Another sweeping set of life changes has intervened. There is no chance at an exhaustive reckoning, but some that come to mind quickly: I decided to separate from my wife last month. The short story is that she didn't make me happy. The long story isn't much longer. I also lost my job this month. I quit drinking in March. I'll be quitting my chorus in June. I've lost two good friends in the last year. I'm putting in time with those who are left. Most of my life is being stripped away right now. Nearly everything I have is potential. What I have that is manifest is a highly functioning body, an educated mind, a good set of coping strategies, and a growing relationship with my daughter.
I find there I have no one in particular to tell all my stories to. I have this tremendous urge to pour out the ideas in my head. How things work, what I saw here or there and then. The lack of an ear, an interested or at least fairly captive human to dump all these ideas upon, I find strikingly difficult to manage. There's also all the parts of being completely alone that normal humans have to deal with, but you all know about that quite well I'm sure.
So I'm going to put some stories on here. Apparently, no one will read them. Just as I logged in today I noticed there is a view counter on this blog and my last entry got 3 views. Several previous that I had sent links to friends and family only got 11 views. Quantities that show me I am somehow violently ignored. Regardless, I already feel some of the comfort I have always derived from talking on end, so I will persist.
Three years ago I set a goal in life to bike through every county in Ohio. Since then it became clear that it wouldn't take anything like my entire life (I will likely pass the half-way mark this summer), and so I've added that I would like to bike through every state in the US, and if that target is met, I'll set to biking on each continent. The rules aren't strict and no one is keeping score but myself. I don't count it if I merely bike extremely closely to a county (once a bike path ended, I later learned, precisely on the county line, and so I biked back and around a corner to catch the next county over). I also won't do anything silly like drive to each county with my bike and do a tight loop at a gas station. I have counted counties that I merely clipped a corner of on a long trip, but I generally try to find at least one town or other marker within the county to make a good deal of it. I like to have something that I remember of the county, of the ride.
As of now, the states I have biked in include (in order that I got to them) New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.
The Ohio Counties I have biked through, in approximate order are Cuyahoga, Lorain, Erie, Athens, Greene, Clark, Warren, Butler, Hocking, Portage, Summit, Trumbull, Ashtabula, Stark, Geauga, Lake, Franklin, Pickaway, Fairfield, Licking, Knox, Richland, Morrow, Delaware, Mahoning, Fayette, Montgomery, Clinton, Madison, Miami, Ross, Pike, Scioto, Adams, Highland, Brown, Clermont, and Hamilton. Tomorrow I intend to bike to Champaign, and in a few weeks, another seven from central to western Ohio. I made this info-graphic earlier this year.
I learned to ride a bike in New Jersey. I remember that I only ever fell off my bike in the early days once, and that I didn't hit my head. I didn't get hurt at all. I fell into some leaves and grass, and I was only 6 or 7, so it wasn't very far to fall.
In fact, given that I have biked approximately 10,000 kilometers in adulthood and perhaps 1000 in youth, it's remarkable that I've only fallen about a dozen times, and among them my injuries included only two or three scraped knees, one scraped shoulder, and a strained neck. My last helmet was damaged enough to replace merely on the basis of how many times I had dropped it on the garage floor. I even crashed my last bike into a parked van and its handle-bar column snapped in half. The car had not a mark, and my neck was a little sore.
I love covering new ground. Seeing what a place has that I've never been to before. I love the sight of hot yellow sun on acres of trees. The smell of green, yellow, purple, and pink of the outside barely tamed by man. The rhythm of the peddling and typically quiet backdrop of insects and birds, some crunch of gravel and the punctuation of a passing car. It's a calming, familiar sound. I love the roads less traveled and the crumbling infrastructure of things you can't even tell what they were once. Knowing that some old local could say, 'that was a such and such, my friend's dad worked there. It got bought out and then closed...' The hot sun beats down, its rays breaking down the bonds, the rain breaking down the bonds, the roots breaking it down, and you can feel it slowly crumbling as you roll by and wonder. I love rolling through some minute town so far from anything and wondering, 'what in the world do you DO here?' I love stopping to rest and drink water under a gnarled old tree on the side of a farm that was planted to break the wind on that field a hundred and fifty years ago. The hard rides calm my body with that runner's high. I wrote a poem about it last year or the one before.
Thirsty by a cornfield on SR 42
between nothin' much and maybe some good ribs
yearning for what's lost, what cannot be gained?
(Was me supposed to fill in Simple Ranger)
The black eyed susans and asters
fields of sunflowers at the quarter acre
a creek yonder, once poisoned, now?
near, some city, some widgets are made.
(My shoulder all jangled there)
Fields of purple-pink flowers that grow like weeds,
forests and hills, potholes, penitentiaries,
blown out husks of human endeavor on backroads no longer frequently traveled.
(And who could play! Delirious dreams)
In future posts, I may share my memories from each county and state. Looking at the lists, I'm sure I remember something from every single one. Or I'll forget all about it and not post for another year. Feel free to ask, all three of you who'll read this. That's 39 or so stories right now. We'll need some coffee.
Your Obedient,
Ian Hogan, PhD
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