Jay’s Note: This is part two of a running two-week adventure log for RAGBRAI. Each day I’ll be posting a journal entry and some pictures from our trip that begins in Virginia, lands us in Iowa for a bike ride, and then eventually gets us back to the East Coast.
Black cars look really nice, but when your skin is all over a polished black exterior with the sun beating down on it in 90 degree weather… boy, do you question life choices. My burnt arms and hands aren’t thanking me tonight.
Anyway, that’s where I found myself for the majority of the day as we got the rooftop carrier on top of our new car, the tent on top of the InTech, and the trailer all cleaned off. Sarah took the trailer in to get it checked out at the Farmer’s Co-op in town, which is about the coolest place ever for all things trailer related in Lexington, VA. They took care of the trailer, and I’m hoping we’re ready to go there.
Our rooftop carrier was given to me by an old friend and mentor, Hank Streeter, by the way. It’s seen a lot of use over the years. Adventures across the midwest and up and down the east coast. It’s a medium-sized Thule, and it’s held up quite well. The only thing I’ve needed to replace on it are the brackets that fix it to the car, and that was a quick trip to Lowe’s to pick up a few beefy pieces of steel with pre-drilled holes in them.
The tent is also a Thule, and was quite a creative solution if I do say so myself. With a rooftop tent on the InTech, we’re able to increase our sleeping capacity without increasing our footprint. The only drawback now is that, with the girls getting older, they want their own sleeping space. So this year they’ll be in their own tent, setting it up and taking it down every day, keeping it clean…
That’ll be an interesting one.
Back to the rooftop tent. Replicating a design (if you can call it that) that I built back in Illinois, I took two long 2x4s and fixed garage hooks on them to make it easier to slide the tent on and take it off. The hooks grab on to the back luggage bar, the tent slides on, and then we mount it.
Even with that, the tent is a bit of a bear to get on, but it makes it more manageable. If only we had a garage about a foot taller, we’d be able to keep it on year-round, but so it goes.
Tent on, rooftop carrier on, gear packed.
The driving days begin tomorrow when we head out for the Ohio KOA I mentioned in the first blog post. Once we leave, we won’t be enjoying modern luxuries (personal shower, bathroom, a kitchen, etc…) for two weeks. First world problems, I know, but I’m going to miss our bidet.
It’s days like this when I wonder what my blue collar upbringing would think about all of this whining. Probably not much.
And so… we begin.
Reading for the Day (a brief digression):
I read the Cliff’s Notes version of The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt today. She studied under Heidegger, and while their philosophical roots are similar, the outcome is a bit different. Instead of Heidegger’s being-toward-death — the idea that our mortality is the horizon that defines us — Arendt centers on natality: every person born is a new beginning, capable of setting something genuinely new in motion. That’s an interesting inversion, and one that I think merits more thought. It points to a latent creative potential that I believe we all have. One that renews itself every time we start something.
Arendt also distinguishes between Labor > Work > Action. The idea that the highest form of human effort is action is alluring. Seeing beyond what is and into what is possible… kind of like figuring out how to take the constraints of a minivan, a trailer, and 6 people and rolling it into one big solution.
Get action.
Trip pictures from the day:
