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"It doesn't feel like it's only been three days, has it?"
That was a question Forest posed to me at lunch, while I was chewing on a chicken breast sandwich with the texture of cardboard and a honey mustard glaze that seemed to be purely decorative. I merely nodded while trying to chew and swallow, and he continued.
"When I got back from doing the AIDSRide last year, Q picked me up and I asked him what's been going on, and he said not much and I was totally shocked and forgot that I've only been away from Boston for, only like, five days."
I could understand that feeling, even more so now that I'm home and looking backwards on the weekend. It was only five days, but it was five days of riding across three different states, feeling the pull of calves, the push of quadriceps, the gasping of your lungs and the aches of your shoulders. It was five days of being intimate with your body and knowing what it's capable of, and learning more about yourself than you would in a month of sitting in an office, staring at a computer terminal.
When you get used to a life in an office, it's easy for the days to fly, for weeks to blur together, and for your memory to hit fast-forward on all of those empty moments in between the good parts where you're actually living the life that you want. And when you're looking back at of one of those experiences, and realizing that you haven't hit fast-forward in a while, it does seem longer than it is.
The morning of Day 3, I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arcanus, who had to bail from the ride at the last minute due to a freakish shoulder strain on his left side. He had our team jerseys, and we were trying to figure out how he was going to get them to us. It was the first time that I talked to anyone in Boston since the ride started, and when he picked up it did feel like an age had passed since we last talked and already I was starting to wonder what life would be like when I got back.
That was a question Forest posed to me at lunch, while I was chewing on a chicken breast sandwich with the texture of cardboard and a honey mustard glaze that seemed to be purely decorative. I merely nodded while trying to chew and swallow, and he continued.
"When I got back from doing the AIDSRide last year, Q picked me up and I asked him what's been going on, and he said not much and I was totally shocked and forgot that I've only been away from Boston for, only like, five days."
I could understand that feeling, even more so now that I'm home and looking backwards on the weekend. It was only five days, but it was five days of riding across three different states, feeling the pull of calves, the push of quadriceps, the gasping of your lungs and the aches of your shoulders. It was five days of being intimate with your body and knowing what it's capable of, and learning more about yourself than you would in a month of sitting in an office, staring at a computer terminal.
When you get used to a life in an office, it's easy for the days to fly, for weeks to blur together, and for your memory to hit fast-forward on all of those empty moments in between the good parts where you're actually living the life that you want. And when you're looking back at of one of those experiences, and realizing that you haven't hit fast-forward in a while, it does seem longer than it is.
The morning of Day 3, I called
arcanus, who had to bail from the ride at the last minute due to a freakish shoulder strain on his left side. He had our team jerseys, and we were trying to figure out how he was going to get them to us. It was the first time that I talked to anyone in Boston since the ride started, and when he picked up it did feel like an age had passed since we last talked and already I was starting to wonder what life would be like when I got back.
