Jan 4: Departure Preparations
Jan 4: Departure Preparations[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on January 4, 2004]
Happy new year! Between the tsunami and torrential flooding in the southwest US, I've been very glad to be on high ground... hope you're all high and dry as well.
Shortly after I last wrote you, a mutual friend of Marisa and her parents and myself flew in from Minneapolis for the holidays. Ironically enough, the Christmas-through-New-Years duration of his visit is what I had originally had in mind for my own stay here in Austin... I'm tremendously grateful to Rich and Gloria for putting me up for six weeks instead! My joints are about 99% painless now, and I'm planning to leave town by the end of this week.
I've made some progress in lightening my load, as the doctor ordered. I already mentioned that I'll be leaving my autoharp here with Rich, who used to play years ago... that's about 12 pounds. I also went to REI and bought a lighter tent. I initially considered the 3-pound, coffin-shaped REI Roadster, but when I got it home I found it was about 2 inches too small for comfort. I wound up with the 5-pound, kite-shaped Sierra Designs Hyperlight instead, which is extravagantly spacious for one person but can be pitched with just one pole in narrow spaces (e.g. the top of a picnic table!). I got a great deal on the tent because it was the last one in stock, and they couldn't find the sack and stakes that went with it, so they knocked 15% off the sale price and gave me a generic sack and stakes for free! Then they bought back my three-year-old tent for store credit! I'll miss it -- it was an excellent two-person, 4-season tent, and it served me well, but I just didn't do enough two-person, four-season camping to justify its 10 pound weight. The new tent is small enough that I hope to be able to fit it inside one of the plastic tubs on the trailer, rather than strapping it on top as I've been doing.
Other items I'll be leaving behind or shipping to myself include my colored pencils and drawing paper (about 1 pound), the cradle for my PalmPilot (light, but bulky), and a dozen or so trash bags (about 2 pounds), so all in all I'm about 20-25 pounds lighter than I was when I rolled into town.
I had been planning to head east via College Station, TX, which is actually northeast of Austin, but then I was referred to a Web site called Adventure Cycling that suggests routes through various parts of the country. Their "Southern Tier" route leaves Austin to the southeast, so I'll give that a shot... it will mean staying with my other Austin friends for two or three nights on the way out of town rather than leaving straight from northwest Austin.
Although there are no ecovillages in Austin, I did contact some folks who are working to start one. It's actually shaping up to be more of a cohousing development than an ecovillage, but some of the more eco-minded members of the group had me over for dinner on Sunday night, and we talked about permaculture and bike touring over some of the best legume-free vegetarian food I've had in years. Earlier that day, my friend Gypsy and I toured the Rhizome Collective, which had been featured in two local newspapers last week. I'll have some photos of the place on my next roll of film, but meanwhile you can take the virtual tour on their Web site.
Happy trails! --Ben
Krispy Kreme Karma
Krispy Kreme KarmaAustin is not as crazy about donuts as north Texas is -- there are only a handful of donut shops in the whole metro area -- but there's a Krispy Kreme about a mile from where I've been staying. About two weeks after I got here, I rode to the local bike shop to get a new helmet-mounted mirror, but I was 15 minutes too early -- they hadn't opened yet. I took the opportunity to visit Krispy Kreme, whose "HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW" sign was lit. (I maintain that if they're going to spell it that way, their slogan should be, "Putting the 'ugh' back in donuts!")
Anyhow, when Krispy Kreme's sign is lit, they give you a fresh, hot do(ugh)nut for free just for walking in the door. I ate my free one and had picked out another and was about to pay for it when I reached for my wallet and realized I'd left it at home. When I told the cashier that I'd forgotten my wallet, he gave me the second donut for free as well! I promised him I'd come back later and buy one.
Well, around 8:00 PM on New Year's Eve, Matt and I borrowed Gloria's car to run an errand. On the way we passed the Krispy Kreme, and I saw that the sign was lit, and I figured this was my chance to repay my karmic debt. The employees were busy filling drive-through orders and packing boxes for shipment to local convenience stores and so on, but I couldn't help noticing that at least half the hot, fresh donuts were going straight off the line into the trash. I asked the cashier about it, and he said there's no way to pause or slow the line once it's started, so sometimes supply exceeds demand.
He snagged us two free ones off the line, and then I asked to buy two more. He looked at the parade of donuts bound for the trash and said he'd give me six for the price of two. But when he rang it up, I noticed that he'd charged me for all six. I didn't say anything about it until Matt and I got outside -- I'd intended to pay for the previous free donut anyway, not to get more free ones! -- but Matt said it didn't seem right that I was charged for six when I only wanted two. I said the guy was obviously busy and just made a mistake, and besides I was feeling virtuous for paying off my karma!
As we were fastening our seatbelts, the cashier came running up to my window, apologized profusely, and gave me another dozen for free! So I went in the door expecting to get four for the price of two and wound up with twenty for the price of six! Matt and I managed to dispatch them all, but it was a struggle. The "ugh" is officially back in donuts as far as I'm concerned, at least for a while!
5.8 mi