A memory from when I couldn't sleep last night

I don't know if this happens to you, but when I can't sleep and I'm just laying there looking at the ceiling and trying to find the cool part of the pillow one of 2 things happen in my head:

1. I get ideas that seem totally brilliant, until day breaks and I realize they're stupid. ("Yeah, I'll call up my ex-girlfriend from 3 years ago and give her pointers on how to be a better person. That way she'll thank me and stop talking shit about me behind my back and we can be friends and I can get back at her for being such a bitch to me.")
2. I remember things that happened to me years ago that I never bothered to remember since they happened.

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS ONE OF THESE MEMORIES:

When I was living in California I rented a room from a retired soldier who was a compulsive over-eater and spent most of his time writing editorials to the local paper. In the house next to ours lived about a dozen college students (as happens in any college town) as well as their girlfriends, boyfriends, squatters, dog, 3 cats, and untold quantities of beer and weed. We shared a driveway/back yard with the Animal House and I would even exchange a word or two with them every once in awhile, although I never got so far as to learn their names, or who actually lived there.

One afternoon I was sitting at the end of the driveway wrestling hopelessly with an inner tube and the wheel from the 1970s Pugeot that I was training on for the Big Kahuna (a half-iron distance race). The tires were original and they were stiff, and my pump was a PoS, and in general I'm hopeless with these kinds of things. As I was tackling this impossible feat of mechanics and the minutes were ticking away, it got harder and harder to hide from my neighbors that I didn't know what the hell I was doing. They were all were standing around in the driveway drinking beers and smoking cigarettes and casting, 'Who's going to be the big man' looks my way. Finally, one guy came over and said, "You need some help with that?" I did what I typically do when I don't want to look like a stupid girl, I made excuses, blamed it on the bike, and then handed over my tools, but not without sticking my hands in his way every once in awhile to make it look like I was helping. To my relief, after about 20 minutes he told me that, in fact, it was a hopeless situation - but not before having a very interesting conversation. I can't remember what his name was, so we'll call him Jeff.

Jeff: So do you ride long distances on your bike?
I didn't know what to respond. At the time getting to my 56 mile gole was almost inconceivable, and I was amazed at myself the half dozen times I did it. I didn't know if this merited an affirmitive answer or not.
Claire: e. Ummm, I guess. Longer than most I suppose. I think I got up to about 60 miles once.
It turned out that my long rides every couple of weeks did not merrit long distance standard as Jeff was defining it, but he had the grace not to tell me so.
Somehow it came out that I had been studying in Barcelona the year before (obviously, previous to this particular stay) and that I was planning on moving back.
Jeff: Oh really? I just got back from being in Europe for a year. I was riding my bike, see, that one over there.
I was well on my way to tri-geek-dom at that point and when I saw a hybrid (on the mountain side) that he was pointing at with horns on the handlebars but no shocks on the forks, inwardly I scoffed. (Keep in mind, that at this very moment I was incapable of changing the tire on a 197? Pugeot, a brand they stopped producing in the US in the mid-80's).
I was real into asking questions back then. You can learn a lot more from asking a really open question than talking about yourself, I thought.
Claire: So what were you doing over there? I was expecting him to say something like "I wanted to see the French countryside, so I visited all the suburbs of Nice on my bike" or something.
And then Jeff surprised me: a surprise on par with the first time I swallowed the scope of a marathon, an ironman, a 100 mile trail race, or a Tour-type effort. (I hope I'm not the only one who has these moments where someone forces you to stretch your concept of what you thought possible). Jeff kicked down my mental barriers of what was possible for any Joe Schmoe around the world with words something like this:
Jeff: Well I landed in the Czek Republic, then I went up through the former USSR like Estonia and all that. I spent a lot of time in the former Yugoslavia, you know like Bosnia. And then I went west through Poland, Hungary, Germany. I was in Italy and France for a couple of days, but I never made it to Spain. Then I really wanted to go back to Eastern Europe so I made my way back. I had to get my return flight through Prague anyway.
By this point my jaw was on the ground. I'd only ever made it to San Mateo county (the next one up from Santa Cruz) on my bike.
Claire: So, if you don't mind my asking, how much did you spend on this trip?
Jeff: Well, I got the ticket and I think I went over there with $1,000, that included the money for my trip back home.
Claire: So how did you, like LIVE and stuff? I mean, lodging and food and stuff can really add up...
Jeff: Well, I camped a lot. I had a tent in my *inseart word for the little packs you put next to your back wheels, the ones hippies carry their books to class in*. When I got to a town I searched through a lot of trash bins. When I couldn't find anything, I would ask people for food. People were really nice. They usually gave me something they were going to throw away.
Claire: But do you speak any Slavic languages? I mean, how did you let people know that you were hungry.
Jeff: Mostly like this *bringing hand to mouth*. When I could I told people that I was riding my bike through Europe and they seemed to understand. I met a lot of cool people.
Claire: Wow, that sounds so cool. I'd like to do that some day.
Jeff: (Somewhere in here the fact that I'm a vegetarian had come up). I wouldn't recommend it. You can't be to picky. I mean, you're eating out of the trash. No one knows what a vegetarian is out there.
Claire: And what did you do if you ever had a technical difficulty? This was suppremely significant, considering the situation with the Pugeot.
Jeff: Well, I mean, it's Europe. There's a cycling shop in every town. But I met a guy from Estonia along the rout who had some weird tire dimension that they only make in the old Eastern Bloque. He told me that he couldn't find a spare tire anywhere in Western Europe and that one of his tires had some 113 patches on it.

I had a 50-mile ride to do that day, so when I gave my tire up for dead I had to walk to the nearest bike shop and leave "Jeff" behind. But, how COOL is that?! Jeff had rode all around Europe on that crappy bike, and he'd also rode across America in the same way. His next plan was to ride from San Diego to Alaska. Alaska! On a Bicycle! And this dude was just visiting some buddies and smoking a cigarette and drinking some beers with his homies. He wasn't all into gear and training zones and treating his body like a temple, and still he did all these crazy feats for fun, not glory. This is the kind of thing that would get most people's picture in the paper. I want to do an ironman someday, I want to do a 100 miler before I die, but my main goal is to be a real lifestyle athlete like Jeff was. Who says you can't see the world on your bicycle and $1,000 a year? Now, I pretend that I'm a badass, but really, Jeff was (say it with me so I don't feel like such a cusser) ONE BAD ASS MOFO!!!