Monday January 15

Monday January 15, 2007

I get up slowly and start to pack up. It’s been raining for over three hours already and almost everything is wet; well not just wet, but pretty thoroughly soaked. I call Teri who lives in Jackson and she says that in Jackson it’s going to be 40* and it’s going to rain all day. She also said that she was in Chicago. Gee, thanks Teri, but at least I know.

I get everything packed up and it’s still raining so not only is the gear wet, but I’m drenched. I have dry clothes, but if I put them on, I won’t have anything dry when I get to the other end. Either way I must be careful as I don’t want to risk hypothermia. I decide to stay in my wet jeans and shirt, pull my snowsuit on over them and get on my bike.

It’s been physically challenging to get on a bike in wet clothes. It was more challenging to get into my gloves because my hands were so wet. The gloves were stuck to my hands and just wouldn’t push on. I ended up having Wendy help me like I was some little kid.

For most of the 150 miles, it rained. And rained. And rained. No just a light drizzle, or a drizzle but rain, rain and more rain. I stop and put $3.00 in my gas tank. I didn’t put the other $1.68 in for some strange reason. I was afraid that I would have to stop and not have any money if I needed it. (I think that really was one of the processing problems that my mental illness causes.) Hindsight says that I needed to get more gas in the tank.

Then as I take off from the gas station, I realize that my speedometer/odometer isn’t working. I won’t know how many miles I’m going. On a motorcycle the way you know that it is time to get gas is:
By how many miles you have gone or
By having to turn on the reserve tank and then finding out how far it will take you.

The thought of having to use option b scares me to death as I am in a rural area and could be caught a long way from a gas station. I don’t want to learn the hard way how long my reserve tank will last.

If Teri had been in Jackson would I have told her that I was in trouble? I really don’t know, but she wasn’t so it didn’t matter. She was in Chicago heading over to Kansas. Now I ask you, the NAMI Ed’s Group is meeting in Kansas in the dead of winter, how sane is that?

Anyway, I make it to Rocky Springs Campground. The first thing that I do is head to the restroom and drip all over the floor for about half an hour, feeling the warmth on my face. I shrug out of my snowsuit, then pull off my boots and pour the water out of them. I really do need a better answer. After another half an hour, I head outside to find a good campsite; a place to put up my tent.

As I unroll my tent, it is a sodden mass of wet fabric, wet on the inside and wet on the outside. Since it isn’t currently raining, I leave the window open and the fly off the top for a bit to see if things might dry out a bit. My sleeping bag is also wet. I am grateful that I don’t have a goose down bag as down doesn’t have as much insulating power when it is wet as the artificial fibers do. When hollofil gets wet, it can still offer some warmth.

So I unroll it, shed most of my wet clothes, lay down and cover up. And I start to shiver as I start to warm up. I’m getting warm, but not fast enough. I reluctantly pull out my dry clothes, put them on and climb back in the wet sleeping bag. I pull the blue blanket over the top of the wet sleeping bag to offer more insulation from the cold and fall asleep.

I am not sure just how cold it got, but it got cold. The van dweller staying across the road from me woke me up continually by running her vehicle. Get a damn decent sleeping bag so you don’t have to fire up the vehicle and wake up most of the entire campground. Geesh.

Finally about 4AM, I got up and went in the restroom for self-preservation and read a book. I wanted to kill the van dweller. Many van dwellers run in stealth mode, but I guess she doesn’t do that in campgrounds.

The restrooms are really clean and large. I am glad that they are heated. About 7 I hear her packing up and I go back and lay down to go back to sleep.