19: Daily Routine

Touring is tough. It’s only fun if you’re Tracy and you get to drive the luggage truck. For us, it’s a slog and any light-hearted parts have to be underlined and highlighted in bold.

Routine; that’s what makes everything work. Every action has its place and nothing is superfluous. It’s like being in the military, but without killing people.

Morning: wake up at 5.30am, brush teeth, shower, dress in cycle clothes, breakfast, luggage, top up tires, sign out, GO!

The only variance is whether to stretch before or after the shower. If you get to sleep with me, you’d find I do it before. If that happens, you’d see a lot of other things too and we’d be late for breakfast, but that’s another story and we needn’t discuss that kind of stuff here.

Unless it happens.

Just saying.

Daytime: ride, wave and yell meaninglessly at flat tire party, drink, get own flat, swear, drink, fix flat, drink, SAG stop, drink, get tired, drink, get more tired, drink, drink, get fucking tired, drink, drink, drink, run out of water, find religion, pray, apologize to God for bad life, see hotel in distance, thank Lord, reach hotel, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, lose religion, become atheist.

Evening: prepare bike, stretch, undress, laundry, shower, dress in evening clothes, route rap, dinner, walk around Walmart, retrieve laundry, bed.

After 100 miles of roadway torture, shouldn’t a shower come first?

No.

What’s the point getting clean and then doing stuff that will deposit oil and slime and rubber glue all over your pristine hands and arms? Always gets on your head too. Don’t know how, it just does.

Showering is the last thing to do before walking out the door (after dressing, fool) otherwise the temptation is to lie down on the bed and then you’d pass out and miss route rap. Tracy would be pissed and that would be bad.

No. Supper. For. You.

Think it would be best to leave the laundry out all night? Yeah, it might dry faster, but what about the morning when you get out of the shower and find there’s nothing to wear?

If you don’t want to put on evening clothes for breakfast (and who does?) you have to do the hold-door-open-and-stretch-to-balcony thing - and how risky is that? What are the odds of losing your grip on the door so it slams shut, locked, with the key on the dresser inside?

That would also be the time you realize – because the woman next door comes out to get them – that the cycling shorts and shirt for which you were reaching, belong to her.

Yours are hanging downstairs at the back of the motel over a tree.

And you’re naked.