Warming Up

After packing all night Wednesday (I only had one 4500 cubic inch bag that I could bring and yet I was still up all night doing it), with a brief layover in Cambridge, I arrived in Providence, RI today with a bag full of still-damp clothes. Tomorrow we continue with our orientation, testing our bicycles on a short ride and learning more about affordable housing. On Saturday, June 3, we will dip our wheels into the Narragansett Bay and start on the 35 mile first leg of our journey to Pomfret, CT (apparently Rhode Island is a small state).

I have already met a number of cool people, which is not terribly surprising – a group of young adults who want to bike across the country for a good cause is bound to contain some like minded people. This guy Sam, for example, is doing a Spanish major and a physics minor, and is contemplating joining the Peace Corps. His sister decided against the Peace Corps because she felt there existed an attitude of “hey, you third world non-westerners, we’ve pretty much got it all figured out already so uh… do it our way,” which is the source of my hesitation as well.
Another guy is currently doing a Masters in linguistics. He’s studying intonation patters in bilingual speakers of English and Spanish (Chicano?). He’s finding that rather than switching intonation when switching from one language to the other, the speaker maintains the intonation of the language which he started in. So if the speaker started a sentence in English and substituted a Spanish noun s/he would still use the English intonation.

Today I heard the following sentence from a Boston bike cop, “So, where youse going?”

Providence is a lovely town to which I’d like to return. The houses in the area where I am are particularly attractive, which I attribute largely to the texture and quality of the building materials (which is probably also a sign of wealthy owners and old houses).

I am incredibly stoked. Thank you so much to everybody who helped to get me here. Bring on saddle sores, bring on the (sun)burn!