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The Time I Was Caught Sleeping In My Car and Some Thoughts on Cultural Pressure
It's nighttime in an upper-middle class suburb near downtown Denver, Colorado. Streetlights cast a warm light across the neighborhood revealing the faint orange of fall leaves on the trees and road. Quaint old brick homes built right up against each other line the streets with cars of the affluent parked bumper to bumper outside them.
Amidst these luxury vehicles, I'm sitting in the passenger seat of my cheap, old Durango, gathering up the ingredients to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my headlamp. It turns out I left my backpacking spork in the back, which is essential for spreading the peanut butter and jelly, so I open the passenger side door to retrieve it. Opening the door turns on the interior lights of the car, illuminating my bed and many possessions piled up in the back.
With impeccable timing, an older, upper-middle class couple walks by just as I light up my car's interior, exposing my neighborly camping intentions just as I pop out of the car to face them.
The Most Beautiful Sunrise of My Life
A certain energy was in the air. It was one of those rare mornings when you wake up conscious of your surroundings and what you're about to do because it's the day.
My sister and I rolled up our sleeping bags, broke down the tent, and packed everything with a hushed fever and deliberateness. After failing to do so almost exactly two years previous due to an unprecedented August snowstorm, we once again found ourselves at Guitar Lake, preparing to make our second attempt at the 14,505ft Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the continental United States.
It was 2:15am. Four of us stood around trying to maintain a degree of stoicism toward the effort that lay ahead, distracted and awed by the stars above. Well above the treeline, our surroundings consisted of rock and dirt, giving us an unobstructed view of the Milky Way that spanned across the entire night sky. The air felt like one would imagine space to feel if it were hospitable—cold, crisp, still. My hands were crammed into a pair of used, crusty wool socks for warmth. Unable to use my thumbs, I awkwardly attempted uncomfortable grip variations of my trekking poles.
The Post I Didn't Release for 604 Days
I wrote the last post of my cross country bike ride journal on February 28th, 2014.
Today is October 25th, 2015 and 604 days have gone by without publishing this final post. I've put it off because I wanted to link this great new website idea I had at the end of the post. To allow the followers of Pedaling With Purpose to come along on my next adventure.
The problem was, it took me 604 days to get that idea right. To create something I felt was worth following up the success of Pedaling With Purpose with. I'd actually built a whole other website and deleted it when it was almost ready to go. It wasn't good enough...
Today, 604 days after writing it, the final journal post is going up where it belongs. About time.