Then this happened

On my desk is a pile of papers. Actually, there are two piles. I'm sorry, there are really three. On the left side is a pile of papers that are kind of important, but not so important that I could not put them in the pile on the left. The ones right in front of the keyboard, those are the outstanding bills, one is a car payment, the other a cable bill for $2.24, seems like a waste, but there it is. The paper on the right, those are the important papers, legal stuff, a will that is getting dusty, doctors papers, prescriptions and notations, important things, and then today, more important papers came in the mail, so I opened the envelopes, deemed them important, and put them in the pile. Then I realized, having a pile of important papers that just sits there and does not get my attention does not really mean much, so I knew something must be done.

I had a salad for dinner and thought about my paper work problem. Some of these forms could be life changing, I needed to look them over. Some were just very important, things I should read and understand, but since I had not read them, I probably had failed to understand just how important they probably are.

Many years ago, when I was a young reporter, I was always looking for human interest stories. As much as I liked a good murder or car crash, I had a real love to finding quirky stories and letting people let their freak flag fly.

I met this dumpy Jewish teacher in the Catskills of New York. I was a radio reporter, about to stumble upon what would be the biggest story in the country and one that would last for months and occupy my life for a long time, but until then, I did stories on the people who race pigs and a blind woman who was a bird expert, go figure. Then the short dumpy Jewish man started talking to me at a public meeting and at some point while he was yammering on about some social injustice or another, he mentioned how he had just returned from riding his bicycle across the country.

At that point I had been riding a cycle around the Catskills just because I had an excess amount of energy, but something in this guys zeal for the ride, how he described it in real terms, how at some points he hated it, and a few times he was determined to quit. In the end, he made it. I did the story, is was nothing special, but since that chance meeting, somewhere in my mind I have harbored the plan to ride a cycle across this country.

As things happen, the biggest news story of the time stretched through the summer and I had all sorts of fun with it, and every chance I got to get on my bike, off on the back roads of the Catskills I would go, because in my mind, at some point, me and that bike were going to hit the road and ride back to the west coast.

As luck would have it, around September, the biggest news story in the country had been proven to be fabricated, which meant all that time following silliness and idiocy was wasted, except in the overtime I had earned and the extra income I made selling crappy interviews to the New York Post. About a week after that circus left town, my all news radio station changed format one morning and just like that I was a free man, with money in the bank, a bike and nothing to keep me from leaving. So I left.

I packed up what I would need, which was basically nothing. I put the bike in my car and I drove to New York City to spend the night with my best friend, and then the next day I would ride out of the city and across the nation. I parked my car near my friends apartment, walked to his place, rang the bell, he answered, he walked back to my car with me because I was going to store a couple of boxes of my important stuff at his place, and in the time it took to walk to his door and ring his bell, someone had broken the back window of my car, removed the boxes and my bike and disappeared. All this in broad daylight.

Change of plans.

So, one of the things I realized recently, while I was staring at the vast piles of important papers on my desk is this, I need to ride a bike across this great nation.

Soon.