Around the World in 80 Dates (21 page)

As the pain increased, I opened my mouth and let out a shriek that grew louder and louder as the bike went faster and faster. By now the pain was intense, and I shrieked unreservedly, like a kettle boiling near to the point of death.

Then it stopped.

I stumbled forward from the sudden change in pressure; then, realizing it was over and how much my bottom hurt, I started laughing. I don't know why I found it so funny—maybe because why anyone would do this for pleasure was now truly a mystery to me, or because I was happy I'd tried something new. I turned around and saw Bike Mistress looking at me with respect. “That was really awesome,” she said. “You did well.”

I grinned and looked at Jennith, who—in complete contrast—looked mortified. “Come
on,
80 Dates,” she said, grabbing my arm and hustling me away. “You're making
so
much noise.”

“But, Jennith…” I protested in astonishment. “You're next. You're going on too, aren't you?”

Pretending she hadn't heard, Jennith was already on her bike and cycling determinedly away. I gingerly climbed onto my own saddle and pedaled after her, shouting unconvincingly: “It didn't hurt that much. Come back, you baby….”

 

I loved having these experiences with the Costco-ers; they were warm, wonderful people, a community I instantly belonged with.

The time we all felt this most strongly was at the communal dinners each night. Dinner was always accompanied by speeches: Rico thanking us for all our hard work; Garry and the kitcheners being told what an amazing meal they'd made; Hank sharing an experience he'd had in the Store; Elvis telling us about a fantastic theme camp she'd discovered. It might sound gushing and maudlin, but having a brilliant time in an ultra-extreme environment was only possible because everyone worked so hard as a team; sharing a good meal and making speeches was a way of acknowledging that.

And I especially loved this time of night because Garry and I were off-duty. We'd pop in and see each other during the day, but, busy as we were working in the kitchen and store respectively, it wasn't until the evening that we could spend more than a couple of minutes together.

Some nights we'd stay with the whole group, dressing up in ball gowns and going to the Prom a couple of camps down, or cycling around with OB and showing each other parts of the site that had been built that day, or watching the world go by from the dusty comfort of one of the Costco sofas.

It'd always end up just the two of us, though. Caught up in conversation with each other, we sometimes just didn't notice when the group moved on. Other times, we wanted to be on our own, to hold hands and walk through a neon maze or marvel at the people scrambling over vast granite obelisks impossibly suspended from thick iron chains.

And the whole time we'd be talking about everything and nothing, laughing at silly jokes we now shared, stopping in the dust and kissing each other with a hungry passion.

And, of course, we talked about my journey. Garry understood absolutely why I had decided to embark on it. Being a career junkie himself, he'd started to lose hope of meeting anyone he really cared about, too. “Until now,” he told me as we sat by the Temple of Remembrance, looking up at the stars over the desert.

After just four days together, it seemed crazy to say that I had met and was falling in love with my Soul Mate. But that's how it felt. We'd clicked instantly, in a way that was powerful and very real.

But I was also painfully aware that I was going to have to leave soon. As well as a dating past, I had a dating future.

 

I couldn't quite get my head around how I was going to incorporate the fact that I had met Garry—potentially my Soul Mate—into my journey, but I knew I had to. I was committed to my Dates: They weren't just numbers, they were people I was involved with now, and I didn't want to treat them badly. And I
wanted
to meet them, as well as do all those things my DWs and I had worked flat-out to pull together. And besides, leaving here would hopefully give me a chance to think about Garry and put everything that had happened between us on the Playa into perspective. Who knew, maybe I was just in denial and marching on with a
business as usual
attitude because I didn't know how else to handle this new minefield of feelings.

Garry seemed much calmer about it all. “Don't worry, Jen,” he said reassuringly, “I know you have to do this.”

I think one of the reasons he was able to be so reasonable was that our experience was so intense that we weren't really able to imagine anything beyond it. Everything about
now
felt so right. Leaving Garry and the Playa seemed impossible, like this was our home and we'd stay here forever. Leaving Garry—the man I'd traveled the world to find—to go date other men seemed too bizarre for words. Like a parallel universe.

But I thought again of the couple in Vegas united through the dogged efforts of Fate:
“Our entire lives were leading to our time together,”
Hettie had told me.

Well, Fate had brought me on this journey and had led me to Garry; it would seem she had plans for our future, too.

Back in London, when I'd finally settled on my route through the U.S., I had decided to go from here to Missoula, then from Missoula on to Seattle.

Seattle was where Garry lived.

After I left the Playa, I'd see Garry again in Seattle five days later and stay with him for the duration of my visit.

 

We slept less as the time to leave grew closer. It wasn't that we were consciously trying to cram in as much time together as possible, it was more that the better we got to know each other, the more hours we wanted to spend together.

The morning I had to leave, we'd been up all night.

It was 5.30 a.m. I'd said a tearful good-bye to the lovely Costco-ers the night before; Garry and I walked along the dusty road to the car with armfuls of my belongings that item by item had taken up residence in Garry's trailer.

Usually when we went out onto the Playa together, we'd always be nudging each other to look at an incredible sculpture, an interesting theme camp, a crazy costume (or lack of it). But now we walked in silence. We didn't notice the pink dawn blossom around us, or the dancers or the cyclists or the art. We were both quietly wondering how we were going to say good-bye.

Over the last week, I had lived in my boots, combat shorts, and bikini; I'd almost been embarrassed changing out of them into my regular jeans and a T-shirt half an hour earlier. Here for another three days, Garry was still in his crazy shorts and a Burning Man necklace while I was dressed for the real world and feeling as if I already had one foot out the door.

We dumped the stuff in the trunk of my dusty car and Garry walked me to the driver's side, opening the door for me. I threw my bag onto the passenger seat and turned to face him.

We looked at each other in silence. Neither of us wanted to say the words, so we said nothing at all. Garry reached out and took me in his arms.

“I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry,” I told myself.

But strangely, in a way, I felt sort of all right.

I'd been on fifty-four dates and met no one. What were the chances of me meeting anyone else? In fact, considering the odds, I thought myself pretty lucky to have stumbled upon Garry at all. Also, I had talked so much to Garry, I now needed to talk
about
Garry. I wanted to ring and email my friends and tell them I'd met someone amazing; give them a blow-by-blow account of how gorgeous he was, what he'd said, what he was like, how he made me feel. Girl stuff. And I'd see him in five days.

Okay, I'd talked myself around. It was all right; it was all going to be fine.

“It's all going to be fine, you know,” I said gently, moving my head from Garry's shoulder and looking up at him. “We'll see each other in five days and you can show me Seattle.”

But Garry didn't look fine; he looked tired and sad. I could tell he was thinking about how it was going to be when I was gone. But he forced a smile and narrowed his eyes, studying me intensely. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes. It'll be fine.” Then, determined to be strong, he straightened his shoulders and stopped frowning. “Now, you drive safely and have a good flight.” I nodded dutifully. “I've got your hotel number in Missoula,” he continued. “I'll call you on Monday when I'm on the way back to Seattle.”

Now that he was suddenly fine, I started getting upset. The tears ran down my cheeks as I buried my face in his shoulder.

We held each other tightly as all around us BRC geared up for another hot day on the Playa. But I had a long drive to Reno and a plane to catch, so with one last kiss and one last promise to call, I got in the car, got out of the car, gave him another kiss and a hug, got back in the car. And drove away.

I kept looking up at the rearview mirror. Garry stood on the side of the road and watched for a long time as I drove out of BRC, past the greeters and away. A part of me was saying, “Oh bugger the Dates, I'm staying,” and thinking of turning back. But I knew I couldn't. And I knew I mustn't. Garry lived in Seattle, I lived in London.

If we really were Soul Mates, this would be the first of many good-byes.

Me with real rodeo-ers, Bill and
Ramona Holt, at the Holt
Heritage Museum, Missoula, USA

In the heart of the Rocky Mountains that run southeast from Alaska all the way down to Mexico, Missoula was one of those places where it was hard not to have a good time. The University of Montana's campus was here, so there was always a decent band playing, plus with all the rivers and trails dotted around, you could pedal, paddle, and promenade to your heart's content.

That was one of the reasons I'd planned to come here on my dating tour: Missoula has always been one of my feel-good places and, even before I'd met the Love Professor, I'd known that happy people are luckier in love. The other reason was a bit sillier but no less heartfelt. Nicholas Evans's book
The Smoke Jumper
was based on the Missoulian firemen who fight the huge fires that ravage the surrounding area each summer by jumping out of planes directly into the path of the blaze.

It was a classic, sappy love story full of fearless, athletic, yet imperceptibly vulnerable men doing a real and dangerous job. I was in a romantic daze as I read it and—since it was set in my beloved Missoula—wanted to see for myself if the real smokejumpers were just as dreamy.

Of course, all this was before I met Garry.

For the ten hours I'd been traveling, I could only think of two things: how much I needed a bath and how much I missed Garry. The notion that I had Dates waiting for me at the end of the journey (the smokejumper plus a rodeo rider and possibly Cam, an American friend of Jo's) was not so much unwelcome as unimaginable.

 

Descending the steep mountain pass from Interstate 90 into Missoula, I was struck by the eerie brown pall engulfing not just the entire town but the mountains all around it. I already knew from conversations with the Missoula Smokejumpers' headquarters that this summer's fires were some of the worst on record: over 3,300 wildfires already burning out of control across 665,800 acres, with new fires taking hold every day. It was only now I was here that I understood just how serious it was, and I felt guilty for having taken such a flippant attitude.

Parking the car, I walked up the steps of the Holiday Inn, admiring the pretty Clark Fork River and bike trails that ran behind the hotel and along the edge of town. Down in the valley it was a fabulous sun-trap, but the smoke from the burning mountains that surrounded us made the hot sun hazy. I couldn't actually see the smoke but my eyes were streaming and my throat stung; people checking in ahead of me were coughing constantly. The town really was in the grip of a disaster.

I wasn't surprised, therefore, when reading my messages up in my room, to see one from Tim Eldridge, my contact at the smokejumper HQ and the man Nicholas Evans's main character had been based on. He wanted to warn me that the date probably wasn't going to happen since all the men were working back-to-back shifts trying to control the fires. He invited me to meet him at HQ the next day and said he'd do the best he could. I left a message immediately asking him to please not worry about the date: I hoped everyone was safe and, yes, I'd love to meet him tomorrow.

I opened up my laptop. On the Playa there had been no cell-phone coverage, no emails, so I hadn't been in contact with the outside world for five days. But as AOL popped onto the screen, it quickly became clear that the outside world had indeed been in contact with me.

There were 378 emails. From Dates who had been, Dates who were to be, and friends checking the details on Dates who might be. There were confirmations from hotels; invoices for reserved flights; details for rental cars to be collected. There were also work emails: Could I do an interview about this; was I free to write an article about that; did I have the notes for a conference I was chairing next month?

My eyes blurred as I struggled to take in the details, and I finally gave up and ran a bath instead.

After five days in the desert—where I had barely washed, knowing not to waste a single precious drop—I now marveled at how freely the water gushed from the taps. It seemed an extraordinary extravagance to be able to lie in a huge tub of hot, clean water.

Undressing, I was shocked when I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror: Tanned a deep brown, my face was sprinkled with freckles and my body was caked with sand and dirt from the desert. My hair was rigid with dust, my plaits sticking out almost at right angles. It took me a moment to work out why I had angry red welts and black bruises on my bottom, until I realized I was inspecting the handiwork of Bike Mistress.

Exhausted from the last week's excitement and lack of sleep, I caught myself dozing off in the bath, and had to drag myself out and dry off. Crawling into the impossibly huge and impossibly clean bed, I slept like a dead person for fourteen hours.

 

The next morning, feeling stunned like I had jet lag, I walked to one of the downtown coffee shops. Armed with a couple of strong black coffees, I planned another attempt at reading my emails and getting my thoughts into some sort of order.

“A grande Americano with space please,” I told the thirty-something woman busy taking orders behind the counter—a black coffee, cup not filled to the top. Starbucks has taught even us Brits the universal language of coffee ordering:
Espresseranto.

She took my money. “I'm not sure what kind of spice you want, hon,” she noted helpfully, “but we have cinnamon over there by the milk.”

I looked at her blankly. “Spice?” I repeated slowly; then realizing she'd misunderstood my accent, I laughed and said: “Not spice, s-p-
a
-c-e,” putting heavy emphasis on the offending vowel.

Now it was her turn to stare blankly. Another woman, making the coffee, sensed a problem and came over to the counter. “Everything okay?” she asked brightly.

The first woman turned and said: “She wants spice but we only have cinnamon.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” the barista apologized. “What kind of spice was it that you wanted?”

I was a bit too tired for this, but persevered. “I don't want s-p-i-c-e,” I explained, enunciating for all I was worth, “I want s-p-a-c-e.” Now both looked at me blankly. I tried another tack: “Room. I'd like room in the cup, please.”

Upon hearing my request, both women stiffened visibly and regarded me with open disapproval. “We don't have a license to serve alcohol, ma'am,” the barista said with a sniff. “I'm afraid you'll have to go to a bar if you want to drink.”

This really was too much. Putting both hands flat on the counter and leaning toward them menacingly, I hissed through gritted teeth: “Not RUM, r-o-o-m!” A caffeine-withdrawal meltdown was barreling irrevocably toward the surface, like a great white shark with a stomach unexpectedly full of cork.

“She wants a black Americano with space,” the man behind me called across the counter.
That's what I just SAID,
I thought to myself. But his American accent made all the difference and the cloud perceptibly lifted from the countenances of both women. They beamed, as all anxiety over serving the alcoholic foreign lady vanished and they busied themselves with my order. I turned to thank the man, but he spoke first: “It's Jennifer, isn't it?”

That threw me. Could today be any more disorienting?

“Ummm, yes?” I replied, as if unsure myself. “Errrr, how do you…?”

“I'm Cam,” he interrupted, seeing my bewilderment, “Jo's friend? I swung by your hotel to ask if you wanted me to show you around a little. They said I'd find you here.”

God, it was a Date. I was on a date and I hadn't even had a flaming cup of coffee yet.

Cam was a friend of Jo's. They'd met at a Buddhist retreat in California, where he lived. Although I was grateful he'd rescued me from my coffee debacle (it turned out to be terrible coffee, for the record), he scared the bejesus out of me right from the start.

With a shaven head and extraordinary cornflower-blue eyes (I felt like I was on
The Amazing Eyes of America
tour—all the men I met seemed to have them), he sat across the table from me, talking about kayaking but giving me a direct and unnerving look that said:
I will take all your clothes off here and now, if you just say the word.

It was all too much. I hadn't yet mentally prepared myself: I was still loved up and back in
Garryland.

Every year, Cam came to Missoula to take a ten-day rafting trip along the Lochsa River. He'd got back from it just the night before and was excited and energized by the adventure. “Moving with the elements allows you to harness the energy of nature,” he told me, his face feverish with excitement. Apparently he'd come away believing more strongly than ever that “you can't waste that energy. You have to store it up and channel it through everyday life; channel it through the people you meet.”

It was no good: I wasn't in the mood for Cam and his channeling. “Cam, it's lovely to meet you,” I said, trying to stem the flow. “And I'm glad you had such an exciting trip, but…” And I told him all about Burning Man and Garry and how I needed a couple of hours simply to absorb and understand what had happened to me. I was sorry and was very much looking forward to our date, but could we maybe have it a little later?

Cam smiled. “That's beautiful, Jennifer,” he said, taking my hand in his. “And I can feel this man has affected you deeply: I have to tell you that you are generating some very strong, spiritual energy right now.” I nodded, relieved. “In fact,” Cam continued, now trailing his fingers across my palm and circling them around my wrist, “perhaps there is a way that you and I can channel our energies together.” Giving me
that look
again, he edged his chair closer, sliding his leg slowly and deliberately against mine. “It would be a very powerful experience for us both,” he added in a low voice.

Wriggling my hand out of Cam's grip, I lurched unsteadily to my feet as I attempted to disentangle my legs from his while grabbing my laptop from underneath the table and snatching my cardigan from the back of the chair.

“So, umm, Cam, thank you for coming out to find me,” I stammered, backing away from the table and pretending I hadn't understood his suggestion. “I'm pretty busy while I'm here and, actually, may have to go early. But, you know, I've got your number, so if there's time, I'll…uummm…give you a call.” And with that, I fled the café and went straight back to my hotel, leaving a message at reception that under no circumstances was I to be disturbed.

 

Back in my room, I threw myself onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling for inspiration. What was I going to do? Where could my dating tour go from here? I mean, forget about Cam and his energetic overtures, could I carry on dating any man when all I could think about was Garry?

It felt like sitting down to dinner having already eaten: I wasn't hungry for more dates. I wanted to see Garry, pick up where we'd left off. I felt embarrassed to be missing him already—it was only a day since I'd seen him, for chrissakes—but it wasn't just that I missed his presence: I missed the way I felt when I was with him.

But what if it was just Playa Love?

What if, outside the extraordinary, emotionally live environment of BRC, we met in the real world and…there was nothing? No spark, no wonder?

Should I give up on my trip or should I keep dating?

If I stopped dating, Garry and I would have the time to get to know each other and see if this was for real. But would I then feel I'd let my Dates and Date Wranglers down? And if I didn't complete my journey, would there always be a quiet voice whispering
What if?

From a positive perspective, would continuing to date be the test that proved Garry and I really were Soul Mates? But did I have the confidence in me, in Garry and me, and in Fate, to believe our relationship could survive the rest of my journey? Or was I being naïve and selfish even imagining that a relationship could be that flexible? Would I inevitably push Garry's understanding too far and lose him forever?

Ugh! It was all going round and round in my head. I wanted to do the right thing, but I had no idea what the right thing was. Then it hit me. I sat up on the bed and dragged my laptop onto my knees.

This was a question for the Date Wranglers.