Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 60) “You okay?” she asked. “I’m not going, I decided,” I said. “You’ll be fine,” she said. ’D BEEN PLANNING this trip for years, but now I considered all that might happen — lightning, snowstorms, hypothermia, accidents, injury. When I’d left on that first trip, I faced similar fears, had put off leaving for a week, had almost decided not to go. I thought of the mountains I’d soon ride over. Colorado would be the most difficult part of the trip. If I could make it to Wyoming without pulling a muscle or blowing out a knee, I’d know I could do it. I walked inside, lay down next to her. The last few weeks had been filled with the frenetic pace of graduate school and of preparation for this trip, and I lamented my self-absorption, the writing and graduate school life that left her with her own dreams unfulfilled and a debt that she didn’t deserve. Real men hold steady jobs and provide, I thought. They don’t pedal off trying to be 20 again. “You okay?” she asked. “I’m not going, I decided,” I said. “You’ll be fine,” she said. She cuddled close, and we fell asleep. Early Sunday afternoon I watched her drive away. I was on my own. GT Excerpted from “Bicycling Beyond the Divide: Two Journeys into the West” by Daryl Farmer, by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 2008 by Daryl Farmer. Available wherever books are sold or from the University of Nebraska Press (800) 755-1105 and on the Web at www.nebraskapress.uni.edu. I 60 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008 http://www.nebraskapress.uni.edu
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.