HOLY MACARONI! It feels so good to be back home! Why did I ever have to leave this place? Under the guise that we didn’t trust any bike shops in DC, Patty and I came up to Lewisburg last Thursday to drop our bikes off for one last tune-up. I think we spent the last half hour of the ride to Lewisburg shaking with excitement and giant smiles plastered to our faces. The first person we saw when we arrived on campus was our nutritionist for the bike trip, Mayo. He’s doing a “victory lap” and staying a fifth year to grab his Masters degree. We’re very jealous of him, but he made up for it by always sautéing veggies and keeping us hydrated.
As much as we wanted to be at school for Bid Night to welcome all the new guys to the fraternity, it just wouldn’t have felt right, so we went to Hoboken, New Jersey to stay with fellow Bucknell ’07 alums Dan and Rick. We got to see a laundry list of Bucknellians, from dinner with our defending co-rec intramural soccer teammates Julie and Candra to meeting up with older fraternity brothers Fried, Doctor, Kevin, Doremus, Clouser, Stu, Manny and Brengel.
We spent Saturday wandering through NYC. As interesting as New York is, I’m glad we picked DC. We accidentally went through Times Square looking for a good deli, and now I know what ants in an ant farm feel like. On the plus side, I had Jamba Juice for the first time, and if I see one during the bike trip, I’m probably going to have to pull off the road and get another Jamba Juice. The stuff is good.
We went up to Springfield, Mass on Sunday to spend a little time with Mama O’Malley before we depart. We also hung out with Patty’s uncle (and my amigo) Uncle Beady who may be the most fun person in the world. He made us some infamous Beady Bombs and told stories that are probably mostly true. But he can make anyone laugh.
We got back into Lewisburg Tuesday around lunch time. I don’t know any words to adequately describe how it feels to be back at Bucknell, but they gave us these blogs, so I feel obligated to try. There is always something to do and someone to see, I am more busy now than I was second semester of senior year. I have this very excited feeling in my chest, so happy to be back with my friends and so anxious to go see everyone else. I think I feel similar to the Grinch at the end of the movie, when his heart grows three sizes and he lifts the sleigh with the stolen Christmas presents. I usually have a big goofy grin on my face, but it feels three sizes bigger back at school. Someone asked us what we would do when the ride got tough, and just knowing that we en route to Bucknell will get us through whatever we encounter. We would ride Fisher-Price tricycles from the Himalayas just to come back to Bucknell.
It’s strange the way people greet us know when they see us walking around campus for the first time. There are two greetings we get: one is from people who know about the bike trip and know we are back and they yell and jump excitedly and run over to say hi. The second group of people squints at us from afar, not sure if it is really us, gives a discreet wave just in case it’s not us and then eventually realizes it is us, gets excited and jumps up in down and then asks, “wait, what are you guys doing here?” I like watching the facial expressions of the second group going from quizzical and unsure to excited and then to confused.
OK, I would love to tell y’all more about everything we’ve done and how much we are enjoying Bucknell, but we want to go walk around and see more people so we can have even more to tell you about later. This is great. This is so wonderful. I’m still quivering with excitement.
