Determined to Tan: AIDS ride blues

Awoke from the concrete this morning to another breakfast of Ablo and gboma (sweet, moist corn cakes and spicy spinach sauce). Sitting across from everyone, shared happiness and exhaustion passing between smiles and looks throughout the room, it was hard for me to be down on my luck -- still, as I shoveled the congealed spiciness into my gaping maw, the slightest urge to retch tickled the back of my throat and made me yearn for home in a way Ive never really felt before. Maybe it was the Ablo (which I love, actually), maybe it was the soiled biking clothes I had been wearing for 4 days that lent me a wonderful musk of a middle school gym locker room, maybe it was the heat and humidity that, even at 6AM, was already laying heavy on the landscape like a quilt thrown across a freshly made bed. Maybe it was simple exhaustion, or the simple quiet of the morning that left me to my thoughts that tickled at the shadow of loneliness that had been spreading from the back of my mind for a few days, but I would have slapped someone's mother for a 5 am trip to Bojangles on a cold morning for boberry biscuits and shitty coffee. And just because I could, I would have smoked a cigarette and listened to an epic song while gazing at the sun coming up to make it more like a movie.

This is all coming from the last full day of AIDS Ride, a yearly event here where I met with a group of 10 or so other volunteers from Maritime (our region here in the south) and we embarked on a 5 day bike tour through nigh-impassable reaches of the interior to sensibilize small villages and schools about AIDS and preventative measures. We covered beween 40 - 60k a day in about 130 degree temps, over an amazing array of sandy impasses, sandy hills, sandy paths, sand covered slopes, sand filled pits, and through sandy villages. I was up until now unaware of the charms of biking long distances in the dead heat of the day, but let me tell you, its quite invigorating in a what-in-the-hell-have-I-done-to-deserve-this sorta way. Also if there are any questions, or anyone needs a quick condom demo, Im your man to come to.