experience all of these new things and I have someone to share it all with. It makes the bad days not quite so bad. It makes the great days transcendent. And together we're creating this incredible shared history that we'll always have, the kind of history for which no amount of pictures or words or miles can substitute.

The three guys are talking on the nearby porch in the early afternoon, just like they'll continue to do for the next six hours. Kristen and I are in the tent, tucked away from the cold. It's from this spot that I hear the door to the adjacent storage room open. I'd been in there earlier, sitting on a wooden deck chair with the door propped open, getting some work done on my laptop.

"They're in the storage room," I say to Kristen in hushed tones.

"Yeah, so?"

"You know how I was in there before?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I had to pee. And there's no bathroom here. And it's light out and the neighbors are home so I couldn't go next to the house. So I just went in the bucket in there. But I didn't dump it right away because I didn't think it mattered. I thought we'd be alone all day. Then Mason showed up like five minutes later, and then Wayne showed up, and then Paul showed back up, and now they're in there trying to get out of the wind and there's a bucket of my piss in the middle of the room."

An hour later I see Wayne sitting on top of the overturned bucket, using it as a seat. I can't bring myself to look at the floor.

Like I said, an incredible shared history.

In the evening we ride back to the same bar we hit last night. Again we get food from the joint below sent up and again it's just the best: cold beers, crab cakes, boiled red shrimp, corn on the cob, red potatoes, and hushpuppies with this rich, creamy garlic butter sauce for dipping. Rural Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana are coming. This might be the last great food we see for awhile and we're not letting the chance slide by.

We speed back to the house at like fifteen miles per hour without pedaling, courtesy of the leading edge of an approaching storm that could keep us here late into the morning tomorrow. Mason and Wayne are talking, still. A sixer of Michelob Ultra and value-sized boxes of Little Debbie's snack cakes have appeared and as near as I can tell are dinner. Paul is fast asleep on the floor of the storage room in his sleeping bag, and again I try not to think about the bucket or the floor. In the distance the waves crash and crash and crash.

Today's ride: 4 miles (6 km)
Total: 629 miles (1,012 km)

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