Departure

good-bye, Elvis

I had terribly mixed feelings about going away for a three-week trip in Quebec. I signed up for a one-week supported bike tour with CycleCanada in late winter, then more or less randomly added days before and after the group tour, for travel and exploring on my own, thinking of riding the return trip from Quebec City to Montreal alone. In March I began following a DIY training plan.

Then in April I got bad news from the vet - my cat, Elvis, probably had cancer and would likely live only a few more months. Elvis was a half-starved rescue kitten when I adopted him fifteen years ago, and he'd always had stomach troubles, but now he wasn't going to get better. The vet gave him a shot of predisone (I think), and he perked up, gobbling his food, jumping up on tables and bookshelves again. The turn-around lasted two or three weeks, until he began a not-so-slow decline.

I felt guilty leaving him at home alone while I went wandering on long training rides, and worried about finding boarding or pet-sitting for him. Often I'd be twenty or thirty miles from home, out in the county somewhere, then suddenly remember poor Elvis suffering alone, and I'd have to turn back to be with him. Besides that, in June came the two-year anniversary of my mother's death. The money she left freed me to take this trip, but the inheritance came with a load of grief and remorse. And so, though I tried to be disciplined about training and planning, for most of the spring I wasted a huge amount of time mindlessly browsing on-line, moping at home, spending quality time with Elvis, though I don't regret the time I spent trying to comfort him - and myself.

He died on the last day of June. For all of July I kept myself busy busy busy, trying not to think about him or Mom, until the first week of August when I caught a Bolt bus to Vancouver BC for my flight to Montreal. After that I was so immersed in riding, in getting to know my fellow-tourists, in unknown roads, foreign architecture, history and language, that the losses were mostly crowded out of my mind, though every now and then I'd remember I would be returning to an empty apartment.