[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It\u2019s now the third week of the official Complete Upending of my Entire Life.<\/p>\n
Note: This is a draft from 5 weeks ago that I never published because I absolutely despise sorting through images and formatting them into WordPress and so now I’m just putting it up. Sorry.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The comfort I\u2019ve been finding in large, corporate chains is surprising. I am not a person who really enjoyed shopping at chains Before, on the contrary, I found going to Wal-Mart disorienting and sort of depressing. My chain store experiences fixated mostly on the mundane excess (why can I buy a fresh mango in Chicago in February for 99 cents?), homogenization of culture and economic oppression of the employees of these businesses and the community at large. Now that I\u2019m constantly moving from place to place, none of which places I belong to or know, these same corporate spaces that used to trouble me are an incredible comfort. I know exactly what to expect at a Wal-Mart or a Casey\u2019s – no matter where it is. Kevin and I have developed an unspoken routine where we meet up at the Casey\u2019s in whatever town is at the midpoint of our day because we know that we will always find free WiFi and well maintained, single occupancy bathrooms. I think there\u2019s also less shame in sponging off of and existing in these spaces without spending money. I don\u2019t feel bad going into Casey\u2019s to use the bathroom, get water and buy absolutely nothing. Or taking a hobo shower at the Wal-Mart. They\u2019re almost like public parks.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On a more wholesome note, I\u2019ve also developed a routine of going to the public library in every place we land in that has a public library. These also always, always feel at home. I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s just the innate goodness of public libraries and the people who work in them, or my personal history of working in a public library and spending much of my childhood and adolescence doing not work in a public library. Either way, I\u2019m really enjoying it. I got to see one of the original public libraries built by Andrew Carnegie in Fairbury, Nebraska. These were built as part of a campaign in the early 1900\u2019s to build 1,689 public libraries across America. In many places, these were the first public libraries. Say what you want about robber barons – can you fucking imagine Elon Zuckerbezos doing something like that today?[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1629774009481{padding-top: 2em !important;padding-bottom: 2em !important;}”]I\u2019m still trying to wrap my mind around this new existence. Before we left, people kept saying what a crazy thing it was that we were planning and I\u2019d brush it off – thinking nah, there\u2019s nothing special or crazy about two middle class white people taking an extended vacation. Out here – it feels different. We\u2019re existing in this bizarre crossroads of privilege and hardship. On one hand, we are incredibly lucky to be physically healthy and financially stable enough to undertake this trip. We are quite literally living our dream, as unencumbered by the typical burdens of life as we\u2019ve ever been. At the same time, we are also now Actually Homeless. We spend an average of 8ish hours a day doing intense physical activity, acting as beasts of burden to carry ourselves and all of our belongings to wherever we need or want to go. We are completely vulnerable to the elements. We are, of course, able to bail ourselves out of this situation at any time which is what makes this a Vacation and not a thing that\u2019s being done to us. Still though – when I am riding by myself 20 miles from the nearest \u201ctown,\u201d and it starts raining – I\u2019m just a human being who has no real option other than continuing to ride until I find something to shelter under. This is a deeply different existence than anything I\u2019ve experienced before.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It\u2019s now the third week of the official Complete Upending of my Entire Life. Note: This is a draft from 5 weeks ago that I never published because I absolutely despise sorting through images and formatting them into WordPress and so now I’m just putting it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[116],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4204"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4543,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions\/4543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bicyclecanvassing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}