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davidbilmas

25 years old

brooklyn, ny

Male

About

this past summer i rode my bike through rural oregon with two friends. i mailed my bike in advance and reserved myself to being pretty serious about it.

my two friends and much of the rest of the group were weighed down by their rental-hybrids.

now, most days i had no problem finding my way. the last, longest (and hottest day) would have to be the exection, sure.

we began the morning in dovre, which is almost a mountain top just slightly inland. what i will argue was our warmest night (not counting our nights indoors) but it still required that the three of us share a two-person tent. money was tight this year and all i could afford was a sleeping bag that was nothing more than a flannel blanket. this was all in the interest of conserving space.

that morning when i woke i bundled up in thermals under bike pants and volunteered to stick around at the end of the line. once my end caught up with the second end, however, i jetted and braced myself for a 27 mile downhill. being remotely familiar with the road from a previous ride and willing to test out the crouch-approach to speed...i almost got over my fears of going downhill.

i passed by most of the group and had a little trouble around a construction site.

my directions told me to make a turn, but seeing a sign that pointed more ways than there were to go, i kept riding.

and kept riding.

it suddenly occured to me that i was hopelessly lost.

i was able to flag down a christian girl in a focus who told me that she had only moved to the area two years prior and was not yet familiar with all of the town's five roads yet. i got a similar answer from a biker (as in motorcycle..not bikecycle)

the one day i actually had been given a two-way radio i decided to use it. i heard messages coming in loud and clear. i tried to respond back.

'GREETINGS FROM THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!'

i kept checking my cell phone for service. i got to the highest altitude possible: a small rock. i noticed one small bar of service and fumbled to get the contact info list my friend had compiled that morning.

who better to call in this situation than vladislave; the team's organizer and possessor of the GPS system.

it was ringing

'hello..thank you for calling the portland peace and justice office phone. nobody is...'

i've known this guy for over a year and he gives me his office phone number. thanks a ton.

i resort back to the two-way radio and keep trying to urgently reach the homebase

and that's when i hear it:

vladislav: dan..caitlin..are you still around? caitlin: yep. we're about ten minutes away vladislav: ok, great! that's everyone!

and i dropped the two-way. what if i didn't exist at all?

i started to get hotter in the sun and didn't even bother to find a private area to strip of the thermals; there was nobody around and if there was..they sure as hell didn't know how to get to where i was.

i strongly considered retiring to one of the vineyards i saw along the way and start a new life fermenting my own brand of wine.

but i was too determined to correct this blip in the time-space continuum.

i had to return to that sign that pointed up, down, diagonal, and everyway it shouldn't have pointed. i took my chances and rode up that hill. past an apple orchard and past a school. as the buildings started to become more dense i could feel myself getting close. i regained service on my cell and redialed the portland peace office just to laugh on the machine.

a victory laugh.

i reached the ice cream parlour only five minutes after dan and caitlin (having gone twenty miles out of my way)

reaching into the van to get a much-needed drink of water as well as my shorts, i lowered my bag, containing several sewing needles, right into my crotch.

fuck.

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