My Cross-Country Bike Tour

I left Bob and Violet in Sebree and ended up in the Rough River Dam State Park the next day, where I met up again with Noah and John after patching up flat number six. The weather in the past few days had gotten comfortably cool at night and so we all split the cost of a campsite in the state park and stayed outside. I whipped up a bag of my favorite mashed potatoes and ramen noodles, showered, and crawled into my tent. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in for a sleepless night.

At around 2 AM, loud noises outside of my tent woke me up. It was John. “Xiaoyu,” he said, “I think some raccoons got into your panniers. They’ve ripped some bags.” At these words I instantly snapped out of my stupor. If raccoons had damaged my panniers, I would’ve had a serious problem on my hands. I got dressed as quickly as I could and bolted outside, all the while imagining myself picking up both of my front panniers (where I store all of my food) and discovering two large holes at the bottom. As I arrived at the picnic table that I had leaned my bike against the previous night, I noticed that I was standing in the midst of a miniature garbage dump. Shredded Ziploc bags and granola bar wrappers were scattered everywhere. Fortunately, the panniers were okay. One of them was a bit scuffed up from the dirty paws of whatever animal had gotten into it—it had the remains of what looked like one of my fudge Pop-Tarts spread across the front—but it was otherwise unharmed. I sorted through the garbage on the ground, where I found two survivors: a cereal bar and my very last Clif bar. The raccoons had cleaned everything else out—about $20 worth of food. In frustration, I threw both the cereal bar and the Clif bar down on the picnic table and headed off to the bathroom. Unbelievably, when I returned, both bars were missing! As I stood by the picnic table, I heard a noise coming from the drainage pipe in a nearby ditch. It was the unmistakable sound of a Clif bar wrapper being dragged across the pipe. I was furious. I grabbed my pepper spray and emptied the entire bottle in front of the pipe. The raccoons had taken everything from me, right down to my last Black Cherry Almond Clif Bar (my favorite) that my parents had given me back in Oregon. I had been saving it for a special occasion.

When I finally did get back to sleeping, it didn’t seem like long before the sun rose and the humidity inside my tent forced me back outside. With nothing to eat, I rode to a nearby gas station and pigged out on junk food before continuing.