A Call to Action
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here: I’ve fallen mightily behind. My last post, Day 36, includes a description of my approach to Cloughjordan and my stay with Warmshowers host Elaine there. It’s been over a month since then, and I’ve lost track of the days. If I had to guess, today 12/15/2021 is Day 72. That means that for every blog post I’ve made, two full days have passed on this trip.
There are many reasons I fell so behind. The first and largest reason is that cycling exhausts me. Pedaling all day leaves my mind space to wander, and I end each day not just physically, but also mentally exhausted. I want to do nothing more than to relax, whether that be catching up with friends or listening to audio books. The second reason is that when wild camping, I never have power, and I rarely have signal. I need my computer to work, since I find writing without a keyboard a painstaking and frustrating task. My computer’s battery is weak, so writing posts without access to an outlet is essentially impossible as it dies within half an hour otherwise. The third reason is that as I fall ever further behind, the amount of focus I need to catch up is almost overwhelming. It seems counterintuitive, but the further I fall behind, the more acceptable it feels to procrastinate just another day. And the fourth reason is that while I write this blog very much for myself, the people I write about are often my audience. The blog should reflect my experiences as I perceive them truthfully, and I’ve faced a moral quandary where I feel I can’t be entirely truthful with them reading it. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about as I’ve ridden, and I don’t yet really have an answer. I think I’ll just have to keep some things private.
The blog, however, is very important to me. I MUST keep at it. I NEED to record my experiences before they fade in my memory. That’s already happening. I’ve taken notes about each day since my last blog post, but the notes don’t cover everything. Naturally, some detail will be lost by now. I’ll try my best.
Each day that I cycle, when I’m another day behind, I feel an overwhelming urgency to stop and write down what I can. Each unrecorded memory bounces around inside my head like a cacophony waiting to be put to rest. I think about what I have seen so far, and how I will phrase things here, lest I forget them entirely.
But this evening, as I was going to transfer files from my GoPro to my external drive, I discovered that the external drive was missing. Lost! I searched my electronics bag, then my laptop case, then my bike. It wasn’t there. I swallowed a wave of panic and searched everything again, dumping out the contents of all my bags. Nothing. Frantically, I called the hostel I had stayed at in Galway to check their lost and found. I sent messages to the Warmshowers hosts I had stayed with before Galway. Nothing has turned up yet. The external drive contained all of my GoPro footage and photos to this point. I realized I had made a backup of all of those files to a microSD card I had intended to send home. So I plugged that in, relieved to see all the folders there. So I transferred today’s video to the backup, then went back and tried to view earlier recordings. The folders were empty. The microSD card had been corrupted somehow, maybe. When I checked back, even the files I stored just a minute before were gone. This can’t be true! This can’t be true! Except it is. I’ll keep trying, but I’m slowly coming to terms that those files might be gone. It’s a tragedy. My soul hurts. I can’t help but feel anguished.
But it reminds me. Those experiences aren’t gone… yet. I still have them in my memories, at least for now. It gives me the motivation to catch up. I want to have something to look back on for years to come. So I vow to continue.
