Day 9

Monday, August 2nd: Wellsville, NY -> Wellsville, NY

Rest day!

Sleep in until 9:30am, reveling in my excellent hiding spot where nobody can spot me. Have lemon-lime cookies as I pack up to go into town, which becomes my breakfast - eww? Listened to Radio Lab podcast stories this morning - reheard the "Limits" episode featuring a woman completing her first full length triathalon and crawling across the finish line at the end of the running portion; the story about Yuri the Slovenian who won the "Ride Across America" ["Ride Into the Depths of Hell?] four years, where they bike from west to east as fast as they can, usually it takes 10-12 days and most of the riders average 1 to 2 hours of sleep a night for those two weeks.

Bike the 4 miles into Wellsville - the front wheel shimmies back and forth so much when there isn't 20 pounds of weight on it! The public library here is simply beautiful - there is a table inside with wide ceiling-height doors that open onto a stone patio, I sit in an easy chair with breezes gusting across the pages as I read. Grab some issues of Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News magazines - one of the memorable articles I read by Michael Pollan had a quote similar to:

"I'm not sure if Organic can feed the whole world, but even 1/2 would be a huge improvement."

The idea that synthetic nitrogen is necessary to feed the world "now that the population is so large" irks me.

Is everyone pooping?

There. Your nitrogen.

On the computer figure out the bicycle parts I will get ordered into Jamestown, NY. Read an Orson Scott Card short novel set in the time period of Ender and Bean's early days at Battle School, but following a new protoganist, Zeke, raised in a fundamentalist Christian community but still selected for the school. [I don't expect that to make sense to many of you - a worthy author in my opinion, one of my favorites.]