The Night Before

Everything is packed. Bike is loaded. Cats have been onboard for the last four days, acclimating to their new home on wheels.

This morning I was on Campers Corner – Let’s Go Camping Show with Raymond Brody. Mom and Dad listened to it on the web since the radio show is out of Nashville and Knoxville. Ray read my email that I had sent him.

Since returning to Knoxville in January, I have been listening to your Sunday morning show on WNOX, and I have enjoyed your enthusiasm for camping. Now I am about to go on my first RV trip—a four month long trip the east and Gulf coasts. I am nervous about it as I am going alone.

Your radio show keeps inspiring me. Each week I listen to you talk to people who share your energy and passion about RV camping. I want to share my stories, inspiring baby-boom era women who may be considering the idea of RVing, but need a little encouragement.

I am an author, promoting my first print-on-demand book, The Last Voyage of the Cosmic Muffin. In June, I am headed out in my parents’ cruiser, a twenty year old Toyota Sunrader.

I like to propose that I while I am on my RV trip, I call your show every week or two to share an adventure or interesting RV experience with your female listeners that will inspire them to get out there with that Let’s Go Camping spirit. And yes, I would like to promote my book too, which is about sailing across the Pacific in a 40 sailboat—just me and the captain (yes, I am more nervous about the RV trip than the voyage, and I had never done anything like that before, either).

And tonight….I can’t believe I am doing this. When I was eighteen I decided to ride my bike across country instead of going to college or getting a job. My parents’ supported this venture, although I know my grandmother was horrified at the thought of her oldest granddaughter riding her bike down the road. She must have thought my mother was crazy to let me go.

I never made it, but for a couple of weeks I peddled my butt off across Vermont, down into Massachusetts. Not being to geographically aware of western Mass, I naively picked the route over the Berkshires where the highest mountain, Mt Greylock, is located. It would not have been any easier if I had stuck to Vermont.

The first night I checked into a little bed and breakfast. Cost me four dollars. I pulled four one dollar bills from my hip pocket and handed them to the keeper. They were as limp as a dish rag after Thanksgiving dinner. The next day I made the summit, pushing my bike up the road. At the top was a tavern where I ordered a coke and a hot dog. Famished, thirsty and looking very much like I shoved a boulder up a mountain, one of the local patrons offered to buy the snack for me. I said yes. Everyone in there thought I was running away from home, as I liked more like fourteen than eighteen.

I believe if I had too, I could still ride my bike to the coast, although I am hardly eighteen. Forty-four years later, the RV makes a lot more sense.

Only God know what lies ahead of me during the next four months. I pray to be safe and bold.