I woke up around 8:00 a.m., I stayed in the tent writing and uploading blogs until around
11:00 a.m. I also made a video about my encounter at Father Bill’s Mainspring.
My bike tire still has a bit of a wobble even though I continue to try to fix the inner tube of the rear tire. It seems that after I patched the inner tube, due to the fact that the inner tube is stretched out, it’s bigger than the rim, which causes scrunching and causes the wobble when I ride the bike.
I went to the administrative office of Father Bill’s mainspring and I spoke to the executives there. Three top executives to be exact. I told them my story of abuse at the hands of one of their workers at their emergency shelter. They all seemed like well educated privileged folks, they expressed concern, and they let me know that the worker would be reprimanded although they couldn’t promise me that I would get an apology. I let them know that I still did not feel satisfied without receiving an apology from the aggressor before leaving town. I will have to decide how I will proceed.
I went to the recovery center and I went to a recovery meeting held by some ambassadors for a large addiction recovery organization in Massachusetts called MOAR (Massachusetts Organization of Addiction Recovery. It was a good vibe in the room and there was a lot of talk about recovery and what it means. I’ve been in tons of rooms like this and listened to this rhetoric. I did share a small story about an interaction with my mother where she accused me of falling off the recovery wagon because I gave guff and I didn’t want to be suckered into doing increasingly elaborate yard projects for her. I felt my resistance was understandable and I felt I was setting a boundary, and was offended she would think so low of me. Ultimately, I apologized to my mother, and we came to mutual understanding. I do understand how hard it can be for people recovering from substance abuse, especially when any unexpected behavior can be construed as the sign of relapse.
After I left the recovery center I went to the library and charged my devices up.
At around 4:30 I started riding Back to my camp. I planned on eating at Market Basket, but instead I stopped at an ethnic market called vicente’s. There I got rice and beans and fried shrimps. The Majority of the shoppers were African American. I did not explore the market. I just ate and left.
I came to my campsite where I began working on the inner tube of the back tire to try to get it set right so that the tire would not wabble anymore. There is a small clearing near the pond where I worked. At one point while I was riding my bike to test how smooth it rides, a man appeared on my small trail that I’m living off of. I was walking back to my tent and I noticed that he was standing at the entrance to my hidden encampment staring into the forest. I knew there was no way that he could see my tent, he must have been looking at birds or something I guessed. But it was unnerving thinking that he might know where my little hideaway was.
When I finished working on the tire and got it as good as I could possibly get it, it was around 7:30 p.m. I chained the bike to the tree, and I walked over to my small camp and settled in for the night.