Lakeside living in the summer- who doesn’t love that?
OK, back to the adventure in its proper order.
Contrary to what the name might suggest to those of you with the sense of humor of a thirteen year old (including me), warmshowers.org is not an “organ”-ization dedicated to casual acquaintances sharing bathing experiences in the wee hours of the night but is, in fact, an international hospitality network exclusively for people like myself who prefer to travel the globe by bicycle. Although the network is extensive, there are geographical gaps in coverage so I decided to broaden my horizons a little and try out couchsurfing.com, another network open to all kinds of travelers.
Having left the comfort of Thunder Bay I found myself pedaling west through what I thought would be the last stretch of Canadian wilderness on highway 11. My first couchsurfing host turned out to be a cool cat named Matt in Fort Frances, Ontario bordering the US just across the Rainy River. I couldn’t have asked for a better ambassador to welcome me to the couchsurfing network. Completely out of character, I arrived earlier than our prearranged time and found that Matt was still out fishing on the lake. The wait was well worth it as there is nothing like being greeted with a meal of fresh pickerel and bourbon nips (there may have been some gin involved also). Matt’s place is less than a hundred meters from Rainy Lake so the next day we took a paddle out to explore a few inlets and cast the line out a bit. Go to Canada- catch a fish, that’s rule, right? My pathetic catch was no trophy to write home about but it was a rite of passage, nonetheless, landing my first pickerel in the Great White North.
View from the dock at Matt’s
It turns out that Matt and I have chewed a lot of the same dirt in our travels through Southeast Asia so I was more than happy to share the last of my road spices cooking up a batch of Malaysian style curry for dinner on my last evening by the lake. Upon hitting the road the following day I took Matt’s advice to “pop over and back” to the US side to resupply my groceries at a discount food market and I now believe that’s when the first day of the rest of my life began…or maybe the first day of the best of my life- that story is still unfolding and I ask the patience of my readers to allow me to relate it in good time.
The US border town just opposite Fort Frances is International Falls, Minnesota. I will apologize in advance to the good people of the county seat of Koochiching County for what I am about to say. I freely confess that warmshowers is a terrible name for a hospitality network but at least a warm shower is actually something one can look forward to when utilizing its resources; however, International Falls is, by no stretch of imagination, the nexus of cultural diversity one might expect from a township of that moniker.
…but I’m getting ahead of myself…
Back in the USA but oddly not as great as it usually is coming home
Tanya and I are still stuck at the border being detained, searched, and interrogated while the real threats to our nation’s security are freely crossing the border in their rented cars with Canadian plates; at this point the bounty of International Falls is but a dream just beyond my grasp.
Fast forward two and a half hours later with my soul (and my stomach) aching from the kind of malnutrition afforded by fast food and empty promises, night falling and no place to sleep, I decide to do what I always do- put one pedal in front of the other and move on to greener pastures. Now I’m so rattled from my border crossing experience that I decide to stay in my own country (at least I thought it was mine) for a while and see what great things Minnesota has in store for me. The sun had set and I was heading west along the river toward Baudette when I started singing a different, more upbeat tune and got back on track to thanking God, Matt, and even those douche bags at the border for detaining me and thereby altering my trajectory indirectly. The waxing gibbous moon in a gentle southern arc lit my ride from twilight ’til about 3:30 in the morning. As the moon set it got all huge and stirred a memory of my mother holding me as a child and pointing to that big-ass moon, my heart pounding and my little mind trying to wrap itself around the phenomenon. The skies cleared and filled with stars. I rode past innumerable white tailed deer and experienced seeing a head-on point meteor for the first time in my life.
That day the rising sun brought with it a vision of brighter days to come and continues to make good on its promise. The world didn’t stop growing for the last year; I just failed to notice it but I’m growing again and letting go is feeling less like saying goodbye and more like saying, “I hear you, Betty.”
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