If fishing on Lake Erie was a brief interlude, that was all it was. Other than that, it will have been over 139 days since my last adventure. I'm overdue and the Gold Wing needs to spread its feathers.
To be clear, this is not an adventure that is all about crossing state lines or burning up fuel and rear tires in the quest for miles. My family is getting together for a few days and there were a few other things on the "some day" list that I'm looking forward to getting through.
In the extended family, I'm not the planner. But somehow I ended up planning more of this than I am comfortable with when I think about it. Hopefully the rental house is good (enough). Hopefully there is enough to do to keep the nephews entertained. Hopefully there is enough to keep the siblings entertained. Hopefully there is no other implication of duties left undone.
Over the last few weeks I've tried to time all those things which need to get done. Getting the lawn mowed. New tires and maintenance preparation for the bike. My old, faithful Tourmaster Transition jacket had lost its waterproofing after somewhere far north of 100,000 miles so I had to replace it; it was brutally hard throwing the old one away after all this time and I penned a tribute to it that I do not believe was accepted once submitted. So it goes.
I will occasionally put the date (not including the year) into Google Photos and see what comes up. Since many of my adventures take place late summer into early fall, the pictures have begun to show past road trips. I probably save too many pictures, but even seeing the more mundane shots can be fun.
"Memory is insubstantial. Things keep replacing it. Your batch of snapshots will both fix and ruin your memory of your travels, or your childhood, or your children's childhood. You can't remember anything from your trip except this wretched collection of snapshots." - Annie Dillard
But Annie Dillard is wrong on this - not that memory can be transient, but that what is remembered isn't always the big grand moments, but often the small ones that are sometimes recalled and replayed. No pictures or written description will ever fully tell the Tale of an adventure, but pictures can be the gateway drug to memory, sometimes even to nostalgia.
Wile the Lake Erie fishing trip was only a few weeks ago, the scene of a mother and son eating their $0.50 ice cream cones in McDonalds has replayed in my head. There is no reason for this other than they looked so placid in that brief mid-summer moment.
"We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives." - Robert Pirsig
Things are wrapping up at work. I'll likely be bouncing off the walls this weekend before finally heading out. But it almost seems imminent at this point.
No comments:
Post a Comment