damonjustisntfunny.com

Somewhere between the time I woke up that morning and the time after I cruised down miles of paved red carpet lined with cheering adorers my left ankle (specifically, the Achilles tendon on my left ankle) began feeling a little funny. Not funny “ha ha this tickles” but funny “ouch ouch what the hell is this all about?” And not funny all at once but funny gradually. Funny over a slow enough time period, in fact, that I really didn’t notice it until it was no longer funny.

Until we got to Tanglewood.

But it wasn’t really Tanglewood. Tanglewood is just what I called this particular town that exists after Packwood and before Iron Creek on our journey. I can’t recall the name of the town and I know I can look it up but I don’t want to and anyway: the point is that I always called it Tanglewood and Ben always corrected me and then I forgot again. It was Tanglewood, WA. Not to be found on any map and known by no one but me.

At the Tanglewood grocery store, fifteen miles from Packwood, we stopped to buy some food and it was there my Achilles tendon popped. And not popped in a: “hey, look at me, I’m a stiff joint!” sort of way, but in a “you are in trouble now, Mr. Timm, and you had better beg for the Lord’s forgiveness for you have sinned and this is your punishment.”

I didn’t say anything to Ben immediately but I did bite my lip and let him walk into the store first so he wouldn’t see my unavoidable limp. Each step brought shooting warmth up the back of my ankle and threatened complete dysfunction. It felt as if at any moment my Achilles might snap and my foot would stop performing its necessary tasks altogether. I thought of my uncle, who had torn a whole host of ligaments in his foot when he tripped over the front of his sandal, and how he had to throw his leg out to the side in order to get his lifeless foot to come around front. This couldn’t be happening to me: not on our second day of riding.

And if there is anything I would ever keep from Ben it is my own physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental discomfort. Ben doesn’t believe in discomfort. It is heavily frowned upon in the Church of Life that he attends and no one, under any circumstance, should complain of this “discomfort” lest they be excommunicated from the Church. And, as that Ben is my best friend and I look up to him in some ways (and not in others) I don’t like to let him down. So if my ass is sore, my legs are tired, my mouth is dry, my stomach hurts, my head is dizzy, my internal organs are bleeding, I usually wait a spell to make sure it is truly something that warrants mentioning — for his disapproval is immanent.

After we had shopped accordingly, I limped outside while he waited for the groceries to be bagged and paid for, and considered how I would broach the subject of my broken ankle. Looking around, I saw that Tanglewood was less of a town and more of an intersection with a gas station, a food store, a shoddy restaurant, and an emergency clinic. At one time, in the past, it might have been an actual place, but now it had become merely a way-station — a way to stop in-between bigger places. But America seems to be becoming more like this, in general, and more people tend to be drawing closer together in the large city centers for their shopping and entertainment needs. The country store is no longer the place to shop for groceries and medicine, but the place to shop when you don’t have time to go to Target or have run out of gas between BJ’s and Sam’s Club. It is sad, in a way, but I do not pretend to be a activist for the cause of the small towns — I would do all my shopping online if I could because then I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Especially, at that particular moment, Ben, who was shaking his head at my limp with the classic look:

“What, Damon, could you possibly be ready to complain about now?”

In the weeks before the trip began I had resolved myself to not bringing my cell phone, blackberry, palm pilot, GPS unit, or laptop. I had decided I would approach this trip the old fashioned way without the bother of people trying to get something from me and without the temptation of shooting off quick updates and emails and enquiries and searching for directions on the internet while pedaling. Friends of mine were horrified that I would consider a trip of this sort without a cell phone.

“What if you get in an accident? What if you are attacked by a bear? What is something bad happens? What if you are raped by defectors from Bush’s cabinet?”

These questions took me slightly aback because even I — and I am not very old — remember a time when there were no cell phones. If you can’t recall let me refresh your memory: it really wasn’t all that long ago. Had I been born a century earlier, I could have embarked on this trip without a single worried cry outlining my reckless abandon by not bringing a means of instant access and communication. My response to these comments usually was:

“If I get in an accident, I will send Ben for help; if I am attacked by a bear I will scream at it and fight with all my might; if something bad happens I will try to see the good in all things; and if I am raped it will be very unfortunate indeed.”

Knowing Ben as well as I do, I made the mistake of assuming Ben was on the same page with me on this topic. And, secretly, I think Ben was on the same page with me about it, however, he has a wonderful girlfriend that he wanted to see when he returned and I did not. So, for her sake, he told me he would bring his cell phone and I was only disappointed because I had spent the last twelve weeks convincing everyone I knew that I would be all right without the cell phone and that they couldn’t reach me and now here we were bringing one. I thought it was useless and a waste of space, but Ben gave me the look of a husband who has acquiesced to his wife and could never turn back, and I said no more.

The cell phone was useless. It only worked in Seattle, Hood River, Bend, and San Francisco and absolutely no where in-between and, had it worked, there was no place to charge it. We used my calling card, mostly, and although only five years had passed since I had purchased my own cellular device, I had forgotten how tedious and awful using payphones truly is. On our second day of riding, we spent almost six hours on the bike and I, personally, spent almost seven hours entering the codes of the calling card into all the payphones between Packwood and Tanglewood by dialing and redialing and leaving messages and calling back and speaking with operators and learning Spanish as well as how to produce the key tones correctly myself when my fingers grew tired just so I could get a hold of #6.

I finally did at the very last payphone, in Tanglewood, leaning heavily on my right leg, as I iced my numb and blistered index finger. She said she would still come, after work, and that I should be put at ease, and that she would be there in three or four hours. She hadn’t forgotten me. She wanted to see me. She would come to Iron Creek. She promised.

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