The Princess Plan

AIDS Lifecycle riders fall into two basic categories: those who are on the regular program who check their bikes, eat meals with the group and sleep in camp in tents like this:

Tents sleep two people each – tent mates are assigned at check-in unless you’re traveling as a couple or with a friend.  You pack your own gear, are responsible for set up each day after the ride and break down each morning before ride out.  Shower facilities are portable trucks that travel from camp to camp.

And then there's the Princess Plan.  The Princess Plan allows riders who are a little more, um, persnickety, to stay in the hotel of their choice along the route.  Obviously at additional cost and slight additional hassle as the P-Plan requires someone willing to pick you up from camp, take you to your hotel, drive you back in the morning, etc.  In some cases, riders use taxis.  In some, they have friends in each town who are thrilled to see them and support their efforts.  And in Sig Other’s case, there’s me - his personal soigner.

The Princess Plan started perfect enough.  No complaints from rider OR soigner about the bed at the Four Seasons.  Santa Cruz proved equally pleasant though in a sort of funky beach motel sort of way:

And then came King City.

This is the stop I’d been dreading all ride – the stop I knew would be challenging both in terms of accommodations and cuisine.  I was prepared for Deliverance.  But somehow, even the anticipation of a dingy fleabag motel could not prepare me for the smell – the smell of disinfectant on musty carpet and lit up by fluorescence.  There is no smell like the smell of a cheap motel.  No color like the green of a shiny cotton bedspread under buzzing ceiling lights that turn on and off with motion detector timers.  And no sound like the sound of a room facing the highway with only a gas station between to cut the hum of cars speeding by, headed for destinations better than this. 

Somehow, the Princess Plan landed me in the middle of a Sam Shepard play – sort of sweaty and dirty and not at all sexy though I do have a craving for long pull off a frosty bottle of beer and a sudden urge to suck mightily on a cigarette.  Perhaps Sig Other can skip the showers and throw on a wife-beater and a pair of torn Levis to complete the picture.

Welcome to King City.  Welcome to the Princess Plan.  What I would give to be in camp, cozy in a sleeping bag, sharing a tent with a snoring stranger…

Day Two Continued - Salinas to King City

Farm outside of Salinas

Road to King City - slightly off the beaten path

Tonight's entertainment

Day Two - Santa Cruz to King City

Santa Cruz Pier at dawn.

Santa Cruz coastline

Santa Cruz - Natural Bridges State Beach

6:23am - Camp before rideout

Day One - San Francisco to Santa Cruz

Boardwalk - Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Pier

On the road...

Sig Other Rides Out...

There is a preponderance of homosexuals here...

Our regularly scheduled program of introspection and musings regarding step-parenting and middle-aged sex is interrupted in honor of the tenth annual AIDS/Lifecycle ride and my chronicling thereof.  Sig Other announced several months ago that he would be embarking on this weeklong adventure and it never occurred to me at the time that either a) it would actually come about or b) I’d be roped in.  But suddenly there we were, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco – standing in line after line to prepare Sig Other for the 545-mile ride. I will not be joining on two wheels.  Rather, I will follow on four – playing unofficial “soigner” on Sig Other’s ride.  We walk toward registration and Sig Other notes with some surprise, “there is a preponderance of homosexuals here.”  Yes, I remind him.  This is, after all, an AIDS ride.

Sig Other is not homophobic.  But he is filter free.  Five minutes in and already he is wandering around the Cow Palace saying things like, “this is SO gay” and “there are a lot of gays here.” Generally, Sig Other likes to think of himself as living in a “post gay world” – a world in which labels are unnecessary and equal rights prevail for all.  Of course, that is NOT the world we live in.  And in our world, our gay friends are denied basic rights – the right to get married, etc.  So Sig Other is riding in support of a cure for a disease that, without activism, would have otherwise gone unexplored.   Sig Other was aggressive and successful in his fundraising – he’s in the top 10 percent of donors on the ride.  He cares about justice and ethical behavior and feels a responsibility to do tzedakah.  But what he LOVES is riding.  What he loves is the bond between bikers, the obsession of the road.  I remind him, as he wanders and makes his comments, that in fact he would have been just as happy riding in support of virulent toe fungus were that a cause he could raise money for.  But as this is for AIDS, he should be aware that there will in fact be a number of gay people present and not all will share my deep appreciation of his filter-free style.

As much as Sig Other loves riding, he has an equal and opposite response to large groups – large groups make him a bit queasy.  Large groups of people ordered from one area to another, standing in lines and shuffling about make him feel that he’s reliving a scene out of Schindler’s List.  He bore up well through the first hour or so of registration - 2500 people going from medical check to e-ticket to the waiting area for the orientation/safety video.  I, on the other hand, was starting to feel like one of the cows for which the palace (a misnomer if ever there was one) was named.  We waited on cold concrete in what looks like a cavernous metal barn, were herded from one line to the next, from waiting area into the video room.  Doors closed, we were seated, asked to turn off our cell phones and told that if we left the room for any reason during the video we’d forfeit the bright orange wristbands proving we’d seen the video and have to start over from the beginning.  That’s when Sig Other leaned over to me and whispered, “See - this is when they turn the gas on.” 

Sig Other rode out first thing this morning.  With his friends Mark and Max and 2500 others.  I’ll meet them at their first stop in Santa Cruz later today.  More then…

Berries and cream please.

Child One did not like me when we first met.  Child Two takes every opportunity to remind me of this.  It gives him great pleasure.  “Maybe,” Child One said to me last night, ”it was because you tried to serve me strawberries with balsamic and basil instead of sugar and whipped cream.  I was only ten.  Who serves a ten year old their strawberries with balsamic?”  I remind her then she was not exactly a typical ten year old and already had a remarkably sophisticated palate.  She considers a moment, agrees and says perhaps she’ll try it again soon.

This observation did not come out of nowhere.  We had come home late from a movie, both starving, and I’d whipped up a quick dinner of scrambled eggs with shaved ricotta salata and sautéed baby zucchini with fresh sage.  For dessert, she grabbed a nectarine from the fruit bowl and asked if I thought it would be good.  “Better,” I said, “with a drizzle of thick balsamic and some chopped mint.”  That’s when she wrinkled her sweet nose and reminded me of the berries.

Once or twice, when the reminder comes that Child One did not, in fact, like me when we first met, I suggest that perhaps her not liking me had nothing to do with me.  She did not like the girlfriend that came before me (nor did I for that matter), or the one before that.  I suggest that perhaps ANY girlfriend who would come into her father’s life would not be received with open arms – that the girlfriend would be a threat to her own relationship with her father and a threat to the possibility that Sig Other and Ex Wife would reunite.  Child One dismisses this without a thought, “No,” she says, “I didn’t like you but that’s not why.  Maybe because you were bossy and I was afraid of you.”  She pauses there.  I agree with her.  I tell her I agree with her.  And then she continues, “But now I’m sort of bossy too and I love you so much!”  We laugh and leave it at that.

But I know – I will always know – why Child One didn’t like me.  I know and will always know why, even now that she truly does love me, she will remember those first years as difficult and fraught.  No child wants a third parent.  No girl child wants a woman to threaten her special relationship with daddy.  No boy child wants a woman to take his mother’s place.  These delicate relationships – the tenuous spiderweb dance we do as blended families – take constant attention – constant observation – which child is comfortable – which is feeling insecure – which is taking advantage, and which simply does not like balsamic on her strawberries and would prefer a simple serving with sugar and cream…