James' arrival

When James arrived in Pittsburgh we ended up walking about and shopping for pants downtown as I'd ruined mine days before in the fall. James was rightfully exhausted, but when we finally found what we needed we also found ourselves a long way from home without a clue as to how to return there. Had we taken bikes to meet James we might have all just ridden back, but with only James' bike for the three of us, public transportation seemed the only solution.

So we asked an eager bus driver what we should do and eagerly as ever he told us to get on. That he might have been going in the right direction was apparently an oversight on his part. After wrangling with James' fully loaded bike for a couple of minutes, we got it tenuously attached to the bike rack on the front of the bus.

It was sickening to watch the bike's girth swaying with every siezing halt along the bus route and every lurch as returned to movement...all this as the busdriver told us he'd only ever seen one bike fall off the rack before.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Oh, well, the bike was too big."

"I meant what happened next...as in how did it turn out?"

"Oh, well, it was fine the bus went right over it...the bike didn't survive though."

I imagined poor James stranded at the beginning of his trip, stranded in Pittsburgh, his bike ruined by this bus driver. Having just quit his job and left his appartment, I began to wonder what I was obliged to do in the event that his bike fell beneath this giant jamming transport. Would I be alone then on my trip? Will James spend the money on a plane ticket to meet me in San Francisco?

The bike never did actually fall, though some of his bags did work themselves open in the wind. Exposing their contents, these little open bags brought drama to an already impossible tension.

Small humble prayers, stiff wringing hands and "don't fall, don't fall, don't fall" silently repeated.

"I can't look" Kate says staring down the swaying bike.

The bus driver finally lets us off near a gas station in the middle of nowhere with instructions as to how to take a long series of busses to where we were going.

We then realized that it had clearly been a mistake getting on and that we were now further than ever from Kate's appartment. Poor James sat in the bus shelter, increasingly incredulous and grumpy at the situation into which we'd fallen.

In the end we hitch hiked back to Kate's instead of waiting for the busses.

On that note, I'd like to thank John, the fellow who took us across town in his pick up truck.

Thank you John.

That's all for this episode...I'll try to write up another tonight and post it tomorrow. It's so hard to get access to a computer out here amongst all these cornfields.

From the distances of Illinois,
this has been Eric.