Dispatches through Time in space

Dispatches 

 by Bill Poindexter

January 5, 2024 2:59 AM

Time and space 

Dear friend, 

Hard to believe another year gone by. I wanted to thank you for reading my words. I don’t expect you to read them all the time when I send out dispatches out or rants.

 I appreciate you reading my words as that in itself entrenches my writing desires. The older I get, and I’m 60 now, I realize that I’ve always been a writer/story teller. Today I was re-reading some of my dispatches from my bicycle tour from Kansas City to Yorktown Virginia via the transamerica Trail as I am organizing, a book about that experience. The dispatch amused me and brought back some fun memories. 

I’m laying here in bed, holding the phone in my right hand dictating this I’m laying on my right side Coyote my oldest cat I think she’s around 15 or 16 now the black-and-white one you’ve probably seen pictures of her she’s tucked into my right side up against my chest and draped over my right arm holding the phone and my left arm is wrapped around her. A cold night outside, the weather’s been a little strange it’s been kind of a wet cold without the rain or snow but every morning there’s a lot of frost out there and when I go out to feed the squirrels, stray cats and the birds, I can feel it in my bones. I woke up many a morning on the bicycle tour with that wet cold feeling. 

 I generally would wake up between two and four, doing some writing like this, or in my journals with my pencils. If I hand write, I like writing with the pencil, there’s  something about a pencil in the way it feels on a piece of paper that I like and I prefer writing in a journal blank pages versus one that has lines on its paper.

I’ve never been one to be organized in a traditional sense -organization to me is having the lot on the table in full view so I know where everything is to me that’s order to other people it’s called clutter. 

I also have a cup of hot, tapwater coffee, freeze dried maxwell house I think it is. And this coffee always sends me back to military school as a 14 year old boy. It was a rough time for me, being alone, becoming a man I’m sure you know the story of me getting hazed that first couple of months I was there. I’ve written about it a few times, but as I got used to the school there I would wake up in the middle of the night as well, the time from bedtime around 1030 to 620 was my time I relished and like now I would get up in the middle of the night and write at my desk looking outside the window listening to the woods and words, sparking my imagination, and even then I would go down to the bathroom to pee, and get some hot water from the tap and come back up and make myself a cup of coffee with freeze dried coffee, if I had it. And like I said, I would either write, or just think, or maybe read a story, and at that time I would read stories of ghosts in haunted houses or stories of great white hunters in Africa and their adventures, or stories of explorers. Military school had a good library not in the amount of volumes, but the way it was set up and that it was easy to find books and it wasn’t a large selection, I mostly would skip the card catalog, then walk down  the dusty  isles reading the titles until something interesting pulled me in. Many of the books had that old smell to them and had not been checked out for decades, at least the books I wanted to read. I liked that very much as I felt the books were in hibernation and waiting for someone like me to come wake them up. It wasn’t like cheap books of today the fall apart easily. These were books with proper bindings and thick paper the kind they were made to last a long time.

That was back in 1979 along time ago. 

One thing I learned in military school was how valuable my time is as the school was very structured so almost every hour of my day was taken up with something, so my free time was between 1030pm and 620 in the morning.  And every morning when I woke up, I would usually dread the day not that I would be scared of it, but that I would dread the structure of the school, the mundane, the ridiculous, the classes bored me, the food was awful, but I knew I just had to get through it. All I have to do is make it until bedtime and then I have my time. I still think that way whether I have a job or or just riding out a normal day. 

One of things about being on a bicycle tour is, as long as one is solo, every day is your day, and there is a strong inner voice of introspection during the long distance cycling when you’re bicycling from an hour or two after waking up until late in the afternoon or possibly sunset. And for me once I’ve set up camp, and had my supper, then I get into my sleeping bag with my journal next to me looking out at whatever I can see in my surroundings in the dark and usually angled so I could see the sky and the stars if they were out and I would be reminded in my safe little home, the tent or the piece of ground I was laying on as sometimes it would just be me on a patch of dirt with a ground pad and my sleeping bag waiting for sleep to come and remembering my day then it starts to transcend it is just me, the earth, and the universe at that moment in time and space on that patch of dirt, or in this bed, or at that military school in that bed, or at the writing desk, being aware of the past, present and future, not being afraid but embracing life. To be clear, actually, more clear it’s that feeling you have when you are outside looking up at the stars and you feel small, but yet somehow are attached to everything. And everything is as it should be.

Thank you for reading my words. 

I hope you’re doing well. It’s been along time since I’ve talk to you. Drop me a note and let me know how things are going and if you’re in the area, let me know. You’re up for a cuppa coffee and a chat. And I’ll share wonderful things with you. 

Peace and love, 

Bill Poindexter.

If you’re interested in supporting this endeavor, I am also trying to raise money for my next expedition, which I’ll be talking about an upcoming post please consider buying me a cup of coffee and a sandwich. You can find me on https://venmo.com/code?user_id=2935349168832512847

thank you!