Excuse me, Miss, but could you please tell me what country I'm in?

... Guess who's home?
[home as in Indiana University - Wright Dormitory - Room Roughly the Size of a Spacious Penitentiary Cell.]

.... yes, that would be me. :) And, after days of driving, unloading, unpacking (staring blankly at my possessions and trying not to:

1. break down in tears
2. scream obscenities
3. curse the local deity's name
4. spontaneously combust
I have finally ... finally ... gotten settled in. Hall-le-freakin-lujiah.

Perhaps it was the mindset that I shouldn't leave the containment quarters - er, my room - until I'd finished putting everything in its proper place that did me in - by the time 7:30 came around last evening, I had accomplished a great deal of nothing besides nearly taking my own life with the set of bunk beds (but I'm only one person!) and tacking up a picture of my Babci to remind me that murder and mass destruction go against the moral and religious grain. In other words... well... no, you understand.

Mais oui - 7:30 p.m, my mind checked out, and I could do no more. Hence the slight manhandling of my bike as I high-tailed it out of the building and onto the road for some quality me-and-my-masochistic-route-ideas time.

It was a good idea - I came back to my room around 9:30 and actually finished up before 1 a.m! A victory, if I do say so myself.

In any case - I used to think biking was a ... well, to be honest, a soft option. Mind, I consider myself a runner, so if I can't feel my legs literally pounding the pavement, something must be horribly wrong. However - flash back to last summer, when I ran every day and nearly destroyed my right leg... and all the resulting power walking I had to do in order to allow it to properly heal.

The term "dorkwalking" is in itself enough to make a person start to look at other means of beating the tar out of their own body.

Hence: the bike. I realized that it's what you make of it - riding down to WaWa is not an effective work out, but tearing around town and the Valley for an hour or so is. My only problem is I tend to get explorer-crazy when I bike. I see a new, foreign road - next thing you know, I have no idea where the hell I am. It adds to the fun.
"Dani, what the hell did you do for the last 3 hours?!"
"Oh, sorry guys ... [cue gasping breaths and hands clutching chest] I ... I didn't mean to be so late but I... [wheeze wheeze] I ended up in freakin' Canada man - no idea how I got there..."
".... Oh. Well. Did you bring back a souvenir?"

A few days before I came back to school, I veered off onto the back roads of Wilmington, Delaware ... as mentioned above, what we call the Valley. Gorgeous by day, slightly terrifying at night (rows upon rows of fields, winding roads, massive hills... you either get engulfed by a love of nature or swamped by a sudden desire to run away screaming from axe-murderers, aliens, Mel Gibson...) so I decided that a late afternoon escapade would work out. For the first hour it was brilliant - dodging cars that honked lovingly, swearing magnificently as I scaled the hills, pulling up my shorts after they fell down for the nth time - I was having a blast. Then... I turned right on a whim.

Suddenly, the roads are paved differently. The license plates all read Pennsylvania. There is an air of tension and foreboding, as if the daring of a native Delawarean to enter such a place is grounds in itself to send her body back to the First State in a box. Even the nature sounds treacherous - a lizard sunbathing distinctively stuck his tongue out at me as I rode by.

... as you can see, this was Serious.

The further I ride, the more and more I am convinced that I will somehow miss civilization entirely. Whatever signs of humanity I see are obviously inhabited by evil beings who want to see me get tired and finally get off of my bike. Worse, I begin to fear that, by the time I rectify my mistake by either turning around or finally recognizing my surroundings, the sun will sink down in a fiery display and leave me to wind my way home in the dark.

and... even if I survive the dark, I would most certainly not survive the lecture from my parents about riding in the Valley alone, at night, without a helmet.

As you might figure, I was in a pickle.

... until I came out of a tight curve and was deposited at a main road about 2 miles away from my house.




Needless to say, I'm still convinced that I passed unknowingly - even if only briefly - into a twilight zone area of Pennsylvania. Further - the next time I ride here, I may just end up North of the Border if I'm not careful - and I won't rule out Mexico either.

... I'll just bring money in order to retrieve something pretty as proof.