I'm currently at my Aunt Jo's house in Chesapeake, Virginia, enjoying the finest of Southern comfort. Yesterday when we rolled in she presented us with a mountainous quantity of chunk roast, peas, applesauce muffins, ice tea, baked potatoes, oatmeal raisin cookies, hot fudge, and ice cream. She has a truly delightful accent and the appropriate figures of speech to match--she's sweet as pie. On the way here we rolled past my great uncle D.D. Jones's trucking company (I think) and my great grandmother's house in colonial Williamsburg. Before that we'd been staying at Locust Grove in Walkerton, VA, where I used to go to family reunions (www.locustgrove1665.com). My Aunt Missy is wonderful; she's thinking of starting an organic herb farm there next year. Cecky is full of incredible stories from her theater tours and now I think spends most of her time making art related to Native American religions. Her mother, Harriet, was born to a deaf mother and father and thus learned sign language from birth--she didn't really learn how to speak until she went to school--and signed "Silent Night" for us before we went to bed.

To back track a little, I started the trip last Sunday when I biked from my house in Lutherville to Rebecca's in Takoma Park. I found my bike to be unbearably heavy on the hills and somehow got rid of about 20 pounds worth of stuff. The next day Kathrin, Rebecca, Hannah, and Whitney and I started out down the trails of DC, struggling with a lot of gear problems along the way and charming our way into finding people to fix them. We camped out in a bizarre swamp nature walk at Fort Belvoir and were woken up by army folk jogging by. Eventually the gals decided to call it a practice run, find new gear, and start over...but I continued on to meet up with Sam and Rachel at Locust Grove.

Someone has already created my dream!

http://www.rhizomecollective.org

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This map is pretty lame (i.e. it's kind of city to city as the bird flies, as opposed to actually following a route). I just wanted to see if I could figure out this website stuff.

It's official! On September 4th, we're leaving to bike to New Orleans. This plan has its origins in the rose-colored glasses that one acquires at camp. Upon more sober evaluation, we've come to the conclusion that goshdarnit it's a swell idea and dagnabbit we're going. "We" at this point includes Sam, Rachel, Jesse, and me, with the possible addition of three rad Guilford grads. It's a very affirming, positive-thinking group of "funemployed" young folks.

I just sent off a number of fund raising letters to close friends asking for donations to Sibley Bike Depot and its youth program (www.bikeped.org). There were so many enthusiastic kids wandering into the shop this spring that it became clear that we needed to come up with some sort of a structured program. Thus was born the Junior Mechanics program, in which kids pick out a donated bike and then take a four-week mechanics class and learn by fixing up their own rides. Afterwards they can come in and work aside adults at the normal volunteer hours. I really adore those kids. So, I'm hoping that by next February Sibley will have raised enough money through donations and bike sales to hire a part-time youth programs coordinator--a consistent face to be there for them.

I admit in the past I have scoffed at people who tour for a cause--why is fund raising on a bicycle any more effective than when one is stationary? The whole concept is still somewhat beyond me, but I decided to go for it anyway. Now, I'm beginning to understand the premise. The ride is an attention-getting device--some folks will turn their heads when they hear you're going on a bike tour, but almost no one will give a second glance to yet another pre-addressed donation envelope. The tour gives me more of an occasion to talk up the organization, and my appreciation grows every time I explain it. Knowing that the people I love and respect have donated to the project makes me care about it even more, and it gives me an avenue through which to build rapport with strangers. And I guess the fact that I've promised others that I'll reach my destination raises the stakes and makes it more likely that I'll make it over the last mountain pass (or the last bayou, in this case).

The only thing that makes me uncomfortable is that some charity rides seem to carry a variation on the "noble" sentiment, a certain pomp and circumstance or self-celebratory generosity. I am under no illusions about this--a bike tour is a pretty self-indulgent endeavor, in my book! I just wanted to jump at the opportunity to bolster an organization I hold dear.

In my brain I have a collection of fantasy-land non-profits that I would like to a) exist b) work for or c) establish myself. They're sort of like dollhouses--sometimes I happen across a nice piece of intellectual 'furniture' in a magazine and then place it in the appropriate room in the appropriate non-profit in the desk of the appropriate employee. For example, "Oh wow! Vermiculture--what a great idea!At the Enviro-Responsibility Institute we should install a big compost with a glass wall where people can see the worms at work. Even better, we could have a live-in volunteer coordinator who would also live behind the glass wall, putting all of his own personal waste into the heap so that everyone could see humans as part of a complete ecological loop. The board of directors could all commit to having composting toilets and vermiculture at their house so that rich people would use them at their dinner parties and then the composting movement would spread like wildfire across the country!" These pieces of intellectual furniture are interchangeable between the various imaginary non-profits. Some are in vogue (socially responsible investing), some are pretty tacky (children's mural projects) some are damaged to varying degrees (the anti-sweatshop movement), and a few are blown to smithereens by some frustratingly excellent point made by an intellectual I admire (Noam Chomsky crushing anarcho-primitivism). Oh man i just used the "A" word in a blog--if i don't write in three days, it means the government goons have come to get me.

Anyway, during the hiking trip one of these non-profits rose to the surface as a potential priority. I would like to be a part of a neighborhood-based sustainability center in which people learn the importance of and methods for reducing dependence on outside resources, particularly oil. Working with Sibley really did convince me that learning about things is a great way to build community in a diverse neighborhood. There could be an urban farm, or at least a garden or two. There could also be a model house that has had all of the inexpensive improvements done (insulation; solar heating/cooling, simple cleaning products) and maybe a fund through which people could finance their own energy-saving home improvements. There could be an after school program where kids learn how to do all kinds of things, from gardening to bike mechanics to sewing to energy audits to cooking...there could be classes and film screenings explaining how everyone fits into the global economy...how much energy it takes to produce a pair of jeans, etc. Maybe there could be some field trips to the woods, to the sewage treatment plant, to city hall, to the ports downtown, to a dairy farm. Field trips taken in our very own bio- diesel school bus, painted appropriately. There will also be ponies, rainbows, and puppy dogs aplenty. In the meantime, I am eyeing the giant field behind the Superfresh on St. Paul street. Somehow, all of this seems like it would be easier to accomplish in Minneapolis. Why is it so damn cold there?

I think I want a group tattoo. Maybe a few of us could get our favorite kitchen appliances emblazened across our chests. Anyone in?

The weather turned to Heaven a few weeks before finals. I started to resent my job, which kept me indoors on what are supposed to be the glory days of my youth. This is ridiculous, because it is a great job, and customers actually tell me how great my $8-an-hour lot in life is as they trot out the door on shmancy rides.

I had a dream in which I had two little babies. I started out in a very confrontationally triumphant mood about it; I was proud of the fact that I was twenty-two and decided to have those kiddos despite societal pressure to do otherwise; and I demanded that my aunts coo over them at family gatherings. Through the rest of it, though, I started asking my friends what they were up to, and their tales of Cambodia, bike trips and beyond made me unbearably conscious of the weight of the 18 years that lay before me...I realized that I would never be able to do anything I wanted to do. I have never been so happy to wake up from a dream! That led me to withdraw my applications from the jobs for which I'd been competing...I don't know what I am going to do, but I realized that I didn't want anxiety to be the force that propels me forward in my next direction. I need some time away from Mac to really figure out the way I operate outside of school.

Not having a plan is always exciting in theory, but very rarely in practice. However, I think I know what I am getting into, and as long as I feel prepared for one to two lonely months with my parents back in Baltimore, I can continue this way.

Senior week's canoe trip was stellar, the riverboat cruise was worthy of its reputation, and graduation actually made me cry. Walking past the Geography professors, through the applauding crowd...it hadn't occurred to me that I should actually be proud of myself. I was overwhelmed and flustered and snotty and happy. The president told me that the Sudan divestment proposal passed as he was handing me my diploma. Ah, closure.

I got to bring my family around to oggle at what I've been doing for the past four years and to bask in their approval. It makes me realize that yes, this apartment is sunny and yes my friends are interesting. I brough a greasy-handed bike mechanic to eat Ethiopian finger food with us, and my father was impressed. He was likewise impressed by the hydroelectric plant. Amanda and I had a barbecue among the lilacs with guitars and our dear dear friends, and my older brother did a blues rendition of the ingredients on the rice krispies treat package. I moved in with BenTonyJaredJoe, and suddenly my life was filled with fireworks and other pyromaniacal phenomena. It is so fun to live with them.

My feminist women's chorus gave me the big solo, which was very nice of them because I think that they see me as the inexperienced one and they want to encourage me.

We started the junior mechanics' certification after-school program, and the kids shine shine shine.