Friday, September 24, 2010

Yup, the water proof spray works

I spent two nights at the Zion Lutheran Church/bicyclist hostel in Hutchinson, KS.  Showers, bathroom, kitchen, good company(not very much sleep) a bed.  It was great. I ate homemade mac n' cheese, and pancakes, and made chocolate chip cookies.  Yess.  And to think I almost up and left that town right after the bike shop stop.  45 dollar handle grips, a tire, a tube, a headset tightening, a rear derailer alignment, and a great time with Andrew.  Those grips better be worth it Andrew(my hands have been hurting a lot since I pulled that 130 mi day. I could barely unbuckle my packs.)
I biked 90 miles in the rain yesterday. The first real rain I've biked in.  It was exhilarating, gorgeous, and totally freeing.  The cool drops splattering on my warm, bare skin, running down my face, arms, and legs, and puddling in my shoes, cleansing body, mind, earth, and air.  Kansas looked beautiful.
I pulled into a closed campground next to a lake, slightly tilting my bike to fit under the metal gate.  It had only been slightly drizzling for the past hour or so, so I slipped into dry clothes: shorts and a t-shirt, it was warm.   Remembering that it could start raining at any minute, I finally started pulling my tent out.  It immediately started to pour.  I rushed to put down the tarp, lay the tent down, put together the poles and get the fly on before the puddles got to big.  I threw my stuff under the fly and climbed inside, stripped my now soaking clothes off, and started drying off the inside of my tent with a small, scraggly rag.  Wiping down and ringing out the rag I worked my way down to the lower end of the tent.  "Whoahoho. Whow.  That is... well, that is waterproof, that's for sure."
There was an enormous puddle of water in the lower end of my tent, and being a bathtub bottom tent that I recently re-waterproofed with that water proof spray, that water wasn't going anywhere. So I crouched, stark naked, soaking water up with my already wet clothes and wringing them just outside the tent under the rainfly as the rain poured down from the sky making little drumming noises on the tight fabric.  The geese honked overhead and the water of the lake lapped the shore, sometimes more vigorously than others making me peer out with my flashlight to make sure it wasn't going to start rising all of a sudden.
I cooked some dank Annie's mac n' cheese by reaching my hand underneath the rainfly and tending to it without getting wet, only pulling everthing inside when it was all done.  I inhaled the noodles, slurped down the extra water, all salty, garlicky, full of creamcheese, and tomato juices, yummm, and had the best night of sleep I have had in a while.

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