Have you ever wanted something so badly

[KnottedYet]

P.S. I remember reading an article a long time ago, written by a woman who drove all over the southwest. There was a little mention of how she and her companion picked up a woman near Death Valley who was riding a bike laden with milk jugs full of water. She had left her abusive husband taking one of her kid's old bikes and using a highway map to work out a route from somewhere in the midwest to her friend's house on the west coast. She hadn't called the friend or asked any agencies or family for help. She just packed up the bike as best she could and left.

Anyway, the author and her companion drove the woman and her bike across Death Valley. (she wouldn't have made it otherwise) and wished her luck.

I think about that article every so often. The woman who would ride a bike across the country rather than ask for help, and the two women who would pick her up and drive her where she couldn't ride but then let her go to finish her journey her way (rather than turning her over to social services or insisting on driving her to her friend's house).

Women and bikes.

[mimitabby]

I have felt that feeling, not necessarily with bikes, but you can feel it, dream it, taste it.

it is such a strong thing, a compulsion. it's all in the wiring I guess (said mimi whose computer analysis system is being dissected because it doesn't work and 3 experts can't figure out what the problem is.)

[DebW]

I've had the feeling about both biking and backpacking. The backpacking is more appealling in that you can get away from roads and cars and forget that civilization and mass communication exist. You just boil life down to its necessities (the contents of your pack or paniers) and find out that everything else is really unnecessary. Like you've stripped living down to its most basic nugget, and all the rest of that huge thing called living was just crap that melts away in the rain.