First the vacation, then the rumination
Mood:  blue
Topic: Ruminations
So we're back. We've been back for a couple of days now, having taken the overnight bus from Cadiz on Friday night. A case of relationship overdose on both fronts.

I hate this period of time. Not because I wish I were back on the bike and travelling more - I mean, THAT's a given - but because there's always a dead time after you go on holidays with people when you don't talk to each other (after having overdosed on your travelling companions) but you still want human companionship - hard when everyone is still on holidays.

And I feel kind of dumb because I let myself fall into temptation by having a flingette with G-Man, who, as they say on "Sex and the City", just isn't that into me. I know that we agreed to just make it a holiday thing, that it was going to end the minute we got on the bus, and if it were that easy I wouldn't be checking my e-mail every five minutes, waiting to get the reason why he's just sent me two audio files with no text attached. (As Dr. Phil says, "Every question is a statement you already know." So if I ask him, "Are you mad at me?", I probably already know he is.)

I wish I had the talent for cruelty that would allow me to walk away from difficult situations. I wish that I could just chalk up a fling to being a fling, but the fact that it happened with someone I've been infatuated with for a long time but I can't. What's worse is that this is someone I bike with, someone who I do stuff with. And I know that anything further is not going to happen.

So tomorrow it's back to work. It's back to fixing bikes, taking reservations, fighting with hotels, and dealing with the boss. I wish that I could rewind into last week. I wish I could relive the thrill of bombing down hills on a fully loaded bike, the great taste of an icy Diet Pepsi after four hours of straight riding, the thrill of a new man touching my back and running his hands through my hair, reaching the top of the hill and seeing the purple fields full of crownvetch sway in the wind; the way he grabbed my hand as I was putting sunscreen on his back and looked intensely into my eyes and didn't say a word. And now I have to let go of all of those things and internalize them and pretend, in a sense, that they didn't happen.

At least I can get the biking back.