A Good Time at the Dollar Store

I spent several hours in Rustee’s yard, organizing myself in the rain-slush-snow. My bike bags kept filling up with water as I packed them, but I happened to have a large sea sponge in my car so I used that to soak up the water and squeeze it out. It was kind of like bailing a ship.

My car, filled with all my travel gear, was also a mess. I was in the middle of a year-long road trip–traveling around the country to housesit, freelance, and take bike trips–and my Subaru was stuffed with everything I might need, including expedition gear for every climate, a bed, office supplies, and a portable disco ball.

I ran back and forth between the car and the bike, rearranging things, bailing, losing stuff and finding it again. It was a predictable level of chaos, and it didn’t really bother me. I was getting ready for a bike trip!

For the last three months I’d been housesitting a condo in Michigan, and now I was free to explore. Rustee was one of my new friends from town, and he’d agreed to let me leave my car in his driveway while I pedaled around Michigan.

Finally my bags were packed and my car secured. I changed into dry clothes, put on new socks, and slipped plastic bags over them to keep out the rain. 

It was sleeting when I pedaled out of Rustee’s driveway. I gave the house a farewell wave, and set my GPS for the Dollar Store. I’d forgotten to pick up contact solution, so that would have to be my first stop. 

I turned down city streets, taking in the strange infrastructure of human civilization. Lines of houses, a boarded-up building, cemented-in trees, brick walls splashed with art. I’m a creature of the forest, so cities always surprise and horrify and exhilarate me. They embody inexplicable nuance. What are the people doing behind all the closed doors? Do they feel free, or trapped, or something in between? Who are their friends? And where do squirrels sleep at night? 

I got to the Dollar Store and searched for the contact solution. As I walked through the aisles, customers ooh and ahhed over my sleet-covered bike clothes. I smiled broadly and assured them of my wellbeing. 

One man looked at me, shook his head, and said simply, “God bless you.” I got the strong impression that he really wanted god to do that. I smiled, thanked him, and wished him the same. I always have a good time at the Dollar Store. 

After that it was a clean shot to my campsite, thirty miles away. I wound through more streets and bike paths until they thinned and opened into broad fields and forests. The skies widened, and I breathed deeper.

I passed a family burning brush in their yard, and I savored the smell of the wood smoke. With it came the scent of wet earth from a roadside farm. The identity of a place is made up of all its parts, and these smells all seemed important. 

It was still cold and windy, but I had all my layers. Sleet plopped down on my hood. Then rain, then snow. I wondered why I was so happy. Was it normal to be so happy, biking into the unknown with frozen water sliding down your face? 

I care a lot about my body and how it feels, and I work hard to keep myself warm and dry and rested and well-fed. Maybe that’s part of the reason it’s so easy to be so instantly happy on the open road: inside the chaos of the unknown, I become the eye of the storm. I trust that I will take good care of me.

At dusk the pavement turned to sandy mud, and I slogged my way forward. Families of deer bounded across the road, their hooves leaving deep tracks. Finally I arrived at a sign, and then a bend in the road, and then the campsite I’d been aiming for. A quiet spot with tall pines and a slow-moving river. 

I set up my tent on the riverbank, ate a sausage and some walnuts, and went to bed wearing all my layers. 

In the morning I woke up under the pine trees, drank coffee, and listened to the sound of the river. It only takes a night out here for my mind to shift, to open at the edges, to let go of things I hadn’t even known I was holding onto.