Pilgrim's Progress and The Blood Sacrifice: Castor to Perth

August 25, 2010

Before we had gone to bed the night before, I had taken an anti-histamine. In our haste to find a campsite, I had traipsed through a patch of stinging nettles, and my entire leg was on fire. Although our little field was situated between every major transportation artery, I slept like a rock. Not even the heavy passenger liners flying low overhead could rouse me from my slumber. It might have something to do with the anti-histamine, but it could also have something to do with having ridden just under 200 miles in three days. I was exhausted.

Packing up quickly, we loaded our panniers onto our bikes. We're still a little nervous wild camping, and I was just waiting for an angry farmer to come in and kick us off. Once we were packed away, we stood in the middle of the field under a ray of sunshine and ate our rice pudding standing up.

Fed and ready to go, we followed cycle route number one toward Queensferry. Although we had cycled a long way through Edinborough and the residential areas surrounding the major city the day before, our little campsite was just the first of dozens of farm fields. I love that about European cities. Even the ones that sprawl don't sprawl for too many miles, and before you know it, you're in the countryside again.

A very long bridge connects Edinborough to Inverkeithing, and unfortunately, the cycle path on our side of the road was closed down for maintenance. We clutched our brakes and bumped down two flights of stairs, and on the other side, we grit our teeth and hefted them back up (actually, Joshua hefted them up; I just sort of had my hand lightly on the back wheel.)

When we got to the top, a unicyclist in a yellow jersey was just boarding the long bridge. He shouted down from his perch, commiserating with us and saying, 'Edinborough's tricky!' Ha. I bet it's a whole lot trickier with just one wheel. Following the mad man, we watched as he swung his right arm to gain momentum up the arched bridge. Every muscle in his body seemed to be working, and at his maximum effort, he was cruising along at the exact same pace as the two of us - right about 9 miles an hour.

On the other side of the bridge, we realized that our cycle route regained its path back on the right hand side of the road, and once again, we banged our bikes down the stairs and hefted them back up again.

The cycle into Inverkeithing was mostly downhill, and when we got there, we found a cycle shop where we could stock up on innertube patches (we've already run through them all). Heading uphill, we pedaled out of Inverkeithing, past the unicyclist in his yellow jersey, and up into the hills of Dumfermline, an Edinborough suburb. Newly built and taking cues from the most cookie-cutter gated communities in the U.S., Dumfermline was an ugly, characterless place with little going for it. All the construction was so new that even the light and electrical posts where brand new, and we lost our cycle route because none of the blue and red stickers had been replaced.

Finally, we found our path again and we climbed into Townhill and then the hilly stretch into Kincross. The wilds of Scotland are different than everything we've seen so far; whereas most of England is either farmland, mountain reserves, city, or Moor, Scotland has forests of deciduous and conifer, and along the road, big beautiful purple flowers grow tall and straight, their stems loaded with fluffy white seeds that blow in the wind.

At our summit, we looked down into a broad valley where our lunchstop, Kincross, lay. We descended slowly, squeezing our brakes the entire time. After Joshua's fall, we're both a bit more nervous, and I sneak glances behind me every 500 feet or so.

On the valley floor, we cycled the last couple of miles into Kincross, and when we spied a food store, we stopped for lunch. Coincidentally, our unicyclist friend and his buddy in an Enterprise Rent-a-Van where at the very same rest stop. While we were tucking into a meal of oatcakes, brie, apples, and crisps, he was loading up on Ibuprofen. Apparently, he intends to break the record from Lands End to John O'Groats on a unicycle, and if he keeps up his pace, he'll do just that. Unfortunately, he knee was acting up, but he was committed to plugging through until Saturday, his expected date of arrival. He's been cycling for seven days now, and in total, it will take him 10. He cycles 70 miles a day, and from the looks of it, his friend in the rental van meets him every ten or so for some water and food. Obviously, his unicycle can't have any panniers :)

Back on the road again, we headed North towards Perth on country lanes and eventually on a cycle path alongside a busy A road. The views were very pretty, and although there were a few ups, there were just as many long, nice downhills, and we covered the last 20 miles into Perth easily. For the last few miles, I was riding behind Joshua, and I couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous he looks. Now that we don't have front panniers, both of us have an extra pannier strapped to the back of our bikes, and Joshua tucks his shed layers and our extra food inside the bungees and straps. The whole effect makes him look like a mini-caravan or a bike-bus. I started singing, 'he's a brick house,' and since I don't really know the rest of the words to the song, I just made them up. It wasn't very poetic, but we were laughing all the way into Perth.

Just before we entered Perth, we passed the unicyclist again, and while I kept heading downhill, Joshua stopped to chat again. Apparently, the man thought we were funny because we weren't taking our journey very seriously. While he grit his teeth through miles of A road, we swing here and there, taking long lunches and stopping for photo ops. When Joshua asked him how his knee was doing, the man told him that it had swollen to nearly twice its size, but he wasn't stopping. When Joshua recounted the story, he laughed at this part and said, 'I mean, yeah. You can always get a new knee.' Which, I guess, is true.

In Perth, we went searching for the public library for internet access and an outlet for my computer. We figured we may as well spend our free hours in a dry, warm place with electricity. Before we found it, we stopped to wave at the unicyclist as he pedaled by, and when an elderly couple oohed and aahed over his bike, we told them that he intended to set the record from Lands End to John O'Groats. They asked us what we were doing, and we explained that we were taking a somewhat more leisurely approach to the same journey, and the man shared with us that he had also completed the journey in 1959. They wished us good luck, and we kept searching for the library. When we finally got to the big, beautiful building, we discovered that it closed at 5, and we only had 40 minutes left. I plugged in my computer immediately and hunkered down to write, while Joshua hopped on the internet. When the speakers announced that the library was closing in five minutes, I realized that I had neglected to actually turn on the outlet I was using for my computer, and I had not charged it at all.

Feeling thwarted by our library experience, we headed to Cafe Nero. While I drank a big cup of mint tea and finished my posting, Joshua went out in search of food and an outdoor store. I wrote for about an hour, and when Joshua came back, he came back crabby. Apparently, Perth had denied him in every endeavor. Everything in the whole city closes at 5. To console himself, he bought a huge slice of brownie drenched in whip cream and listened while I read my post out loud.

When we headed back outside, I discovered that Joshua hadn't been exaggerating. While the city had been bustling just an hour ago, now - at a quarter to 7 - it was dead. All the shops were closed, and no one was walking about. There weren't even any cars on the road. On a Wednesday evening! Where do they all go?

Outside of Perth, we passed the Scone Palace. We know that it's a very big deal, but we're also not really sure why. Something about Kings receiving their crowns, Macbeth, and tasty pastries. Oh well. It was closed.

After a few more miles of cycling, we hopped off on a small B road, hoping to find a campsite for the night. While Joshua spied a nice forest, I had to veto. There were all sorts of old unused chicken coops and things deep in the undergrowth, and it was super creepy. I am not about to be kidnapped by some demented Scottish farmer.

We cycled a little farther down the road, but when we didn't find anything, we had to turn back and find a little patch of woods across from the creepy forest. In all honesty, I found this little patch of woods just as creepy, and here to, there was also an old unused chicken coop, but I knew that Joshua was getting antsy, and it was about to rain.

We set up our tent on lumpy ground, and I immediately burrowed inside. Sitting inside our tiny tent, we ate a bag of uncooked stir fry and a punnet of strawberries. Before we went to bed, I finished writing, and then I stuffed earplugs into my ears so that I couldn't hear anything if it went 'bump' in the night. As I turned on my side, I held Joshua's hand, and I refused to think about all the scary chicken coops and crazy Scottish farmers outside.

August 24, 2010

When I was a little girl, I had a children's book entitled Pilgrim's Progress. Although I suspect that this slim, illustrated volume is in fact an abridged version of some epic classic, I'm embarrassed to admit that I am unaware of this book in its larger context. All I know about is the colorful children's version.

After a day like yesterday, I've begun to see our cycle journey as its own little Pilgrim's Progress. Along the way, we meet beggars and saints, and with every turn, we find a new task or obstacle. What's a journey? If I'm really obtuse, I suppose the answer is - simply - the stretch from point A to point B. But what really makes up the journey? The more specific answer is two bicycles, two people, and one long, long stretch of road. The word, 'journey,' seems a very metaphorical word to me. It's one of those terms loaded with archetype, connotation, and history, and in a way, when you label something a 'journey' I think people already have a sense of what you might mean.

I'm sure my mom would ask me what I'd like to learn from my journey. She'd ask me what I was looking for, what I hope to find, and what I've already found. I veer away from questions like these for the same reasons that the word, 'spirituality,' makes me cringe. I like things to be simple and concrete. I don't like the idea of spending a lot of time in my head; especially when I'm pretty sure that all the things that really matter are right in front of me. Give me the option of heaven or earth, head or body, faith or action... I choose the latter. When it comes to religion, I barely tolerate lines like 'store up your treasures in heaven,' but other lines like 'we are Gods' hands and feet' ring true. I'd rather do than talk about it, and most of the time, when I try to put words to the deeper stuff - the reasons why I do the things I do - it has no poetry. They say the unexamined life is not worth living, but I think maybe they're wrong. Leave the examining to those who examine. I'll do the living.

So, if I'm forcing myself to get all metaphysical on you, then I'd guess I'd have to say that I chose to make this journey because I wanted to accomplish something. After two years of feeling like I accomplished approximately nothing, I wanted to be able to stand at John O'Groats, face South, and say, 'yup. I did that.' If I follow the same line of reasoning, I suppose then what I'm looking for is a little bit a confidence. As for what I've already found... Well, you've read my blog. I know that's an answer like that would irritate my mom. It's too simple, and it's not really making that metaphysical leap that she's looking for. Even now, when I'm asking all the questions, I still resist the answer. I don't want to make it that complicated. We biked. We ate. We saw. We slept. We woke up, and we did it again.

But like I said, this all does feel a little bit like Pilgrim's Progress. No matter my religious apathy or my theological agnosticism, I still approach things like they are a test. I've got serious pioneer blood, and if there's one thing that I almost instinctively believe in, it's hard work. Don't quit. The greater the difficulty, the greater the accomplishment Workin' till your fingers bleed is next to godliness. That sort of thing. Don't worry, after two years in New Orleans, I know that hard work isn't the gospel, and sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can never get out, but ancestry and origins are a difficult thing to shake.

In the end of Pilgrim's Progress, I think the Pilgrim was successful if he proved his mettle. He surmounted his obstacles with grace and ease. He showed proper gratitude towards the saints, and he bestowed kind words and good deeds upon the beggars. If the journey did not reveal some great flaw of character - the propensity towards selfishness, thievery, or laziness - the Pilgrim was rewarded with treasure and recognition all through the land, etc. The metaphor being: Pilgrim withstood the test. Pilgrim made it into the gates of heaven.

Well, I'm pretty sure that John O'Groats isn't heaven. I'm also certain that I will not receive fame and fortune upon my arrival. This isn't getting me points or rewards (ok, bragging rights, but still...). I didn't do this for a good cause. I just did it. There was enjoyment, and I got to see more of Britain than most travellers do. We traveled cheaply, we got to see all of our family and friends who live here. Our legs got strong, and we got to spend time together. It appealed to my extremist, been-there-done-that sensibilities, and we got to meet all sorts of interesting people. The landscape was beautiful and sometimes it was ugly, but mostly, it was superb.

Was it worth the rain, the hills, the sore knees, the stiff backs, the smelly, soggy clothes and shoes, the greasy hair, the days without showers, the falls, the cuts, the bruises, the worry, the traffic, the gravel roads, and all the popped tires? Well... Yes. No journey is without its difficulties, and Lands End to John O'Groats is far from the exception. Just the same, I'm not even done, and I already know the answer: yes, yes, yes. It was worth it. It is worth it. It could piss and shit and scream hills for the next six days of cycling, and I know the answer would still be yes (knock on wood, please).

Clearly, Joshua's fall got me in a philosophical state of mind. I was cycling up that hill, thinking of all the horrible scenarios of what could have happened to him, and I was thinking, 'what the fuck are we doing here? Nothing is worth losing Joshua over. Absolutely nothing.' And you know what? It's true. Nothing would be worth losing Joshua over. That's why he's never allowed to take up mountain climbing, go paragliding, or buy a motorcycle. With other things, though, you weigh the risk. We could get hurt. Either one of us at any time or in any place. We could get hurt doing anything. We hope that we're never made to regret our risks, but we take them still. So here's my philosophy: we won't live life right on the edge; we won't tempt fate. Instead, we'll live life ten feet from the edge. Just close enough so we can hold hands and enjoy the view together. We'll be Pilgrims together, and in the end, it won't matter if we make it to heaven.

The morning after Joshua's fall, we woke up and broke camp. It had finally stopped raining, but our little nest in the trees was still dripping. For our first ten miles, we rode through hilly countryside and steered our bikes directly into a headwind. It was serious. Our mph went down to 6 miles per hour.

Near the coast again, we descended into Pease Bay, and we were treated to stunning views of red rock cliffs plunging into the surf. Over the next hill, we passed an enormous power plant, and on the other side, we found a public toilet station to fill up our water bottles. After a few more miles on route 76, I popped a tire. When we took of the tire to investigate, we discovered that the bounce that I had been experiencing for the past few days was the shredded sidewall of the outer tire. The innertube popped because it had finally poked through the outer tire. We changed the tube and discussed our options.

An exposed innertube won't last long over bumpy terrain, and even on the road, it's got a pretty short expiration date. The town of Dunbar should be a couple of miles away, but the last man we talked to said that the closest cycle shops were either in Berwick or Edinborough. The chances of them having a cycle shop seemed pretty slim. What Dunbar did have, though, was a rail station, and though it galled us to consider cutting out 30 miles of our journey, we didn't have much choice. We loaded the panniers back onto my bike and headed for Dunbar. We planned to ride into the city and see if there was a tourist office. If there was, then we'd ask them if they knew of a closer cycle shop. If not, we were headed for Edinborough by rail.

Less than a mile after we repaired the tire, we were entering Dunbar when I saw a man cycling in the opposite direction. When he got close enough, I yelled across the street, asking him if he knew where the closest cycle shop was. Stopping, he asked us what we needed, and I explained our dilemma. Thinking he might have a spare tire in his garage down the hill, he suggested we follow him to his house.

I think both Joshua and I were nervous that 'down the hill' meant 'to hell and gone,' but true to his word, his house was less than 200 yards behind us. Propping up our bikes against a storage container in his yard, we followed him into his make-shift cycle garage. To get in, the man had to remove two bikes and a tandem with a child's seat attached to the back. Inside, there were multiple tires, other bikes, bicycle cleats, and a bunch of stuff which I cannot identify because I'm a biking ignoramus. Clearly, this was a massive stroke of good luck. I could not have asked a better equipped or more generous cyclist (in Pilgrim's Progress, Rupert is the Saint).

To change the tire, Rupert invited us into his home and introduced us to his wife and daughter, Naomi. While we sat at their table, they made us tea while Rupert changed my tire. As though that weren't enough, they also served us a plate of fig rolls and oat cakes. Fairly stuttering over our gratitude, we asked if we could offer them anything in return - money, a day's hard labour (just kidding) - but they politely refused, and instead, we talked about cycling. Rupert's other daughter sometimes races in a velodrome, and when Joshua and I sucked in our breath and said we thought it might be scary, they agreed. I said that maybe it's scarier to watch than to do it, but Rupert's wife said, no. It's just as scary to do it. This led us to a brief conversation about fixed wheels, and when I looked at them like they were speaking another language, they explained that a fixed wheel means that you must keep pedaling - there is no coasting - and when you want to stop, you need to first slow your pedal strokes and then stop pedaling. Oh, I said, like little kid's bikes where you pedal backwards to stop? No, Rupert explained, that's a back-pedal brake.

In terms of cycling knowledge, I was out of my league. While Joshua and Rupert chatted about cycle routes and wild camping, I talked to Rupert's wife about teaching. She teaches too, and Scottish schools have been back in session for almost two weeks already. In the mornings, she rides into school with her daughters on the tandem we'd seen outside. It's their pedal-powered school bus. When I remarked on their many bikes, she said, 'we tried counting how many bikes we have, but then we ran out of numbers.'

Finishing our tea in mugs that said, 'I'd rather be cycling,' we thanked them profusely and went back outside to put my wheel back on. While Joshua reloaded my panniers, I dug out an arty calling card and wrote them a quick thank you note. Thank you to the most generous and kind Trail Angels ever!

Luck like that puts us in a really good mood, and as we pedaled through Dunbar, we exclaimed over the solid and beautiful stone buildings, the bit of blue sky ahead, and our fabulous biking trail. Rupert had gone onto the internet to check out the forecast, and by the looks of it, we just might skirt around the band of rain headed over Edinborough. (When he'd asked us if we checked the weather forecast often, we said no. We pretty much figure it will say something like, 'intermittent showers,' 'bands of rain,' or 'sunny intervals.') Things were definitely looking up.

In Haddington, we stopped at Aldi's to buy a little bit of food for lunch, and then we ate our oatcakes and Wendsleydale on a stone bridge over a river. Finished with our snack, we headed back onto cycle route 76 headed for Edinborough.

On a stretch of graveled path, Joshua popped his back tire. Trying to keep our spirits up, we paused to change it. It was nearly 4 o'clock and we had cycled a little over 30 miles. We hoped that Edinborough would be less than 20 miles away. Back on the road again, we passed pretty countryside with lots of rolling hills and more stony villages. Descending from the hills, we met a coastal path, and from the road, we could see Edinborough tucked into the bay.

Figuring Edinborough couldn't be that far away if we could see it, we pedaled through suburbs along the River Esk. Nearly losing the cycle route, we found it again with some lucky guessing, and near the end of the river path, we met up again with cycle route number one. While the new cycle sign said, 'Edinborough 5 miles,' we tried not to despair. Although we had already cycled about 48 miles, five miles wasn't too much more, and after that, it was only 10 more miles across the bridge and into Inverkeithing, where we hoped to find our next campsite.

We're not sure if Edinborough is a floating island or if Scottish miles are three or four times longer than English miles, but the signs into Edinborough said, 'Edinborough 5 miles' for about another five miles. When we finally arrived in the city (through a really creepy, really long tunnel), we paused at a Sainsbury's to buy a bottle of water and some chocolate. While I waited for Joshua to come back, I sat on a bench next to our bikes, eavesdropping on American tourists talking about their how 'cool' the Edinborough festival is.

Just before Joshua came back outside, a German tourist came over to ask me about our journey. He wanted to know the usual - where we were going, where we had come from, where we are from, and where we sleep, and I answered him slowly, the way I prefer Spanish-speakers to talk when I'm asking them questions. After a bit, his two travel buddies came over and one of the women had impeccable, American-accented English. She took over asking questions and translating some of what we said for her friends, and then, when she discovered that we would be traveling to Turkey, India, and Nepal before we returned back to America in December, she said, 'you're lucky. Not many American's get to do that.'

I'm not entirely sure what she meant by that, but we agreed, saying that we had saved a lot of money in the past two years of working. I don't think she was suggesting that we were spoiled rotten trust-fund babies, though. I think she was just commenting on how few Americans take off large chunks of time to travel around the world. And once she said it, I starting thinking about it. It's true; not many Americans I know travel the world. Most of us get jobs and then work like hell to have a home, raise kids, and give them all the things we never had. We work so hard that there's little time for play, and even when there is, traveling is rarely even considered as an option. People might go on vacations to other places in the U.S. or maybe - if they're feeling really adventurous - to Mexico or the Caribbean, but Europe? Africa? The Middle East? Asia? Do they even speak English there?

Ok. That might sound a bit harsh, but I don't mean it to be. I know a lot of people who would never consider traveling in a place where they don't speak the language (and lets be honest, for Americans, that's pretty much anywhere where English isn't spoken). In general, I think there's a lot of fear. Don't people get kidnapped and held hostage and then have their heads cut off in far away places? Don't they get malaria and amoebic dysentary? What happens if you get to a village and no one speaks English and you don't speak whatever they're speaking? Do you go hungry? Do you sleep on the street?

Lesley asked us if we were nervous to travel in India, and Joshua confessed that he does get a little anxious when he's going to foreign countries where he doesn't speak the language. Lesley laughed, saying that was probably healthy, and then she told a story about her and Linda pantomiming to a village of Spaniards that they wanted beer, food, and a bed to sleep in. When she was telling us the story, it struck me that this is why I'm not as afraid: I know that there are other ways to communicate, and I know that mostly, the world isn't as big bad and scary as we sometimes make it out to be. (I know it can be really big bad and scary, but people are good, too, and you don't have to look as far as you might think to find goodness.) Anyway, I know these things because I've been traveling, but a lot of people don't know, and so they never do. They never travel, and they never find out. We're lucky because we got good jobs, we saved money, and we took the risk to take time off. We're lucky because we had already traveled and we knew we wanted to travel more. We're lucky because we've found more of the good in people than the big bad and scary, and that goodness has made us feel safe enough to explore new places where we don't speak the same language.

Once we had finished talking to the Germans (the American-accented one really looked like Franke Potente, but I think that might be just because she had a fun haircut and she was German), we spent the next few miles biking through the center of Edinborough and hunting for the little blue and red signs that had a number one.

As the light began to fall, we pedaled like mad through the city, joking that we might just have to pitch our tent in the middle of a residential park or soccer field. After a few more miles out of the city, we passed a really, really fancy neighborhood, and on the other side, we spied our first farm field. At 66 miles, we were ready to call it a day, and we pitched our tent in the middle of a wheat field with an interstate running along the side, a railroad behind it, and an airport so close that planes flew low overhead about every 10 minutes.

We were so tired, we hardly cared, and by 9:15, we had our tent set up. For dinner, we cooked tortellini over the campstove and smothered it in pesto. We ate a basket of ripe plums, and when we had finished, we munched on a chocolate bar. For the first time, we crawled into bed, freezing, and fell asleep without even attempting to read or write.

August 23, 2010

I woke up early. During the night, I had lain awake, tormented by nightmares of devilish Englishmen ala Deliverance. By 7:15, we had broken camp and we were already on our way into Castor. The sky was grey and cloudy, but the low morning light over the Northumberland Coast was lovely. We biked into the tourist office in Castor to use the toilets and fill up our water bottles, and then we hopped onto the cycle route number 1, taking us North.

By noon, we had covered nearly 30 miles of rolling terrain. Although the route had taken us slightly off the coast, the countryside was still unbelievably beautiful. Beautiful or not, the rain let loose just outside of Holy Island, and when we saw a sign offering a shortcut to Berwick-upon-Tweed, we took it. It was a shame to miss one of my favorite places in England, but it wouldn't have been enjoyable in the freezing, pouring rain anyway.

The next few miles were extremely bumpy, and we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves. We passed a couple riding mountain bikes with panniers, and we all agreed that it was cold and the trail was too bumpy for its own good. Just outside of Berwick, the rain let up, and we decided to enjoy the lovely cliff and seaside view with a soggy lunch of bread, cheese, and humous.

When the sky started to sprinkle again, we took our cue and cycled downhill into Berwick. Huddling under a bridge, Joshua plotted our next move while I went into the Spar to load up on food for dinner. Back on the road, we prepared ourselves for another ten miles. On the other side of Berwick, we found our next cycle route, number 76, and we headed into the hills. Berwick is very close to the border, and after a couple of miles of climbing, we finally crossed the border into Scotland. We paused for a photo op in front of the welcome sign, and once again, we headed into the hills.

Ok. Let me preface this whole part by saying that I have sought Joshua's permission to write about this in the blog. He said that it was ok under two conditions: 1) that I entitled it 'The Blood Sacrifice,' and 2) that I communicate to all of our family and friends that he is ok, and there has been no lasting ailment, which is true.

On our descent into Eyemouth, I passed Joshua and cruised nearly two miles into the small village of Aynton. At the bottom, I waited for Joshua to catch up. After a couple of minutes of waiting, I turned around and anxiously looked up the hill, and when he didn't come down after a couple more minutes, I started heading back up. The further I cycled up hill, the more and more worried I became. We never ride more than a hundred meters apart, and we've yet to be split up. After 10 minutes, I started shouting his name, and then I started crying. I didn't want to imagine what had happened to him, but somehow, I couldn't quite convince myself that he had just popped a tire. When I saw a car coming down the road, I stopped them and asked them if they had seen another cyclist. To my relief, they had, and they reassured me that he was just changing a flat.

The panic didn't quite subside until I saw him another ten minutes up the road, and when I did finally see him, I started crying in earnest. Those ten minutes I had spent thinking that he was dead or seriously hurt had really, really upset me, and I needed him to hug me and tell me it was ok. He did, but as he was holding me, he said, 'do you want to see what happened?' Confused, I watched through my tears as he pulled down his cycling shorts. On his hip, he had a softball-sized, angry red abrasion. I started crying harder. On his leg, he had a gash on his shin, a cut on his ankle, and road rash on his knee. His brand new rain jacket was torn at the wrist and scraped all the way up to the shoulder. His elbow had an abrasion, and he picked up his cycling gloves to show me where the pads of the hands had worn away. By now, I was nearly sobbing, and he asked me if I was ok to see the scariest part. When I nodded my head, he picked up his helmet and showed me the dent.

Apparently, as he was going about 20 miles an hour down the hill, he heard a snap, his handlebars swung in, and then he saw the ground coming at him. He was quick enough to pull his foot out of the clips, but he fell into the middle of the road. The culprit was the front pannier rack. It had always been rickety and cheap to begin with, but as he was going down the hill, the rack snapped, the bar swung into the wheel and through the spokes, and then it threw him.

By the time I had got up to Joshua, he had already assessed the damage. Although his front wheel has a slight bent and some of the spokes are slightly askew, the bike ran relatively smoothly. A nice Scottish gentleman had seen the crash and stopped to offer help. When Joshua stood up, assessed his injuries, and found himself to be alive and well-functioning, the man said he would return in twenty minutes to see if he could help with the bike (he needed to bring his ailing pickup home). The front panniers were gone, and once I had stopped sobbing and fretting over all of Joshua's war wounds, we took one pannier each and loaded them on top of our back two. Now, we look like serious cycling vagabonds with back-heavy panniers that call to mind caravans and buses.

The nice Scottish gentleman came back just as we were about to descend the hill, and although he offered to take us up the hill or into town, Joshua assured him that he and the bike would be fine. The man looked a bit dubious, especially when he looked at my tear-streaked face, but eventually, he wished us luck and sent us on our way. We descended the hill at about 12 miles an hour, and then we cycled the last couple of miles into Eyemouth.

A couple more miles out of Eyemouth, we found a forest alongside a field and burrowed into the undergrowth to set up our tent. It began to rain, but we were so far under the trees, we only experienced intermittent wet splats while we stowed away our stuff for the night. Sitting in the tent, we ate our dry dinner of bread and cheese, and then, absolutely weary, we crawled into our sleeping bags. Just before we went to sleep, I made Joshua suffer through an antiseptic cleaning and antibiotic annointing trial, and when we had finished, I hugged him, told him I love him and that he's never, ever allowed to get hurt again.