Road Trip Day Eight

"There is a need to find and sing our own song, 

to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there,

that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage."

~Barbara Lazear Ascher~

August 5th, 2013

When I woke up we checked the weather and wondered at whether or not camping would be a good idea or not.  It's been raining on me the entire trip.  It feels like the storms have been following me where ever I go.  He had to run up to his work and take care of a few things, so I suggested that I stay and play with Elsa, wash a load of my laundry,  run to the grocery store, and start cooking up some lunch while he was out.  He took off on his bike and I took advantage of my time alone.

To start I took his dog, Elsa, outside while I sipped on some coffee and smoked a cigarette.  Elsa plays this funny game of fetch in the backyard.  You have to have 2 sticks to play with her; one to throw and one to entice her to drop the one she brings back.  There is no talking her into dropping the stick she fetches unless you wave another in front of her until she drops the one in her mouth in excitement to fetch another.  I did this for a while before I left for the store for some supplies to cook up some recipes I had saved on my phone.  

Once back I stood over the kitchen sink washing vegetables when I suddenly felt like crying.  Shit, I'm so damn tired of thoughts of my ex creeping up on me. It's few and far between these days, but every so often thoughts of him leak in and I wonder if I'll ever love anyone again the way I loved him.  I wonder who will go on midnight bike rides with me in the woods when it's below 32 degrees outside.  And who will spontaneously agree to pack up the car armed with ski gear to take the kids sledding after a big snow fall?  Well, it's not my ex and that's all there is to it.  That chapter in my life has ended and I get to keep moving on to whatever life brings next.  Chin up.  Eyes forward.

I heave a big sigh and will myself to focus on the task at hand.  Mushrooms are waiting to be stuffed, pasta boiled, and all the ingredients for peanut butter sheet cake are stacked in front of me.  I had barely brushed the tears from my eyes when Matt walked back in the door to greet me.  I handed him a salad and promised that a full-course meal would follow soon.  After lunch we were still feeling quite lazy, and it was crunch time before we decided that if we were going to camp it had to be now.  He swore he had never packed for camping in such record time.  I smiled and gloated because I had been packed for camping all along for the most part.  

We set out in separate vehicles, where I was reminded that time alone on the open road with good tunes in my ears never grows old.  It was about a 2 hour drive to Devil's Lake State Park near Baraboo, Wisconsin.  I prefer riding alone on trips like this.  I belt out my favorite songs in karaoke fashion without a care in the world about any possible onlookers.  I also have a tendency to play my favorite songs or albums on repeat as many times as I want.  Anyone riding along would be incredibly annoyed, but I don't have to give a shit when I'm alone.  Some people seem to prefer the company of others over solitude.  I have my reasons for liking them both; some of them healthy and some of them just plain selfish.  It was sprinkling on us most of the drive and we only hoped the rain wouldn't come down too heavy while we camped.  We took one of the only spots the camp had left and braved the rain by sitting by the open fire.  We cursed for a while about how fires don't like to get started in wet conditions before it finally caught for good and we could relax. I started boiling water so I could eat some ramen noodles and Matt set to work opening his MRE and talking about all the different contents of the package.  

Matt has this way of complaining about things that don't go his way using very dry humor that might come across as bitterness if you didn't know the guy well enough.  I dig his style, maybe because I can relate.  Our site wasn't the greatest and he wasn't happy that the campers next to us had set their tent up so close to our fire pit.  It didn't take long though for us to settle into acceptance that it's just the way it was going to be and we'd have to get used to whispering if we wanted to stay up and visit.  We were worn out though, so we didn't stay up too late.  We turned in after deciding that in the morning we would contact the front desk and try to move our camp to a more secluded spot so we would actually feel like we were camping at a state park instead of a commercial RV site.