This past weekend, I caught a ride up to Columbia for contra dancing and to spend time with a family of a good friend of mine. It took dozens upon dozens of phone calls, but I finally secured a ride. I would bicycle a good portion of the way home. I looked forward to it.
The weekend held some noteworthy moments. Firstly, I got the opportunity to go sailing with a brother of my good friend (he is in England on a mission right now). He is very dedicated to his art. He is spending an entire year saving money while working full time so he can buy a sailboat of his own and go on a grand sailing journey. I learned a great deal about the true ancient way of water travel, and I look forward to the sailing trip with my friend after my mission.
After getting back to their home, right back out the door I went! Bicycling to downtown Columbia was old and brown. I had a spare tire wall with me and I put it on the bicycle before I left. It turned out to be unreliable and I traded it out after I lost two tubes to it. I hugged a railroad track for a mile and a half before finding the road to Knox Abbot St. Even in the night, bicycling across the Congaree River and over the lonely railroad track was beautiful and poetic. The moon was burning at full, as I knew it would be. The rocks that edged just above the water shone in the night. The smooth steel of the rails and imagination also were galvanized. I went under the bridge that went humped over the next set of rails, expecting to catch glimpses of a bum taking shelter. None were there. I was in a vastly empty part of town. I enjoyed the emptiness of it. I took some pictures of the cottonball clouds and the USC Campus. I prowled Finlay park like a five-year old. It was huge. It was a maze of water and stairs. I then enjoyed contra dancing. I didn't move much on Sunday. I spent a lot of time at church. Monday morning the brother would drive me fifteen miles south.
I began my journey back home in the same area where I ended my three-week trip by bicycle, intending to tie up loose ends and finish the gap between Orangeburg and Charleston, down U.S. 178. The fog clung just above the cars as we drove down. We arrived to where I would begin to bicycle. I thought of when I breathed in the red dusk in this exact same spot on my way back from Columbia in the spring when I had a car. A truck balled past me, appearing out of nowhere. Having a mist between you and everything you see makes it all a little bit more mysterious, pulls you in just a little bit stronger out of curiosity. It was fifteen miles into Orangeburg. As I made my way, the fog cleared pleasantly, ascending as did my mood, from grounded to high in the sky. I dictated as I rode, "Its the same scenes a thousand times over, whether it be U.S. 21 to Orangeburg in the fog or S.C. 133 out of Clemson." It brings my mind back to a time when I traveled with my mother and a few other people to see Niagra Falls. As I was intently watching the Horseshoe, one of the ladies told me in her gentle Honduran accent, "You can get tired of seeing what man has made, but you never get tired of seeing what God has created, even the same thing day after day." A gentle clack sounded under my bicycle seat, and I knew what it was, though I didn't want to accept it. No more bicycling. The axle had broken. This had happened on my way from the tops of the ridges of Balsam Range to upstate South Carolina, and while it bought one of my greatest stories and inner changes, I did not feel like walking fifty miles. I caught a ride home from Al, he was coming down from Florence to Charleston. I spent the next few days catching as much sleep as possible. This is the second time I finished my trip prematurely in Orangeburg. We brought the bike home, but its useless until fixed. Separated from my Frankie, I am like a bicycle without a back tire. I'm not going anywhere.
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