Unable to sleep I might have been, but entirely aware of my surroundings I wasn’t. As if in a dream, although a fairly lucid one at that. A voice. From where I wasn’t at first sure. Then the slow realisation it was from someone I felt I should recognise, for it seemed they were addressing me. A greeting. Yes. I remembered suddenly. Tracy. A fellow cyclist also staying with me at Linda’s house. We’d been introduced earlier.
It was very late, close on ten pm, but I’d decided to go shopping in a nearby supermarket. Thought I might as well do something useful whilst I wrestled with jet-lag in what seemed like almost perpetual daylight. In the summer Anchorage having as little as four hours twilight. Tracey and friend Amelia had ridden to the outlet, whilst I’d opted to walk. My trusty steed yet to be reassembled. Besides, I’d have been a danger to myself if I’d tried to ride.
I’d landed much earlier in the day, around five in the morning, a screaming child depriving me of even a dose on the overnight flight from Hawaii. Met by host Linda at the airport, I really had planned to sleep when she’d dropped me off at her house. But it wouldn’t have worked. Neither sufficiently tired to do so or, for the most part, alert enough to do anything useful. Instead, drifting about like a small boat parted from its moorings.
