I wish that I had the picture to post of
Carys and me in our regalia on our bikes. Or even better would be a picture of both of our moms trying to get us to pose for a picture in our regalia on our bikes.
I think it summed college up nicely: I worked for four years to earn a hood, parade around in it for a day, and then immediately regress to childhood where you spend all day playing on your bike.
As many of you may have experienced, this trip has definitely given me something to talk about. Little did I know just how much I would appreciate that until I was home for a quick break in late March. As most of us know, somewhere around junior year of college, adults change their conversation from "have you decided on a major" or "you
still don't have a boyfriend?" to "what on earth are you going to do after you graduate, especially with that, what was it? Oh, yes,
history degree?" Typically, I would respond "
hmmm, good question," to which the adult would say "graduate school" and I would reply, "oh no, well at least not yet. And definitely not in history." To this, the adult, perplexed would ask, with just one word: "teach?" and I would say "I hope not," and the adult would say "law school?" and I would say "no way," and the adult would look at me, totally confused as if I didn't know that my parents had spent about a million dollars on my education in hopes that someday I would find gainful employment.
Fortunately for me, Bike and Build has dramatically changed this conversation. Now it carries on in one of two ways. The first, where the adult again asks "what on earth are you going to do after you graduate, especially with that, what was it? Oh, yes,
history degree?" My reply has become a casual, "oh, well, I plan to bike across the country." Genius. No one (but my big brother who constantly asks about life beyond the saddle (as if I can imagine that)) probes further into my future plans. They either sense that I am fundraising and change the topic to something like how Abby is getting along at Work Forest, or they ask about every detail of the trip (most likely thinking the thoughts recorded in the post labelled "an introduction to the summer"). For those of you who stuck around, intrigued (or at least faking it) thank you for your interest in my life after William and Mary, (but know that I can't help but think that I fooled you, at least a little bit).
It is my sincere recommendation to anyone future graduate that you find something like Bike and Build (after this summer I will let you know if Bike and Build as a conversation topic was really worth the work) to keep all those 'adults' off your back. It probably has to be a pretty wacky idea if you want to keep them wide-eyed, so don't settle for travelling across Europe, if you want to keep them occupied, tell them that you are living in Atlantis, or traveling to the former planet Pluto, or, the faithful fall-back biking across the one of the seven continents.
