I woke up in the tent around 7:00 a.m. I slept decently. I’m beginning to overcome my fear of death and the supernatural here. I haven’t showered, because of the heat my shirt is drenched in sweat. I cut the sleeves off last night, because the wet sleeves irritated my skin. My shirt is soaked and it stinks pretty bad. I could go to planet fitness and take a shower, I could even change my clothes, but it wouldn’t be more than an hour or so riding my bike that I’d be covered in sweat again. It’s been over 90 degrees every day. I decided the best approach is taking a baby wipe shower. 8
I spent the majority of the morning in the tent, scrolling around social media. I looked for a cheap or free bike to give to my new friend Lincoln who is homeless in Manchester New Hampshire.
Morning epiphanies:
A stream of thinking of mine going back a couple years now has been how people deal with adverse emotional states, and a person’s ability to think critically. I had these two psychological functions on separate lines of thought.
It has dawned on me, through some of my own emotional and logical inquiry into experience, that these two mechanisms work in concordance to improve decision making, mental health, and physical health.
I believe developing a course on understanding and working with adverse emotional states, followed by a course on critical thinking could greatly improve a person’s quality of life.
I write this here, not only to share, but so I don’t forget I thunk it and I can work on developing these courses in the future.
It’s dawned on me due to my superstitious fears of ghosts and the dead tree cracking at night. Which most likely is an expansion and contraction of the dead wood due to the high heat during the day and the cooler nights. I’ve laid here in this haunted forest two nights now. I see how my emotions and my logic are at battle with each other. When this epiphany dawned on me, I was approached by two beautiful deers, the one deer saw me and ran, a youngen. The mother saw me and I gave salutations and she sauntered off. An enigmatic sign from nature.
I spent some time in the morning looking for cheap bikes in the area on Facebook marketplace. I found a few for like $40, so I sent messages to see if they were available.
At around noon I left and took a bike ride over to the 1269 Cafe and I got lunch. I was a bit late and they only had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I gratefully accepted. A nice woman that worked there even stopped by and put her hand on my shoulder and asked how I was doing. I told her I was all right. I really love the people at this place. I also saw the girl that I found on a mattress in an alley in Lawrence Massachusetts. When I took her to the shelter she said she was originally from Manchester and had been staying at the shelter there. I called her over and asked her if she remembered me. She seemed distressed and she said she did not. I believe she is schizophrenic, which is sad. She was dirty and behaving a bit frantic. It was good to see her here besides Lawrence, although I cannot tell if Manchester New Hampshire is better than Lawrence Massachusetts for a vulnerable person like her.
I Stopped at the Restoration Cafe down the street from the 1269 Cafe since I only had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and was still hungry. I ate an egg BLT with arugula lettuce. After I ate I hung out a while and worked on one of the blogs. I was able to plug in my external battery and charge it up. I can go upwards of 2 days out in the wilderness on one full charge of that external battery.
After I left restoration Cafe I began walking around Manchester New hampshire. It’s definitely an interesting City and I like it a lot. I started to get hungry again I didn’t eat enough. I decided I would stop somewhere else and get something to eat. I stopped at Diz’s Cafe and I got a hamburger and a salad. The hamburger was bangin, the salad was good too. Diz’s was on a main street with a lot of markets and businesses on it, like a market Street. It was hot but not too humid and it was windy. Sitting on outside on the street eating a hamburger was like heaven. I also had some lemon / blueberry ale which was delicious.
After I ate at Dizs I rode my bike along the bike path along the river towards my campsite. I will be meeting with my girlfriend tonight who will be staying overnight in the tent with me. I decided to take a detour along the river and check out a path I’d seen on the other side of the woods from my campsite. The path went along the river, and I found a secluded beach that is all sand. When my girlfriend arrives tonight I plan to take her down there to go swimming.
After my adventure I rode my bike back to my car. I was almost fresh out of water. I filled my water container and drank as much as I could then I filled it again and drank again, and then I filled it and capped it. It was about 90° out. I hung around in my car for a little while, which seemed to be safe where I parked it near the disc golf course. Woman that I had seen in that parking lot when I had arrived was still here parked near the trees. She seemed homeless and had a dog that like to bark at me. She told me that she was waiting for her apartment to get cleared out, because the previous resident passed away. I don’t know if this is true, but she was really nice, I felt kind of bad for her circumstances. I talked to my girlfriend on the phone and she said that she had to drive home and then she was going to drive to me so I guess she would be here around 8:00 p.m. It was around 4:30 p.m. so I decided to bike back to my camp.
On my way back to camp I took a detour down a path I saw at the back of the graveyard. I wondered if I could cut through The disc golf course to get to the sandy beach, without having to take the street. I traveled downhill on my bike through the disc golf course. I found that it is possible to get to the beach that way. My girlfriend and I will probably venture through there at night. There were a lot of people playing disc golf as I rode through. I felt out of place on my hybrid mountain bike, but they were really nice and they had dogs too. I got a little lost at first but was redirected by some kind Disc Golf players and found my way back to the cemetery.
When I got to the camp I gave myself a baby wipe shower, brushed my teeth, and clipped my nails. It’s the best I can do to groom up for my girlfriend. I also put on deodorant. I cleaned up the tent and waited for the thunder showers that were coming. I also spoke with a man on Facebook who said he would sell me a mountain bike for 45 bucks to give to Lincoln.
My girlfriend arrived in the parking lot at the disc golf course around 9:00 p.m. She took some time to get ready and get all her stuff together. We rode the bikes over to my campsite. She wasn’t in the best of moods. We left the bikes in the small clearing, and we trekked through the brush in the dark. She really didn’t like this and complained a lot. I guess I’m lucky to have somebody even willing to sleep in a tent behind a graveyard at night with me. Once we got to the tent she unloaded her gear. Even though she didn’t like trekking through the brush, she agreed to go back out and try to make the walk through the disc golf course to the beach on the other side. At one point when we were walking and getting close to the clearing she dropped her vape and began bending over to get it. I was holding her hand because there is a steep cliff that goes down about 100 ft. When I felt her bending over and moving around I squeezed her hand tight. She said “why are you squeezing my hand!” I said, “What are you doing? You’re standing right over a cliff,” I had told her that the cliff was there on the way in. My night vision is good and I could see the vape on the ground that she was reaching for. I picked it up and gave it to her. We got into an argument, but ultimately she understood why I had squeezed your hand. I was protecting her life.
We rode our bikes over to the entrance of the disc golf course from the cemetery. We traveled down the path and because of all the trees and foliage it was pitch black. I decided it was too dangerous to try to navigate through these woods at night and returned back to the graveyard.
We went back to the tent, and settled in. It was still extremely hot and humid. It was drizzling. I took the rainfly off the tent, which meant we were cooler, as little drops of water would fall on us. We made love behind the cemetery, in the darkness, cuz little drops of water fell on us.
Before bed, I put the rain fly back over the tent and we settled in for a quiet sleep. There was no loud cracking of dead wood in the night.