Reasons

Why ride my bicycle cross-country? To be frank, I had few coherent reasons when I committed to this nearly a year ago. My friend, Dan, was dreaming about bicycle touring in South America, and the idea just got stuck in my head. I made such a huge decision mostly on a whim (in the spirit of another friend, Joey, who decided to become a vegetarian over four years ago after a particularly significant philosophy lecture; he's still a vegetarian.) But reasons sometimes grow out of the soil of rash commitments. And now I have a few:

First, for the adventure. My greatest adventures of the past have involved long-term planning, mental fortitude, pushing myself to my physical limit, the possibility of danger. These are all present in pretty healthy quantities in this cross-country ride. Planning: I've spent several months figuring out my route, sewing it up to my schedule, and making my maps; I've been saving money since April; I'm building my bicycle over the course of the next few months; and I have yet to figure out cheap or free camping arrangements, or a healthy eating plan. Mental fortitude: I'm sure I'll find some miserable days in the cold spring rains of WA, or the headwinds of KS, or the the humidity and mosquitoes of the East. Physical limit: I have to ride 430 miles weekly. Danger: sometimes I can't unclip my pedals and I fall over at stoplights.

Second, for the solitude. I am in a...deficit right now. I really long for spans of time to be alone, be quiet, stop producing and performing and speaking. My past experiences of solitude (solo backpacking, brief hermitages at Lebh Shomea Monastery, traveling alone) have been more than joyful. It seems like forgotten things return to me, startlingly: my senses (meals are full of tastes and smells, trees are sharply outlined, breezes against my skin are distracting), virtues that may have gone stagnant or decayed (empathy, honesty, forgiveness), enjoyment of art (novels, writing, sketching), an ability and desire to listen to other people, an ability to pray, an affection for the good people in my life. It's like my soul gets distracted, or worse assertive and demanding, in the busyness and struggle of the modern world. And solitude takes away most of my soul's reasons to behave in these ways. Solitude sits my soul down in a chair and says, "Stop. Listen. Remember." It's all there, or mostly; it just needs reawakening every now and then.

Third, to see America. I have long had a powerful pull toward travelling the rest of the world. I think most people in my generation have this. We want to travel the globe, see things. But for some reason this desire in me has been refocused toward my own nation in recent years. What a fascinating country! Her geography: volcanic cones, deciduous rainforests, hundreds of miles of cold and windy coasts, or hot and expansive coasts, flat plains with grass, flat plains with little bunches of trees here and there, flat basins with nothing but sand and salt, fourteen-thousand-foot peaks running up her center like a backbone or a great wall, churning glacial rivers, long slow sinuous rivers, canyons, towers, trees like towers, folded hills, ancient time-smoothed mountains, sweet smelling valleys, whole mountainsides of blight-dead oaks, white frozen ponds, lakes as big as oceans, and tidal pools. Her animals: the bear, the elk, the barn swallow, the mouse, the lowly beetle, the crawfish. Her people: Native Indians, inner-city Blacks and Latinos, Midwesterners, Mennonites, Mormons, African war-immigrants, Irish, Chinese, Farmers, Businessmen, Hobos. There's a lot to encounter here, inside my own country.

And moreover, there's something absolutely unique about exploring a place by bicycle or by foot. There's a synthesis that happens. When I drive my car around CO Springs, I get in, close the door, push the magic buttons and spin the dial, and then I get out at a wholly new location. Things are similar, maybe, but they wouldn't have to be. I could just as well step out of my machine into St. Petersburg Square; I wouldn't balk. There's no connection (or very little) between my launch and my destination. But when I get on my bicycle, I feel the road run beneath me like a rope between my hands. If the road drops into a depression by the creek, I feel the thermoclines. If the weather changes between start and finish, it does so continuously, logically, rather than magically, digitally. When I started to commute by bicycle, CO Springs surprisingly shrank in my mind. It was no longer the sprawling archipelago I had known from inside my Volvo. Instead it was a smaller, webbed whole. As I ride across North America I imagine I will witness her shrink. Maybe the whole world will shrink and synthesize. I'll feel the air get cooler as I ride up into the Rockies. I'll feel my skin dry out as I descent into the plains. One ocean will lead to a bit of road and then a town and then another ocean.

Fourth, to ride with friends. There are two legs to which I'm most looking forward. The MT-WY section with my parents. Dad will ride with me. Mom will drive and paint and probably prepare Mom Meals. When we stop in the evening, we might all three ride together. And the Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive section in VA. For a handful of days Melanie, Jessica, and Dan will ride with me, a sort of farewell from my dear friends in CO.

Fifth, to go home. Virginia, in particular the Shenandoah Valley, has become a meaningful metaphor to me in the years since I left college. It represents my childhood, my family, and my faith, all things that I've denied in greater or lesser ways through my young adult years. And so, as heady or ridiculous or dangerous as it is, biking towards VA, through the beautiful Valley, and then on eastward carries a great deal of poetic weight for me.