the right socks?

recently, it's been seeming like anything i need to get done to go on this supposed trip i'm planning, is nearly impossible to get done. I keep waking up in the morning, determined to fix my tent/find cheap panniers/find a twenty dollar bill on the ground, and keep going to bed having done none of these things. Why? This is a good question.

so today, i woke this morning at the early hour of 9 o'clock, determined to go to REI and just put some f-ing panniers on credit already. before leaving, i checked craigslist (like i do every morning) to see if some kind soul was selling their bike bags for cheap, and to see if any good labor gigs had been posted since last night. Of course, i found neither. So i headed for the door, but of course, every time i got down the front steps i realized i had forgotten my wallet/cellphone/waterbottle/where i was going and had to retrace. then, on the way to REI, i got fucked over by those damn one way streets, and drove in at least 7 circles before finally arriving at my destination.

what i'm getting at, though, is that all of these moments are leading up to something, because as i leaned over to check the price tag on what looked like the cheapest bags in the pannier aisle, i heard a voice. this voice was todd.

todd is about 6 foot 5, carries his i-phone in a gym sock, and has biked from seattle to los angeles "about 8 times". (about?) anyway, todd is fucking great, and proceeds to chat bike trips with me, getting me so freakin stoked like i cant believe. he tells me about all the bike trips he's done across the country and up through canada and how many times strangers invited him over for dinner and how he always carried a set of nice clothes so that he could crash weddings and eat good food. he tells me about how i'm leaving at the perfect time and he tells me about a syndrome he calls "organizing my closet" syndrome. which i definitely have. organizing-my-closet syndrome is basically the fear that you get before you go on a trip, the kind of fear that keeps you from going because you keep making excuses like, "oh, i can't go because i don't have the right socks", or "i have to organize my closet before i can leave." he's telling me this and all of a sudden, i am confessing all of my fears about this trip to a stranger. the thing is, all of the fears are irrational and the real fear, i realize, is failure. but of course, as we all know, the real way you fail is by not going. AND, todd reminds me that--like we all know from doing things that scare us--it's never as scary as it seems, and more often than not, all it takes is that first step or that first mile or that first word, and all of a sudden, we wonder what we were so scared of.

so todd confesses to me that although he's "no materialist", he does have quite the collection of panniers piling up at his house and that he'd like to sell me a pair for cheap, "at least," he said, "they'll be going to a good home."

so, while i'm still in no hurry, i'm not going to let the right socks get in my way. i'll leave when i'm ready, but maybe i'll be ready sooner than i thought. or maybe i won't be, but i think i'll go anyway. why not.