Contra Dancing

I remember this weekend. Lots of sun, lots of sleep-inducing sunburn, lots of bicycling. The air was so oppressive friday 'round two in the afternoon. Spent time with a friend, hunkered down while the heavens cascaded down. The bike ride after the rain was so refreshing. You could the simplicity of life, out in Goose Creek country. That night was contra dancing. I had not gone in months. The magic was so great it blew my hair back. I was so excited, I jumped up and down and joyful whoops came without warning. A few great opportunities are coming to me. In early July, there is a contra weekend in Jonesborough, Tennessee. I've wanted to go to this area for a long time, well since last year actually, when a leisurely drive into the beginning of the state made me hunger for more. Also, in late July, I am riding up to Asheville with the guy who drove the Blue Ridge Parkway with me (though it seemed I did most of the driving), and he shall return to his Magic City, and I shall stay and wander the Asheville streets, the Riceville valley, and take the rails to the beginnings of the Great Plains then back home. For now, there is no car. I have gotten well acquainted with my bicycle, starting from when I bicycled some sixty miles back home from Olanta, South Carolina (my travel friend dropped me off there. It is about twenty miles out of Florence). Sadly, there is almost nothing I can say about the country I drove through. The first twenty miles, the only sign of people I saw was a dusty trailer park before the Manning Highway. It had been threatening to rain from the start, and when it finally did, it really let. I was just getting onto Fifty-Two, and I felt very close to the place where the bus would pick me up and give me rest. It came down strong and long. I sat down and watched it for an hour and a half at a big gas station along the highway. Watching the rain pouring down on the green fields on the other side of the road from the sonorous clouds above was so rewarding. The wind gave somewhat of a sense of comradery too. The next miles were very tiresome and made me slightly regret trying this. St. Stephen. I had to bicycle all the way in to catch the bus. I don't know how I finished the trip home from Moncks Corner, but I did, and not only that, I got there before dark. I somehow felt like I was returning from a much longer journey as I passed that great tree in the field of the 52/78 split, it felt so familiar, like I had done this journey a thousand times. I had never seen the clouds so monstrous and colored before. It was the same tiredness that both shrouded me and opened my eyes when I was bicycling my final miles to U.S. 176. Things become so beautiful in your weary desperation. Even the masterpiece of day-fall is burdensome. But it is all over now. It was a very wearying journey, and I feel my legs have still not completely recovered from it.

I have not posted much because I have not read much. My life has gotten much less roam-some too.