American Randonée

The End

2009-08-25T22:48:00.002-06:00

I've begun the next thing: graduate school. My life will certainly include some of the above activities. (I've kind of got a dream fomenting about riding in one day to Missoula from here, Pullman. 240mi. Next Fall?) But mostly my life will be composed of studying, etc. And that's much less interesting to write about, so I'll not be posting on here any more. I really enjoyed everyone commenting and keeping in touch. Thanks so much. Cheers.

Where Did You Stay?

2009-08-04T13:25:00.023-06:00

When I headed out on May 15, I was nervous about a lot of things. But one of my greatest concerns was, where on earth was I going to stay? I'd read somewhere, and a few other touring cyclists had confirmed it, that I would be able to find secret hideaway campsites on private and public land everywhere. "Just look for a little patch of trees or a ditch that you can conceal your tent in." "If it's not fenced or posted, it's called 'unimproved land' and most states have laws that protect travelers who camp on unimproved land." I wanted to be tight on spending, so this sounded good to me. But I was a little nervous about trespassing. I've had some sour experience with that.

Turned out I only had to do this stealth camping twice, both within the first 10 days of riding (see that last two pictures). In the end, I found it it rather nerve racking and somewhat presumptuous. I was on edge all night. I worried both about getting busted and about giving private landowners or public land protectors a bad taste about cyclists. Some riders primarily stealth camp. But there are many other ways to camp, the first of which is to ask, "may I camp here?" And this question usually leads to a nice adventure.

So here's my answer to the question that I was most frequently asked as I rode my 3000mi. Even up to the end, I felt like every night was a new experience. I didn't exactly know how to find a campsite or who to ask. I was a perpetual novice at this. Which landed me in some pretty interesting places:

in private campgrounds

on baseball diamonds

in little cozy cabins

beside Christmas lights
outside churches

inside churches

outside firehouses

inside firehouses

outside strangers' houses

inside strangers' houses
at friends' houses

in the city park

underneath mountains

beside RVs

beside playgrounds

in the water

in the wilderness

in a Winnebago

in state parks

and twice, stealthily hidden away on unimproved land

Conclusion

2009-08-03T18:55:00.005-06:00

Dan and I (and Brooke, Dan's girlfriend) arrived at Windmill Point just East of Kilmarnock yesterday at 4:30pm. The end of my ride this summer.

I swam out about 100 ft into the Chesapeake just to make sure I'd really arrived at the coastline. Then Dan started yelling at me to not get the water in my eyes or ears. Or nose. Or mouth.

We'd ridden through two hard downpours that day, but we'd stayed warm.

Dan and I had a great last three days. The riding was frankly unsavory. Traffic all day, and the smells of traffic. But we enjoyed eachother's company. We stayed in Fredericksburg at a canoe rental shop on the Rappahannock River. The fellow that owned the place told us we could shower there if we wanted. It was a hose hooked up to a shower head hung over a few pieces of plywood nailed up at nearly the right height. A tree limb had fallen over the shower shed and looked like it had been there a little while.

The next night we stayed in Westmoreland State Park. There was a pool, which had aroused our suspicions, the park being on the coastline. But when we got down to the pool (100yds from the surf) it all made sense. There were signs all along the beach warning against swimming in the toxic stuff. The pool was a sight. I've never seen so many black kids crammed into a pool. Or white kids for that matter. Dan did a bunch of heroics on the diving board and a group of kids started yelling at him: "Hey, man. Do that again!" Then I got up on the diving board and did a cannon ball, and they lost interest. That night we cooked a huge meal and played cribbage while we smoked our new pipes (new for me). We both got a little sick. Neither of us are very stout smokers. But we made a lot of smoke rings.

After arriving at the coast, Dan's mom and my parents met us and took us out for a classic seafood dinner. Softshell crabs, tuna steak, crab cakes, fresh steamed veggies. It was great.

Pulling out onto Windmill Point didn't feel particularly significant. It was just the end of another day of riding. I was tired. Pedal weary. Ready to be done. But not in a, "man, I'm glad that's over," kind of way. More like graduation from college. A feeling of sadness that it's behind me. A great many wonderful memories. A bigger sense of life. And yet a readiness for what's next.

I hope I can post some pictures in the next week.

Nearing Completion

2009-07-30T16:47:00.007-06:00

I arrived at my growing up homestead near Staunton, VA and thereby finished out my third-to-last leg two Sundays ago (July 19). The week before that had included so many moments that are crowding for space in my memory I can hardly believe it. Was there a couple in Richlands that invited me to sleep in their son's old bedroom, the walls pasted to the ceiling with Duke Basketball memorabilia? Did my Mom bring me a slice of peach pie in a tupperware container on my first night upon entering VA? Did Tom Graham and his two lovely daughters take me out to their farm to pick blackberries and feed their goats? Did I pass a fighting rooster farm, with a thousand blue plastic roosts perfectly aligned? Did I pedal across Annie Dillard's Tinker Creek? Did my dad join me on a ride through the hills south of Lexington? Did we gorge ourselves on wild raspberries?

I stayed with my parents in Harrisonburg for 4 days and then picked my friends up in Washington, DC to start our Shenandoah National Park traverse. Mel & Jess flew in from CO Springs. And Dan drove; he was moving to Manassas, VA anyway.

Dan brought his BOB trailer for gear, and I threw on the rear set of panniers that I'd jettisoned somewhere back in CO. Mel & Jess, with their racing bikes which couldn't take standard racks or trailers, nevertheless loaded as much gear as they could into their backpacks and onto Mel's seatpost rack. We were a motley crew.

We started with a classic loop through Albemarle County along the Tye River. Some very steep climbs. I kind of wanted to say, "welcome to VA; it's steep here," with that ride, but all it seemed to say to them was, "very pretty." We stayed in a cabin some family friends have rebuilt and baked pizzas on their grill. Then we rode North along the Skyline Drive, and stayed in another cabin near the halfway point. There we cooked some standard backpacking meal of instant rice and canned beans and freezer-whilted sliced peppers and canned chicken. The next day we descended from the ridgeline into Front Royal and rode Northwest to Middletown where a mutual friend of ours grew up. Greg's parents still live on the farm there and hosted us for the third evening. They turned on the water pump to their pool slide and fed us a garden-fresh meal and showed us around the farm. Ray even fired up his 20yr old Cat track loader and let each of us push a little bit of brush down the hill. Made us feel like real farmers. Marlene set us out on the porch as the evening closed and fed us pound cake and fresh fruit. Fireflies blinked on and off. It was very pleasant. The last day we rode the final bit into Manassas, where Dan's parents live. We had to sprint down a couple illegal miles of interstate 66 to connect our route, but got in safely. Mel & Jess flew out the next evening, which gave us enough time on Wednesday to explore a used bookstore and a tobacconist where they bought me an old-man pipe as a graduate school present.

Tomorrow Dan and I will start out toward the coast. He's riding with me for the last little bit. There are only 130mi to go. We'll divide that into 3 easy days. We'll arrive in Kilmarnock, VA, or more specifically the Easternmost tip of Windmill Point Road, sometime toward afternoon on Sunday, August 2. And then it'll be over.

From Coal Country

2009-07-13T08:16:00.004-06:00

Over the last two days I definitively entered the big hills. Instead of the rollers of MO, IL and Western KY, whose amplitude rarely exceeded 100ft, these hills climb and descend 500-1000ft. And they're as steep as anything I've ascended on this trip yet. Yesterday I even began to read a very real rhythm into my riding. Went something like this: climb in my lowest gear at 5mph for 20min, stop and eat a snack near some big machinery parked at the top of the hill, descend at breakneck speed in 3min, roll through the holler and past the 5-6 houses planted there, swerve out of the way of a few dogs, wave at a toothless gentleman, begin climbing again. I repeated this 6 or 7 times.

I stayed last night in Hindman, KY (HIEND-man). I rolled into town a little after 4pm and began my usual search for a place to pitch my tent. I didn't see any churches as I pulled into town, so I stopped in at the local gas station and asked to borrow the yellow pages. She said she didn't carry those. I asked for a phone book, she handed me one. The listing of churches stretched on for several pages; it included all the churches in the whole county. Almost everyone here, it seems, goes to church, and I guess that most churches have an attendance under 20 people. I gave up trying to figure out if such-and-such church was in Hindman, or Emmalena, or Darfork, or Bulan, or Garner, or Mallie, or Rowdy, or Dice, or Dwarf, and I gave her back the yellow pages and asked if there were any churches in town. She told me she reckoned so. She pointed the way through downtown and told me I'd run across a couple. I biked that way, and stopped in at a big catholic-looking edifice. I peeped inside and heard the clinking of billiard balls in the basement. I walked into the frigid air conditioning and moved downstairs where I saw a big fellow with a huge head of hair playing a solitary game of pool. His hair was continuous from the crown of his head to the tip of his chin, long and shaggy. One might even think "hippie" at first glance, something certainly shocking for Eastern KY. I greeted him. He introduced himself as Seth. We talked a little while, and he invited me to stay in the church building. (It was actually an old Methodist building converted to a Baptist youth center.) In fact, he explained, he'd been sleeping there in the basement for the last week. He did that sometimes. He wasn't going to be there tonight, though, he said, because his mom was picking him up to take him back home. "Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge," he said. He had a gentle way of suggesting things that made it seem perfectly natural to bed down in the basement and help myself to whatever was in the fridge.

I took off to look for some groceries for dinner. Found a fruit and vegetable stand and went a little crazy. Picked up two sweet potatoes, two tomatoes, two peaches, three peppers, an onion, two squash, one zuchini. I don't know what I was thinking. Real whole plants are gold when you're mostly eating cheap processed foods, which I am.

I got back to the church and instead of cooking immediately, Seth and I sat down and began to talk literature. And I began to ask myself where did this very literate, very sensitive Kentuckian come from? I guess that was the wrong question really. The better question would have been where did I ever get the idea that Kentuckians are just hillbillies, and that hillbillies don't care about fine things? I sat there and put glue on the soles of my shoes and taped them up to repair some serious heel separation, and talked with Seth about the novel he's currently writing, which to me sounds like an incredibly subtle portrait of a Kentucky coal miner and his family falling into depression and corruption. We talked about poets we like and why. We got really animated about novelists, him about Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, me about Melville and Dostoevsky. We talked about Kierkegaard and his impact on our faiths. He told me about a failed attempt not too long ago of walking across the United States. I enjoyed his company immensely.

Later, they had a Bible study in the room above while I chopped and cooked my quarts of vegetables. I ate them all, with a very little help from Seth, and even ate two chilidogs which I scrapped together from their fridge.

After their church service that night, two others came down to say hello and to invite me out for ice cream, a married couple, Cory and Jessica, and a bright-faced baby on Jessica's hip. They drove me to DQ where several others, including Seth, were sitting already eating various treats. Cory and Jessica are a young couple, 30 yrs old. They already have 4 children, the oldest 3 of which were at home with Grandma, or someone else responsible. Even though they're from this area of KY, they explained to me that they are really gypsies. They've lived all across the country in their few years together, from North Carolina to San Diego. Jessica had a concerned, motherly way of paying attention to my interests and needs, like so many of the women I know married to my good friends. She asked me lots of questions about myself and my trip thusfar. She whispered to me several times later that night that they could take me back to the church whenever I was ready, just let them know when. Cory had an easy and smart sense of humor, making fun of Seth and his passion for Kierkegaard in such a way that you weren't quite certain he wasn't actually making fun of himself. He talked about his own travels and his experience of fatherhood (he singlehandedly midwifed for his wife's 4th child, the bright-faced one on her hip) with self-effacing good-humor. And there was another fellow there on the other side of the table eating his ice cream and telling funny stories about his year living in Poland.

Kentucky? Kentucky of the rottweillers and surreptitious marijuana farmers and the no trespassing signs and the blank stares, where are you? I'm finding Kentucky looks different the closer I get up to its breathing, laughing face.

Tonight I'll be staying in Elkhorn City, on the KY side of the state line. Then I'll bike into VA, my last state of all, on Tuesday. Mom is planning to meet me that evening and take me out for dinner. Not too long after that I'll be pulling into Staunton, VA, sleeping in my childhood bed for a few days, then heading off with 3 good friends into the Shenandoah National Park, to ride north along the Skyline Drive. And then on to the coast.

Midway Through Kentucky

2009-07-07T14:09:00.003-06:00

John Henry and I have made our way through Missouri and Illinois and a bit of Western Kentucky and we're now winding our way upward and ever deeper into Appalachia. And I'm getting nervous.

At the tail end of my Missouri ride two weeks ago, I was invited into the home of Jim and Cheryl Shollenberger. It was a really hot night, the night before I arrived in St. Louis to stay with my Aunt and Uncle, and I had knocked on a church door in Union to see about sleeping inside. After a few minutes of talking, Jim and I felt we'd each met a kindred spirit (separated by some 35 years). He's a quiet thoughtful sort of fellow. A teacher of music at a local college. A passionate student of Native American history and music. He invited me to his house that evening. Among many other things, he and Cheryl took me out for a great big pasta meal. Jim had 3 of his retired friends over for their regular Wednesday night game of Bridge. I remembered a little bit of Bridge from my time in Holland some years ago, but not much. Jim patiently explained a few hands to me, but I didn't ever risk actually playing with these fellows. They were good. I took some snacks and a cold beer downstairs and wrote in my journal and listened to a cd of tenor arias that Jim had wanted me to hear. He especially wanted me to hear Nessun Dorma, which was beautiful. I slept like a child in their guest bedroom. Early the next morning Cheryl and Jim cooked me a great big breakfast and sent me on my way.

The next day I got to Aunt Margaret's and Uncle Randy's (and Cousin Alex's) house before they had arrived home from a family reunion. They'd left a reclining chair and a fan plugged in out on their porch for me. I read for a few pleasant hours and napped for a few more.

I flew out the next morning for Kim & Jacob's 2nd wedding reception in VA. It was great to see family and friends again, and to get a little rest.

I flew back to St. Louis the following Tuesday, a week ago. The morning after, Alex drove me 100 miles around St. Louis, and dropped me off at a ferry along the Mississippi River. There was something very thrilling about crossing the mighty Mississippi on a creaking clanking ferry.

I biked that night to my Aunt Di's and Uncle Brent's in Carbondale, IL. There Uncle Brent and I sat for a while in his studio and talked about metalsmithing history and techniques. Raising, annealing, folding Damascus steel. He's an artist in the medium, a very fine artist. The pictures I found online don't compare to the experience of standing in front of one of his rustic figures. His recent sculptures are abstract, and they explore themes of spirituality, especially primitive spirituality, with simple, beautiful lines and gestures, spires, crescents, mounds. We walked around his backyard smithy which is entirely open to the air, the border between inside and outside is pretty undefined. I stumbled across a large piece of tapered, bent steel there on the ground, concealed by leafy detritus. I asked him if it was some tool of his he'd misplaced. No, he told me. It was his next piece. It was rusting and looked like it belonged there amidst the organic matter. In fact, this is what I like most about his sculptures. They're anything but modern. Their themes are very ancient. And he's made them in a very ancient way. Even the bases that he mounts his recent pieces on are handmade wooden structures fashioned by an adze he also made by hand.

Tod, their son, my cousin, who I've not seen in a decade or so, came for dinner. He is a world-traveler and a very good dog-trainer. I pressed him for some advice about mean dogs in Kentucky. He said be mean back. Get off you bike and be mean as hell. Most dogs, he said, if they've not been aggressively trained to the point of psychological breakdown, will back down, preferring their free foodbowls, to your costly calfs. I've been using that advice for the 3 or 4 mean dog encounters I've had in KY so far. It's working, but it leaves me shaking and pumped with adrenaline. I hope I don't run into multiple mean dogs at once. I've been looking for a bottle of pepper spray to replace the one that got stolen back in OR.

Aunt Di showed me the yard that was devastated by an "inland hurricane" almost 2 months ago. 100mph gusts of wind destroyed trees in a huge swath through that county. Their yard was hit bad. They've lived in that yard for over 30 years and many of the trees they planted themselves. It's a loss they're still grieving. Then we had dinner. My Aunt Di is no less of an artist than my Uncle Brent. She's practiced and perfected the art of hospitality. I ate a wonderful meal and immediately made myself at home without even thinking about it or having to be told to do so.

The next morning I pedaled out. In the following days across IL and the Western part of KY, I did a lot: I slept at the edge of the Ohio, hearing tugboats push whole continents of metal down the river all night long. I was offered and I gladly accepted a free breakfast at a bed-and-breakfast in whose lawn I pitched my tent. I was shown around a museum I stumbled across in Marion, KY by a big old lady who really didn't know much about the exhibits, but read the placcards just fine. She was very kind and gave me some cold water and talked for a while. I stayed for two nights at the famous biker's hostel in the tiny town of Sebree, KY, receiving warmth and grandparently kindness from Bob & Violet, the Baptist Preacher and his wife. I mused about all the signs I passed for "General" Baptist churches. (Somewhere else, I'm sure, there must be a bunch of "Particular" Baptist churches who split with them and who even now are bemoaning their brothers' and sisters' general gospel and general church van policies and way of singing generally on tune.) I jammed my calf unwittingly onto the teeth of my largest chainring while pretending to be mean as hell towards a very intimidating rottweiller. I didn't notice myself bleeding until the episode was over, so pumped full of adrenaline had I been. I stayed alone in a quiet little firehouse in Utica, KY. I stayed behind a convenience store near Madrid, KY, and was invited to dinner by the owners, then at dinner, they suggested driving me in to Leitchfield in the morning to see some murals at her workplace and to grab some things at Walmart.

And most of all, I've begun to get a little unnerved. Just like some of those desolate sections I pedaled through in Idaho, the countryside of Kentucky is beginning to take on an indifferent, even hostile character in my mind. This is odd, because of all of the hospitality I've received in this state. Very friendly people everywhere. But there are little symbols of hostility that I keep running across, little things that say, "you're not welcome here." The rare instance of an exceptionally mean off-leash dog. A house with several "No Trespassing" Signs on the front door of all places. An old fellow that passed me in his old car with his middle finger up and his teeth bared. A lot of stares.

A lot of this is in my head, perhaps could fall into the category of self-fulfilling prophecies. I hope to get over it.

I'll be on my way now. Need to find a place to stay.

Ryan Gosciejew

2009-07-07T13:05:00.002-06:00

Many people knew Ryan better than I did, but I want to remember what sticks in my mind.

Sometime in the early summer of 2007, Ryan and I speed hiked up to Barr Camp on the lower slopes of Pikes Peak. I was thinking of it as training for the REI race up the Peak later that summer, but I got the sense that Ryan was more interested in just getting out into the pines and up on the mountain slopes. And in hanging out. Ryan couldn't get enough of hanging out. He'd hang out with anyone; he wasn't snooty.

We hiked hard, both of us at our limit. When we got up to the camp, we sat down on the main cabin porch and Ryan patched up his blistered heel with duct tape or something. He was trying to break in a new pair of shoes. I hadn't heard him mention any pain as we were going up, so I was surprised to see that his heel was actually bleeding. While we sat there Ryan talked with Neal and Teresa, the caretakers of the camp, like he had known them all his life. He had this gift of talking. It was also a curse. On the way down, I just wanted to get some peace and quiet, so I tried to speed ahead. But Ryan kept up. He was sort of limping, but he didn't once mention his heel. We talked about everything from religion to music to mountain biking. The day was really perfect. Not too hot. Beautiful early summer foliage. Birds. By the time we had reached the bottom, I realized Ryan wasn't just babbling, he had a lot to say. I was learning something.

Once we got down, Ryan invited me up to his and Carrie's house for some juice. Driving back to his place, we must have passed 10 people that Ryan knew and waved at. The morning stretched into the afternoon. Hanging out with Ryan had a tendency to do that. He made some fresh juice in his juicer with carrots and apples. Honestly, it was the best juice I've had. He told me what it meant for him to practice veganism. He explained bits of the Grateful Dead poster hanging on his wall; it had something on it, some character, or some image from almost every one of their songs. He showed me some of his strange paintings. And some of our mutual friend Jason's strange photographs. He showed me pictures from a recent cave surveying trip. And his new recording equipment. He was getting pretty heavily into recording techniques right then, and was also a sometime drummer for West Side Bus Project, which was an impressive Manitou Springs band that unfortunately lasted less than a year.

Coming away from my first day of hanging out with Ryan, it struck me that he was terribly interested in me. I've never known someone who talked so much, but of whose interest in me I was so certain. He wanted to connect and he had his fingers in a million different things to connect about. Hanging out with him was a full experience.

When we finally had the race up the Peak (in late July?) Ryan talked all kinds of smack to me and the other competitors. He was one of the few that had run the official race in the previous year and he knew what he was doing. But Ryan had this way of mouthing off that instead of making you feel trod upon, just made you feel like he liked you. He had not trained very hard, and so I beat him up the mountain. At the top, all I could feel coming from Ryan was good cheer. He asked me all kinds of questions about how the race went. He was genuinely curious about my experience. Everything about his face and eyes said, "Man, that was a fun race." He'd brought several bottles of Guinness up to the top and he shared them around with several of us.

He was an official cave surveyor and rescuer. He was a jazz drummer. He was a lover of the old stuff, the Stones, the Dead, Dylan. He didn't get caught up in complaints like the rest of us at REI, he just worked hard. He smiled in such a broad way that his eyes went all squinty. He was frank. Everything about him, his strengths and his flaws, were endearing. He was an avid mountain biker, a one-time owner of the infamous Rick Merril Instigator. He loved being with people.

Ryan died two Saturdays ago. He was 28.

Iberia, MO

2009-06-23T09:59:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I was banking on resting for a while midday in the library in Iberia. Unfortunately, the library was closed on Mondays. There was nothing else in town. I biked despondently East on 42, figuring I'd just pedal through the heat. But then, a mile outside of Iberia there was a gas station, that also looked like a bit of a country store. I stopped in, thinking I'd at least fill up my water, but hoping in the back of my brain that I could rest in there. A handwritten sign on the door said, "We are no longer taking credit. Absolutely no exceptions. If you have a balance with us, please pay it immediately." I didn't know any country stores still offered credit. There was wall full of shelved liquor. And a sign that priced different quantities of hay. To get to the bathroom I passed a couple tables in the back, set up like a dirty diner. I filled up one of my bottles in the bathroom. Then as I was going outside to put it back in my bottle cage, the lady at the counter, previously engaged with a customer, said, "You don't want any ice, son?" I said no, it usually melted so fast it didn't matter. She said, "And you don't want nothin to eat, either?" I said, well, what did she have. She pointed at a menu abover her head painted by hand on a big piece of plywood. There were hamburgers, different kinds of sandwiches, lots of fried things. I asked if this was a restaurant. She said, "It is. I'm the cook." She explained that she'd have to go in the back and cook whatever it was I wanted. "Takes about 20 minutes." I think she could tell I was hungry, which was why she was offering. But I could tell that cooking stuff kind of bothered her. I said, oh, I thought I'd pass. I'd have a look around at the snacks she had. I walked a loop around the store. Nothing really interesting. I was thinking about a hamburger, or two. I think she sensed this. She asked me one more time, "You sure you don't want nothin to eat, son?" I said, well, really, if she didn't mind. She looked at me. I could tell she did. But there was something else there too. She said, "You're the one paying me, son." She looked at me real sternly. It was like she was trying to teach me a lesson about life. And I didn't mind it somehow. "It's hot as hell back in that kitchen. No air whatsoever. I believe I lose a pound every time I go back there to cook a burger. But I did offer it to you didn't I?" I felt kind of awkward. I asked if I could have two burgers and a plate of french fries. She cooked it and brought it to me. Best burgers I've had in some time. I tried to pay her immediately when she brought everything out, but she said, "You eat that first, then you come pay me." She wouldn't even let me give her a tip later. I stayed for almost two hours, reading, and talking with a few local people that stopped in and stared at me. Talked with her for a while too. Once, after a long silence, she leaned her head around the snack rack to ask me if I'd gone to sleep on her. I told her no ma'am, just enjoying myself.

Vienna, MO

2009-06-23T09:49:00.002-06:00

In Vienna, I biked into the park to have a look around, see if I could camp there that night. There was a little league baseball game winding up, lots of families all around. I stepped into the bathrooms to see if there were any showers. No, but someone had told me they'd be open all night, so they'd do. As I was coming out of the bathroom, a little boy, surely no more than 6 years old, was going in. He took a long serious look at me and then followed me directly out. I swung my leg over my bicycle and stared back at him. "You riding your bike?" he asked me. I said yep. Across the country. He stared at me, very business-like. "To see things?" I nodded. "Do you like it?" I somehow felt like I was getting interviewed. I said I liked it. Sometimes it was hard. But overall I liked it a lot. "Where do you sleep?" I said I stayed in city parks, like this one. And sometimes in cemeteries, I told him, which was a lie. I've been wanting to stay in a quiet little cemetery, but haven't yet. I just wanted to see if this little interviewer was actually a kid. "Cemeteries?" he said and raised both of his eyebrows for a second. Then he walked into the bathroom like he was done with me. Transaction over.

Reverend Kelley

2009-06-23T09:03:00.002-06:00

It is hot. It is so hot that if I park my bike in the sun, my computer LCD goes completely black for a few minutes after I start riding again. It is so hot that my sleeping bag is always wet in the mornings, and I'm wearing nothing but boxers and sleeping on top of it. It is so hot that the first thing everyone who stops to chat with me says is, "You sure you're alright, son?" I'm beginning to shape everything I do around the heat and the humidity: when I sleep, how long, when I eat, how I put my sunscreen on, where I camp. Two weeks ago, my Dad told me, "Brett, there's going to come the day when you'll wish for this cold, rainy Colorado weather." I thought, sure. That day has come to pass.

Regardless, this third leg has brought whole new wonders. In Chanute, KS, I stepped onto the Transam Trail, which is just the name for the established route that most cross-country cyclists take. There's a lot of oral history and tips that get passed around every night in city parks (which is where I've largely been staying.) The things most commonly talked about are 1) the Rollers: these are the supposedly soul-crushing, endless hills of Missouri. They're not so bad. 2) Sending stuff home: everyone, every single cross-country cyclist I've met or talked to has mailed extra weight home after the first few weeks. (I've karate chopped my load down to two front panniers and 4 little sacks on my rear rack: sleeping bag, tent, pad, bag of clothes.) 3) Camping: how to do it, where to go, who to ask. 4) The next town: eastbounders talk to westbounders for advice and vice-versa. There's quite a community amongst the Transam riders. And there's a confidence and warmth between the riders and the local towns. It's very nice to experience. However, I've peeled off of the Transam for the last four days, in order to get to St. Louis to catch a flight.

Yesterday was particularly difficult due to the heat. I decided to eat out, instead of cook dinner, so I could get to bed early and get the majority of my miles in today before the heat got to heavy. After dinner at Margies Kafe, I stepped outside to get on my bike and pedal over to the park to set up camp. The heat hit me hard, and I decided to make a leap and call some churches in town, to see if I could camp inside. I'd heard this was acceptable, and that was all the impetus I needed. I got some phone numbers from a gas station attendant. I called a Methodist secretary who suggested I call Reverend Kelley. He wasn't even from her church, some church across the way. But she said, "You're gonna want to talk to him," as if he was THE guy to talk to in town. I told her it was not problem, I had the number of a Baptist church I could call too. She said, "No, call Reverend Kelley." She gave me his number. I called him and told him to please feel free to turn me down, it was an odd request. I was riding across the country and staying mostly in city parks and on public land, but I was wondering if I might be able to get in somewhere out of the heat for the evening. When he said, in a grandfatherly voice, "Aw, bless your heart," I felt a sudden relief. He told me to meet him over at his place. Gave me directions. He said, "Good timing, son. I've got just the thing for you."

When I got there, he'd fired up his old Winnebago LeSharo. He'd been working on it that day, repairing something in the engine. He showed me how to turn on the air conditioning, and told me to leave that on high all night. I said, "you bet!" He opened up the basement of his church too so I could use the bathroom. I slept in bliss for 6 hrs, got up and began today's riding just as the sun was coming up. God bless you, Reverend.

East from Kansas

2009-06-18T09:05:00.002-06:00

I've had a great 10 days of riding with my parents. We arrived in CO Springs on Tuesday night. It was something coming over Wilkerson Pass and seeing the backside of Pikes Peak for the first time in over a month, felt a little like home. We were met by on friend, Melanie a few miles on the downside of Ute Pass, the last CO Pass I'll be climbing on this tour. Then two other friends, Ken and Sarah, up in Woodland Park to descend the 20mi into the city. That evening and the next morning I got to be with a number of other good friends. Also got to rebuild my creaking pedals in my old shop and catch up with a few friends there. Now, my parents have driven me to Eastern Kansas, from where I'll start my next leg alone. In a week I'll be in St. Louis, MO, staying with my Aunt and Uncle and then flying back to VA for the final summer event, my sister and Jacob's wedding reception.

Mom and Dad are about to take me out for a huge breakfast. In Kansas or Missouri I'm hoping I'll see tornadoes. In the distance.

Notes and Pictures After Day Fifteen

2009-06-11T21:46:00.018-06:00

Notes and photographs relating to the five previous days of bicycle touring. (These are not in strict chronological order.):

Logistics -- Dad has ridden most of the miles with me, but Mom has joined me for 10mi here and there. Last minute, we decided on a more interesting route (and less snowy) than what I had originally planned. This means we're covering more miles than I think I can handle in 10 days. So we've loaded all three bicycles onto the back of my parent's Trailblazer and have driven one big segment in WY at the end of Monday, another short one in UT at the end of Wednesday, and we'll drive one last big one in CO tomorrow.

Dad loading the bikes on Monday.

The Weather Report -- Sunday: rainy and cold, mid to upper 40s. We wore plastic bags over our hands to break the wind. I wrapped my feet in grocery bags before I stuffed them into my cycling shoes. 3hrs and 30mi into our climb, Dad and I summited the pass. We blasted ourselves with the hand dryers at the visitor's center. Then we put on every article of clothing we could and descended 8 frigid miles to the edge of Bear Lake, stopping once to make sure our hands worked on the brake levers. Monday: beautiful morning sun, then scattered rain, temps rising to the high 50s. Dad and I chased a booming thunderhead for half of the day with a gracious patch of sunlight spotlighting our way along the wet roads. A little hail. Tuesday: very little rain, low 50s. Headwind. Dad and I traded drafts, with me mostly in the rear. Slanting rain at the end of the day. Wednesday: cool and sunshiny for first 2hrs of continuous climbing on the steepest grades yet. Then a sudden storm for over an hour. Temps dropped into the low 40s, mixed sleet and rain. Then more sun and spotty rain.

Sunday: Dad and me keeping our hands semi-warm.

Sunday: summiting the pass.

Sunday: Dad assuming compromising positions with a hand dryer.

Monday: A rare segment that we three cycled together. Happy sunshine.

Wednesday: Dad climbing in the sun up switchbacks of 9% incline.

Wednesday: Mom and me descending in the sudden storm. Very cold.

Riding Companions -- I can think of two things that make miserable riding conditions bearable: losing your mind (which I experienced in small doses on my first 10days) and having riding companions. The last four days of riding would have been my most difficult (even though they've been my shortest) had I been alone. But riding with either Mom or Dad has made a huge difference. Dad was worried about being able to keep up, considering the altitude and the fact that his son is in such awe-inspiring physical condition. He has definitely kept up. In fact, I've been ready to quit on a few days when Dad was gritting his teeth and ready to finish the last 10mi. And Mom has been cheerful and excited like a little girl to see the sights. I thought she'd have trouble biking at my speed, so on the first day I started slow. After a few minutes she told me, "I'm used to going a little faster than this, Brett." And on Wednesday, when she and I were getting lashed by sleet and I was in one of my most grouchy moods yet, I could hear her in the distance behind me singing, "Yippee, one more mile to go."

Wednesday: Dad and me summiting the big climb of the day.

Wednesday: Mom and me riding before the sleet hit us.

Food -- High luxury. We've eaten out a good bit. And Mom has cooked some great meals: chili, minestrone soup, fruit & nut pancakes. Mom even makes side-dishes for our camp dinners. We've had sandwiches with deli meat for lunch, and fresh chicken salad. And after our first day of riding, Dusty and Lisa even drove all the way up to Bear Lake to take us out for the famous raspberry milkshakes of Bear Lake. I can feel myself getting soft. Some mornings I even think, "We could just drive to the next campsite and start cooking dinner."

Sunday: Dusty and Lisa showing us the delights of the Bear Lake Raspberry Milkshakes. This is how good they are: we had just been riding for more than 4hrs in the cold rain. And we're eating milkshakes. And we're happy about it.

Sunday: Minestrone prepared by my mom in the fine KOA cooking arena.

Tuesday: Mom and Dad making chili.

Achilles -- Immediately into our first day of riding, after my 2wks of rest, I began to feel my right achilles aching again. After 3 more days of testing it, I decided to call Jessica, a friend who knows these things. She said something along the following lines: "Ibuprofen is not a long-term solution, Brett. Listening to your body is a long-term solution." The next day I offloaded all of my panniers except my right front one for tools and extra clothing. Until my parents head back East, I am going to take advantage of the car and ride light. Already it feels better.

Bob's Rock Shop -- In Kemmerer, WY at the end of Monday's riding, my mom stepped into a local rock shop. (Rock shops are about as common in Wyoming as 'coffee' shops are in Amsterdam. And their owners are equally religious about their respective products.) Dad and I joined her a few minutes later. Bob, the sole proprietor, was sitting in the corner holding a smoldering cigarette. I didn't see him put the thing to his mouth for the full 30min that we were in his shop. Bob is a short-answers, foul-mouthed, old man. (Normally for men his age I use the word, "gentleman", but in Bob's particular case, this descriptor doesn't apply.) Bob's single passion is rocks. And 99% of the rocks and petrified tree limbs and fossils in his shop he dug up, chiseled out, and polished by himself. He has no training, but he knows his stuff. "I read books about rocks. I got a lot of books in the back. You wouldn't believe how many books I got." In one display case he has a full fossilized skeleton of a prehistoric crocodile that he found and scraped out of the surrounding rocks over the course of one winter. We didn't ask where he found it. We sensed we weren't supposed to ask that sort of thing. My mom, being curious, asked if she could poke around in his back room. "Sure thing. It's my workshop. It's where I cut the rocks and polish them." We all joined her. Bob showed us his diamond blades and polishing belts and shelves stacked to the ceiling with rocks in various stages of preparation. He showed us one fist-sized rock that he said he'd been working on for 2yrs. "It's got fiery opal in it, you see. If I cut it just right and bring out that fire, you know what I mean? If I cut it in just the right place, this rock would be worth, oh, $2000." It looked like a plain old rock to me. I asked him what he'd done on it over the last 2yrs, if he'd chipped at the side or something. "Oh no." He looked at me sternly. "Oh no. I come back here, and I pick it up like this, and I think about it. I've got to find the right frame of mind to work on this rock. You can't just go in and start cutting the damn thing." He showed us a piece of flint that looked like a paleolithic knife. We asked if it was some Indian artifact. "No. I use this to scare away those kids with body piercings, those left-hand smokers." I don't know what left-hand smoking is, but I don't ever want to do it around Bob. After a thorough tour, Mom and Dad let me pick out my favorite piece of petrified wood and Bob sold it to us for $30.

Monday: Bob showing us around his beloved workshop in the back of his rock shop.

Flat Tires -- For those of you taking bets, I've now had 6 flat tires. You may want to readjust your betting structure. My 5th flat was a slow leak on Tuesday. I pulled out about 8 tiny pieces of sharp flint embedded in my front and rear tires before replacing the rear tube. My dad had no pieces of sharp flint embedded in his tires. (Maybe this disparity arises from the fact that he rides out in the middle of the lane, while I ride conservatively on the shoulder.) My 6th flat, occuring 45min later on the tube I had just replaced, was a sudden puncture and outrush of air. I had run over something very sharp, leaving a tire gash even bigger than the one that stopped me 30mi short of Logan two weeks before. Again, my tire boot did not provide enough structure to support my tube pressure. Luckily, I've learned some patching techniques since my first blowout. I layered 6 pieces of gorilla tape on the inside of my tire and inflated my tube to full pressure. Worked great. I've ridden over 50mi on it so far, and plan to ride until it blows, or until I get to CO Springs, whichever comes first.

Tuesday: flat #5.

Tuesday: flat #6.

Accommodations -- My parents and I started this 10day segment planning to camp primitively every night. On the first evening, after riding all day through cold rain, we stopped in at a little KOA, "just to see about the prices." (KOA means super-tourist cop-out in my family.) Shivering there in the KOA office we discovered that they had cabins with space heaters available pretty cheap. "They're called Primitive Cabins," we said to eachother. "They don't even have linens." We hemmed and hawed and then decided we'd take one, "just this first night." Then, as we unpacked in our cabin and cranked up the heater and sat down on our padded beds, we each had the very same two thoughts in quick succession. The first was, "Really, if we didn't have gear to dry out, we'd be primitive camping tonight." The second was, "This is nice." Writing this note five days later, I count 3 nights in KOA cabins and 2 nights in motels. We haven't unpacked our tents once. We're becoming KOA Primitive Cabin connoisseurs. "Oh, this one has the double bunks and the porch swing. And it's the same price as the ones in Garden City."

Sunday: primitive survival techniques.

Thursday: organizing gear for our day off.

A Day Off is Reviving -- Today, the fifth day of our leg together, I had scheduled for my parents and me to explore Dinosaur National Monument and to rest. We did a little of the former and a lot more of the latter. In more specific terms, we spent almost 5hrs this morning and afternoon camped out in a corner of a coffee shop in Vernal, UT. My dad and I read and uploaded pictures from our cameras. My mom touched up a few watercolors she's sketched out over the last week. All of us got online and caught up with the real world. In the late afternoon we roused ourselves to finally explore DNM. It's a bastard child of a park. Nobody seems to know about it. This is a misfortune. (To everyone who was not us: we had the park very nearly to ourselves.) The geology there is jaw-dropping. We drove 30mi along a canyon rim, passing pronghorns and mule deer and plain old cows. We hiked out to a promontory from which we could look straight down 2000ft to the confluence of the Yampa and the Green Rivers. The canyon floor was tilted in crazy directions. We could see layers of rock representing hundreds of millions of years arched like so many decks of cards being shuffled. Made us dizzy.

It's now in the am hours, and my parents have long been asleep in our little motel room. So I better wrap it up. Tomorrow we'll start riding again from a 3-house town called Lay, CO.

How to Ride Your Bicycle Into CO Springs

2009-06-11T12:15:00.005-06:00

Several of my CO Springs friends are planning to meet me and my parents in Woodland Park on Tuesday 16 June, to ride into town for the evening. If anyone is interested in joining us, here is the route for the whole day. Only the Eastern segment, from Woodland Park down, is what matters for the purposes of this post:

Hartsel - CO Springs

The logistics are as follows: I'll be in the parking lot of the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park at 5:30pm. We'll begin descending at 6pm with whomever has showed up. Look closely at the map, we're not going to take 24 the whole way down; we'll deviate through Green Mountain Falls and Chipita Park: that's much prettier. (So if you're late, and you want to cross paths with us on the way up, make sure you take the same deviation.)

Any bicycle (Cervelo or Walmart) and any bicycler is welcome. I'm going to ride slowly. And it's almost entirely descent from Woodland Park, 2omi of it. We'll probably take 1.5hrs. I'd just love to see anyone that can make it.

Also, if you're planning to meet me further West than Woodland Park, be aware that my parents and I are planning to arrive in Woodland Park by 2pm or so. So there will be about a 4hr buffer of no riding.

We've had much colder, wetter weather than we thought we would through these Utah and Wyoming segments. It looks like much of the same for the Colorado passes. Maybe even some snow. There are plenty of stories to tell. I'll try to type some out in the coming week.

Day One of Utah to Colorado

2009-06-06T15:52:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow morning I begin riding again after almost 2 weeks off.

Mom and Dad and I drove out to Logan, UT over the last four days. We're each really eager to get out of the car and into the mountains. Mom will ride with me for a few miles tomorrow morning. We'll meet Dad at the base of Logan Canyon, and he and I will climb to the pass over the next 30mi. Mom bought herself a lightweight easel, and she's planning to do some water colors along the canyon. We'll descend to Bear Lake and and camp for the first night at a little state park called Rendezvous Beach. (Named after all of the Trapper's Rendezvous held in these mountains over a century ago. There trappers would sell pelts, drink, and swap tales of the harsh trappers' winters.)

It's supposed to rain most of tomorrow.

Photographic Essay of the First Ten Days

2009-06-01T22:23:00.011-06:00

Below are a few photographs from my first 10 days of riding.

Morning of Day 2, along the Lochsa Gorge -- Third flat tire. (Up to this point all of my flats had been self-inflicted: 1) cheap tire liner slowly sliced through my tube, 2) tore open a tube with clumsy use of tire lever, and 3) wiggled the valve stem around so much while pumping it up, that I tore a hole at its base.) I had no more spares on this, my third flat, so I patched a punctured tube.

Afternoon of Day 3, near Lolo, MT -- Josh met me 30mi outside of Missoula. I was happy to have a riding companion.

Noon on Day 4, near Hamilton, MT -- I hit the wall, didn't want to eat any of the processed food I had. I bought a bag of carrots and snacked on these for a few miles.

Early Morning of Day 5, near Sula, MT -- I woke up to a river at the foot of my tent. Moved it up hill a ways and went back to sleep. About 2hrs later, I heard a, "Hello?" outside. I hollered back, scrambled to get on some warmer clothes (you can see I forgot to put on my shoes, and it was pretty cold!) and stepped outside to greet a German tourist and his wife, worried about my welfare in a flooded campsite. I told him I was fine. I splashed across the little puddle and asked him to take my picture. They seemed to think I was a little crazy.

Noon on Day 6, Salmon, ID -- This is what grocery shopping looks like. These stops usually include whittling away the unnecessary packaging from a new set of granola bars and crackers, peeling off stickers from fruits and rinsing them off, refilling water bottles, readjusting everything to balance the weight, plugging my cell-phone into a socket and making a few calls, and tossing the previous night's trash.

Evening of Day 6, near Ellis, ID -- Great meal: beans, rice, sour cream, salsa, tortillas. I counted up over 2000Cal.

Morning of Day 7, near Ellis, ID -- Inspecting tire for things that shouldn't be there.

Afternoon of Day 7, Fulton Ranch SW of Borah Peak -- I knocked on Marge Fulton's door to ask for water. Got a friendly welcome.

Evening of Day 7 -- I camped on this night at a busy campground near Mackay Reservoir. At first I was really annoyed with all the screaming and laughing by the 'neighborhood' kids. I just wanted some peace. Soon, however, they came over and shyly asked if I'd set my tent up all by myself. They went up on a hill overlooking my site and watched me cook my dinner. I overheard them saying things like, "...real cowboy" to eachother. Later they showed me some flowers they'd found that "change colors" when you put them in water. I gave them one of my cooking pots and told them to get some lake water so we could do an experiment. I told them I'd take their picture if one of them would take a picture of me.

Morning of Day 8, Mackay Reservoir -- Laundry Day. My socks made a very potent sock stock. (I also tried to save money by doing my laundry in the bathtub while I studied abroad in Oxford, England. I think I saved a dollar doing that.)

Evening of Day 8, in the Lava Beds of ID -- The first picture is the somewhat disconcerting view I took in at 5pm, just east of Butte City, ID. I had 60mi to go to reach the next town. Flat nothingness in between. On my map it was marked as some sort of nuclear laboratory, with a town called Atomic City, and several sites miles and miles from anything marked as "Radioactive Waste Management Complexes". In parentheses all over this area was printed, "Restricted Access". About 30mi later the sun was getting low, and I was beginning to look for a place to hide my tent. Then I saw the silhouette of a touring cyclist coming from the other direction. Strange coincidence in the middle of nowhere. Conor Cash was his name. He gave me some advice about a good place to hide my campsite. I gave him some of my water.

Afternoon of Day 9, near Inkom, ID on I-15 -- An unfortunate but necessary 20mi stretch of interstate highway.

Evening of Day 9, Gilbert Farm near Virginia, ID -- I knocked on the door of this farm sometime after 5pm. I'd been rained on for about half an hour and was ready to pitch my tent. Ervin Gilbert showed me down to his barn where he said I could at least dry off. I met his son down there, Kent Gilbert, who's in the picture. Ervin came down to the barn and talked with me for about an hour while I dried off. Kent sat on his ATV and just watched me like I was some curiosity. Every time I looked his way, he'd look down at the ground and then at his dad. Ervin told me after a little while that I could pitch my tent in his yard. Later that night, as I was cooking my dinner, Kent came out to chit chat. He's the only Gilbert boy that didn't go to college. He's got a bum knee and has to hold on to things or sit down to support himself. But he still works all day long on the farm. I asked him if he hunts. He doesn't. He likes animals too much. He told me about how he used to milk his dad's cows when he was in high school. He described them like a bunch of old friends. He'd named several of them. One always came in first, led all the rest in twice a day to get milked. He liked her a lot. As I was going to bed, Kent told me he hoped his cats wouldn't bother me. I said I didn't mind cats, how many did he have? He said, "Ahh...twenty, twenty-five head. I've named about half of them." I saw a few of them later that night, one with an infected eye, another with a sad limp. Next morning I had to use the bathroom. I timidly knocked on the door, and Mrs. Gilbert let me in. They were getting ready to go to the tabernacle for Sunday worship. That's the second picture: me in their bathroom.

Noon on Day 10, Preston, ID -- I sliced my tire and had a blow-out near the border of ID and UT. As I was trying to fix my tire in the Talbot's garage, Mrs. Talbot came out with a heaping plate of hot food. It was a slippery slope. I called Dusty for a ride in to Logan about 10min later.

A Brief Note upon Arrival

2009-05-24T17:14:00.005-06:00

I arrived at Dusty & Lisa's in Logan, UT, the final destination of my first riding leg, at 3:30pm today. It was not by bicycle. It was by jeep.

That might seem like an unfortunate ending, but let me assure you, on this end of the saddle, that was a lovely conclusion to my first 700mi.

I woke up today, in an Idaho Mormon farmer's lawn. (No, I didn't party hard with Mormons last night, I asked him and his family if I could pitch my tent there.) I cooked my breakfast and packed up my gear, wet from last night's rain. Then I headed out about 10am. I wasn't worried about drying it out because I only had 65mi to go to get to Logan. I was very excited about getting to Logan to shower, and eat a real meal, and not ride my bike, and hang out with Dusty & Lisa and another friend, Kara. Very excited.

A little more than 20mi into today's riding, the thunderhead I'd been keeping an eye on unleashed itself. This was the second rain I'd ridden through. Kind of fun, really. I threw on my rain coat and nifty yellow lenses and rode. It started to pour. Then about 45min into the rain, coming down a hill into Preston, ID, I heard a loud POP!

That's not a good sound for a cyclist. It means two things: 1) you got a flat (no problem, fix it) 2) that flat is a blowout (uh oh, could be bad).

I walked my bike through the downpour to a nearby house. Before I could knock on the door, a lady came out and asked if I needed to warm up in their garage. I said, "Well, yeah, if you don't mind. Can I fix my flat in here?" She was obliging. Her husband came out and said a few terse things about the weather. I threw on some extra layers to warm up. Then I pulled off my rear wheel. I was interrupted from any further repairs by the Mrs. coming out with a steaming hot plate of Sunday dinner. Mashed potatoes, roast beef, green bean casserole, salad. I think I dropped my tire levers. When I recovered I asked her name. She said, "We're Talbots." I asked her to take a picture of me, that my Mom would really like to see me eating well. She said I sure did have skinny legs. They left me to eat and repair my flat. I ate it all in about 5min.

I quickly discovered that it was a bad sort of blowout. Something had sliced my tire, probably a ways back, before the POP!, about an inch down the center. It looked like any repair wasn't going to work, because there was so little tire structure to hold the tube in, but I layered two tire boots and even threw a granola bar wrapper in there for extra support. It held up to about 20psi, then started to separate like a wound that needs stitches. It wasn't going to work.

(Anyone know how to fix serious tire gashes like this? In an emergency, way back in the bush, there's got to be a repair that can be done when a tire boot doesn't work.)

It didn't take long for me to think of calling Dusty for a ride into Logan. Once I had eaten a good meal, and warmed up a little in the garage, and watched the slanting rain and wind for a while, the prospect of being done for the day (really for the next week) started to grow on me. Rapidly.

I called Dusty. He came out in about 30min and drove me the rest of the way in. Now I get to play around Logan with three friends for the next three days before I fly out for my sis's wedding. I'll be back out in another week and a half to start riding again, with my mom and dad.

I'll tell more about my last three days in a later posting, they were amazing.

An Argument for Beef

2009-05-22T10:30:00.004-06:00

(Warning: I don't know much about US Public Land policy. So this is coming from a perspective of ignorance. I'm probably mistating a lot of 'facts'. Bear with me. Contact my friend, Dusty, if you want better information.)

Made it yesterday to Mackay Reservoir. Was setting up my tent below an ancient cowboy cemetery a little after 8pm. It was my first really good riding day since day one. I felt energized, mostly by the necessity of covering 55mi of waterless wasteland, but also by the stark beauty (is that the word?) of the place. Almost all of the land I pedaled through was BLM land (public land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.) It has very few restrictions. Ranchers with the right permits let their cattle graze on it. You can camp anywhere you please. You can drive your off-road vehicle all around it. Make a fire anywhere. And this isn't a little plot of land. It included a whole mountain range and huge prairie-like basins. Almost all 55mi that I pedaled through. And along the way I noticed some signs that said the land (or part of it) was under consideration by congress for Wilderness designation. That would mean it would have major restrictions. I think these include no motorized vehicle travel. No bicycles. Certainly no cattle grazing. And no more development whatsoever. I thought, "Wouldn't that be nice." More wild areas are alright with me.

Once I finally topped out on Willow Creek Summit, I had a screaming downhill with a nice tailwind. I was nearly out of water at this point, and had another 30mi to the reservoir. I was making such good time (steady pace of +20mph for the first time since I left WA) that I decided to take a 5mi detour to see a fault line from a 1983 earthquake which shook the valley and raised the mountains 17 days before I was born. When I came back down the dirt road from looking at the faultline, I decided I needed water for the evening. I had enough to get to Mackay but I didn't want to go all the way that night.

Like I said, this is empty BLM land. Some cattle here and there. But in the whole 55mi from Challis (SHALL-is) to Mackay (MACK-ee) I passed no towns, maybe 6 ranches, and about as many dilapidated and abandoned homesteads from a century ago. So finding water was going to be difficult. I was lucky to run across a functioning ranch 21mi outside of Mackay. Just as I pulled my bike into the gravel parking lot, a fellow came driving around a barn with a horse trailer in tow. I waved at him and pulled off my sunglasses to indicate I had something to say. He waved back at me then drove right on by, and down the road. I started to get nervous, thinking it was going to be another replay of the night before.

I leaned my bike down to the ground and walked up to the building that I thought was the house. Lots of trash around it. Knocked on the door. A girl's voice said, "Come on in." I knocked again, because I thought that sounded too friendly for a rancher, like she was maybe expecting someone other than a skinny out-of-towner in tight pants. She said, "Come in," again. I opened the door to a living room that seemed to lean with the whole building. Everything made out of wood. A yellowed portrait of Abe Lincoln on the wall. A wagon wheel in the corner with flowers on it. In the far room, the kitchen, a painfully stooped old woman was facing away from me. I said, "Hello," and she turned around. I indicated that I was biking through and was hoping to fill up my water bottles. She said, "Oh, come on in. Come on in. We've been having trouble with our water, though." She showed me her sink and turned the water on to check if any came out, like she hadn't turned it on all day. "Well it works. Now, this is how you get hot, and this is how you get cold," she told me. And then she said, "Now tell me about yourself." Of course I said a little about myself, but I was too full of questions for her.

Marge Fulton is 91 years old. She's lived there, 21mi outside of Mackay all her life. She was there when the '83 earthquake hit. She said she had just graduated from university when the Depression knocked everyone flat, but I backcalculated and that would have made her 11 years old. She may have gotten the Depression mixed up with WWII. She taught English at Mackay high school for most of her life. ("But really, teachers in towns this small have to teach EVERYTHING," she said, making sure I knew she had done it all.) She kept ending her stories with, "Now tell me about yourself." She showed me a recent newspaper clipping that told about the Marge Fulton Scholarship, $1000 to a deserving Mackay HS graduate. Every year some of her previous students donate $1000 dollars and give it away in her name. She has a son, Gordon, who flies airplanes, and is going up to Alaska in a week. She finally said, "Now tell me about yourself," and I went ahead. I started to explain where I was from, what I was doing in the middle of Idaho, that I was going to study physics in the fall, that I was a little nervous about it.

Gordon walked in right about then. He was a little suspicious. But he was really gentle and soft-spoken. A different kind of rancher than I'd imagined in my head. I asked him a bunch of questions about ranching on BLM land. They have 500 head of cattle. Doesn't seem like much, but out here in the high desert, that requires an unimaginable amount of land. I asked him why ranch in the west then, and he said it was the almost free land. For a very small permit fee, he had access to the land he needed in the form of BLM land. It balanced out, though, he said, with the ranchers in the South, who have lots of cheap grass, but expensive plots of land. I began to connect his story with those signs I'd passed that said, "Under consideration for Wilderness Designation." I didn't ask him what would happen to him and his family if that land became a Wilderness Area. I made a guess.

Pretty early on into our conversation, he stopped himself and said, "And I bet your a vegetarian aren't you?" It wasn't aggressive. He was embarrassed to be talking to me about beef cattle. It was like a gentle country priest might stop himself from talking about God to a city dweller and say, "Oh, now I bet you're an atheist aren't you." I told him I liked cow meat.

Before I left, I asked Ms. Fulton if I could take her picture. I pulled out my disposable camera, and she waved her hand in front of her face and turned away. But I convinced her.

As I was walking out, Gordon was talking to her about Alaska. I caught that he wasn't sure he could find help enough around the ranch to get away. Someone had backed out.

I thought about them as I rode off toward Mackay Reservoir for the night. I don't know enough about the situation to argue one way or the other, for wilderness designations, or for ranching on BLM land. I don't even know if those two are opposing arguments. But meeting Gordon and Marge Fulton, a hearty rancher and his mom living in the middle of nowhere, scraping their subsistence from a tract of land that's not quite theirs, gives me pause about my initial environmental impulses.

From Challis, ID

2009-05-21T13:06:00.003-06:00

I'm in Challis, ID and I need to crank out just under 60 more miles today. So I'll be semi-coherent.

Hit the wall hard on the fourth day, leaving Missoula. Food failed me. From the first pedal strokes of the morning, I didn't want to eat any of my granola bars, nuts, fig newtons, m&ms, and I didn't have any desire to go anywhere. My right achilles had been hurting me and it really started to ache. (I've overcompensated and now my left achilles is hurting.) I treated myself to a nice Subway sandwich at lunch, which was enough motivation to keep me pedaling for the first part of the day. Then I kept going almost to Sula, MT at the base of the great Lost Trail Pass. Camped by the East Fork of the Bitterroot, first campground I had to pay for yet. Woke up at 5am to my tent standing in water. The river had risen about a foot, because of hot days and major snowmelt. I dragged my tent uphill a little more, picked up a few wet things to put on the picnic table, and went back to bed. Later the park ranger came by and gave me back my money. I said angrily, "The service around here!" No, I didn't.

Day 5, Lost Trail Pass was a success. About a 15mile climb in all, the last 8miles at a 6% grade. I sang all the songs I could think of, had a lot of conversations with John Henry. Topped out in two and a half hours, and was blasted by a crazy headwind. My descent was wild. Wind gusts in the 30mph range, from every direction. At one time they'd be slowing me down to 15mph on the steepest downhills, then they'd slingshot me forward to 35mph. I had to swerve a lot to rebalance from side blasts. Thankfully very few cars came by.

On the rest of my descent to the Dougherty's (where I was going to stay Tuesday night) I got a steady headwind. Really frustrating. So much so that once, when I got blown off the side of the road with a huge gust, I stopped my bike and said a bunch of nasty things. Right then I heard a CRACK! and turned around just in time to see a 70ft dead cottonwood at 15Deg to the vertical and on its way down. It was about 100yds out in the field. The wind was so loud I didn't hear it THUMP like I expected, just a bunch of crackling as the branches snapped. I stood there for probably 15seconds with my mouth open.

The Doughertys. My gosh, I couldn't have had a better end to this day. Mike and Jane are Uncle and Aunt to one of my best high school buddies. I'd never met them. But I'd heard crazy stories about them. Real adventurers and real pioneers. They came down to the base of their 5mi steep driveway to pick me up. (They had called ahead to the last town I'd passed through to see about my progress; Idaho's a giant local community.) We waited down there to also picked up their 2nd grade son, Conrad, from the bus stop. They live at the foot of the National Forest. The furthest homestead back on Fourth of July Creek Road, where E Hemingway used to have a house too. Really wild land. They've built up their own land into a rustic mountain farm. After dinner (Elk steaks and burgers, Idaho potatoes, huge salad, home-pickled cucumbers and onions) Jane and Conrad took me outside to help them irrigate their land. They use an irrigation canal that was cut in 1905, way up above their hill. They divert water from it into several channels that run through their land. Jane (healing a broken collar bone, thrown from a horse) instructed Conrad which stones to move to block or unblock different channels. He'd thrust his shovel at me indicating I was to do something too. Then he'd bend down and push a stone out of the way that was twice the size of his head. I chopped at the sod like an amateur. Their dog Chipper played along beside us. Later that night, after Conrad had showed me his books on fighter planes and his cowboy belt for a rubber band gun and Jane had put him to bed, I twisted Mike's arm to show me some pictures from his epic 1700mi, 3.5month kayak journey from Skagway, AK to Seattle, WA. He completed it back in 1996. Largely lived off of clams and fish and kelp. We talked about it late into the night. Got to see his navigation charts, and heard some stories that made me wince.

Earlier on, in the bathroom, Mike had left me a note on the empty toilet paper roll: "Better learn how to go without TP for a real man's adventure." This took on new meaning when I heard about his crazy expedition.

In the morning Jane cooked pancakes all the way up from whole wheat berries. She had decided to let Conrad skip the first part of school to ride with me on his bike to the base of Fourth of July Creek Road. I said goodbye in as meaningful a way as a could to these hearty people. They let me know that I was to come back in the future. The people I've gotten to meet along this trip have made the difficult riding almost negligible.

Day 6 was a haul. I climbed to Salmon, ID, stocked up on groceries, then headed further up the Salmon River. I didn't get as far as I had hoped. About 18miles outside of Challis (which is where I am now.) The land and the mood of the land changed dramatically over yesterday's miles. It got more desolate and far less hospitable. Real desert. Canyons. Lots of ranch land. More No Trespassing signs than there are people in Idaho. A different sort of wilderness than the Lochsa River Gorge. I found a campsite, then headed out in search of water. (I'd misjudged how much water I needed to carry at the end of the day; I hadn't passed any towns or campgrounds like I normally have. I could have used the Salmon river, but it was brown with more than high-water silt and cow poop. I was a little concerned about fertilizers drained into the river.) I stopped by one house a quarter mile down the road. Big handprinted No Trespassing sign. Knocked, no one there. About another mile down the road, in the tiny town of Ellis, ID I found another house. Just a dog barking inside when I knocked. It was like a ghost town. For reasons I can't explain I started to get a little spooked. My mind was a little off-kilter. I stopped at a third house. Before I could put my bike down, an angry dog choked himself on his chain and barked like a mad animal at me. A mean old rancher came outside and shouted, "What!" more like an order than a question. I'm not sure who he was talking to, but he was looking at me. I was really shaken up at this point. I must have sounded like a 12-year-old girl asking for water. He pointed at a spiggot and lit up a cigarette. He stood on his porch and just watched me the whole time I was filling up all my water containers. I asked him a bunch of silly questions to try to make conversation, then headed out as quickly as I could.

Today I've climbed 18miles to Challis, and I've just discovered there are no towns until I get up and over Willow Creek Summit (about an 1800ft vertical, 25mile climb from here) and another 30miles beyond that to the town of Mackay. I didn't realize it when I was planning this out, but this section is through some desolate country.

I'm loading up on water here in town, and then heading out for Mackay. Hoping to make it before dark.

Panacea

2009-05-17T19:07:00.003-06:00

Three days in, I've arrived on schedule in Missoula, MT. My friend Josh surprised me by meeting me 30 miles out and gave me a draft all the way into town. Right now he's feeding me. (We finished our meal, platefuls of ravioli and asparagus, and then Josh indicated that, considering how much riding I was doing, he had planned for this to be just the first dinner. Sounds good to me.)

First day I rode 100 miles exactly from Pullman to somewhere between Kamiah and Kooskiah on the Clearwater River. 30 miles in, on the edge of the Snake Canyon, about to descend down US 195 into Lewsiton, I caught out of the corner of my eye a side road. I looked at my map. It's called Old Spiral Highway. I took it. From the first quarter mile, I dropped down onto the steep edge of the canyon and looked all the way down 2000 vertical feet to the town of Lewiston. I could see Old Spiral Highway switchbacking below me 200ft, 300ft, 500ft. It was a grand 10 mile descent past old battered farm houses clinging to the side of the gorge, and cows chewing the grass on the steep slopes. Not a single car passed me and I took the banked corners fast enough for the banking to matter. Just past Kamiah that night, I pulled off the road and found a hideaway spot to throw up my tent.

Second day I rode 69 miles, following the Lochsa River slowly upstream. Passed lots of classic western whitewater, huge amounts of water flushing through canyons, rapids that blended together into non-stop whitewater. Passed lots of kayakers. I was one of those on this very river with my Dad and Ron and Cy some 7 years ago. I'd drown in that whitewater now. My right achilles began to hurt this day, so I slowed down significantly, geared lower, tried to take it easy. As the sun was just about to dip below the ridge, I found a campsite on the opposite side of the river. To get to it, I got to push my bike across a hanging footbridge. Because I wanted a bath so badly, I stripped down right there, hoping no one would come by, and scrubbed in the freezing snow-melt of the Lochsa. No one came by accept a few cars on the road above, and they didn't know where to look. I don't think.

Today I rode 84 miles. I got an early start (so I was thinking.) I got up at 5am and after breakfast and breaking camp, finally got ready to step onto my bike a little before 7:30am. But then I decided to air up my rear tire. My hasty pump job punctured a hole in the tube right at the base of the valve stem. It took another 45min to get the wheel off, fixed, and back on. By 12:30 I had topped out on the mighty Lolo Pass (~5400ft) after about 4 miles of 6% grade. My achillles was still hurting me, but it cooled off a bit through the day. On the backside of Lolo pass, 10 or 15 miles into my descent, I ran into Josh, and we rode together into Missoula. By the time I met him, I was exhausted and getting into a foul mood. It's amazing what a riding companion does for ones mood.

My first lesson from the first three days is that when I'm putting in this many miles, food is the panacea. It solves everything. This is how it works:

"I'm tired."

"Eat your jerky."

"I'm cold."

"Eat your granola bar."

"I feel sad."

"Eat your oatmeal."

It has worked everytime so far.

Christmas!

2009-05-13T19:20:00.005-06:00

I got several boxes in the mail today, and oh my goodness, it felt like Christmas.

John sent me his super lightweight Primus stove. It's about the size of a roll of scotch tape. It almost looks like it lights itself. I tried to get it to set up my tent.

Dad sent me 1) his sunglasses. They've got 4 different lens sets. The dark ones are for arc-welding, the clear ones are for riding way past curfew, which I hope to do very little of, the in-between ones are for precisely 5-6pm, and the yellow ones match my socks. 2) A new pocket knife. This is better than any I've ever owned. It has a pair of pliers which makes redundant multiple bike tools. 3) Small band aids, triple antibiotic ointment, large band aids. 4) Pot and pan. And eating utensils. 5) A reflector to put around my ankle. 6) A nice Capilene shirt for layering. 7) A couple tubes. (Like I'm going to get any flats, Dad!) 8) A squeezy bottle to put olive oil or honey or hard liquor into. 9) A pair of enormous camouflage clogs, which should be self-explanatory.

Ron sent me 1) his rain gear: a pair of gore-tex pants and a jacket, in a smooth azure color, which I'm afraid I won't be able to wear with the yellow lens set. 2) Another reflector to put around my ankle. 3) Some wind-proof fleece mittens. The mitten part folds down for better dexterity if I want to change my lens set. 4) A small Petzl headlamp. The very same kind that I had packed.

Greg sent me 1) several water bottles. They've got his name on them. Let's hope the police don't get nosy. 2) A set of Jandd panniers! These are great. They're the first set of panniers I ever used. Greg lent them to me along with a rear rack last fall just to try out. They're red Cordura Nylon like my home-made ones but almost certainly better engineered. 3) A bevy of really nice riding shorts and jerseys. They're all from a stash of official USA Cycling gear, so I'm going to feel very out of my league, and I'm going to look like Captain America.

Andrew sent me some essential tools.

Jacob & Kim sent me some money.

Mom & Grandmommy sent me some books to start with.

Whether donated or lent, each piece of gear is going to remind me of some of you as I use it or spend it or wear it or read it. Thanks so much.

I'll begin pedaling Friday.

The First Leg: Part VIII

2009-05-11T03:15:00.002-06:00

Saturday 9 May, 8am, 50mi East of Portland, OR -- Awakes to finches chirping and lady bugs crawling on his tent fly. Stretches. Believes this is going to be the day he makes it to Pullman. Tells his car this is going to be the day he makes it to Pullman. Tells the camp hosts he's leaving his possessions on the picnic table and in his tent for a few hours while he goes to get a tire replaced. Hopes they won't get tampered with. The camp hosts say they'll keep an eye on things. The camp hosts cumulatively weigh close to 500lbs. Brett feels like his possessions are safe.

8:30am, Hood River, OR -- Because Volvo is all-wheel-drive, Brett has to replace all four tires. It costs him a pretty penny. "A final pretty penny," he says, cheerfully, doubtfully.

9:30am, 50mi East of Portland, OR -- Back at the campsite Brett begins to load everything back into his car. To shift the weight forward he straps two of the bulkiest items onto his roof. Gets everything loaded. The frame sags like before, but is no longer bottomed out on the rear axle. Leaves for Pullman. No music. No slouching. Just drives.

noon, OR/WA border -- Crosses the Jordan (Columbia).

4:30pm, Pullman, WA -- Enters the Promised Land.

The First Leg: Part VII

2009-05-11T03:14:00.003-06:00

Friday 8 May, 9am, Portland, OR -- Brett gets call from Mom. She wants a list of the books that were taken. She and Grandmommy are going to replace them. Gets call from Sis. She & Jacob are going to send him some money to help out with new wedding & summer clothes. Gets lots of calls from friends sending him important and helpful things. Deals with strange mixtures of emotions. Angry. Grateful. Whiny.

10am, Portland, OR -- Brett maps out long ride up a road that looks pretty on the map, Skyline Blvd. Bikes downtown and buys sweet-looking Goodwill shirt to get sweaty on long ride. Immediately becomes new favorite shirt. Starts pedaling toward Skyline Blvd. Begins climbing above the city.

11:30am, above Portland, OR -- V-Shop calls. "Volvo's ready. Be here by closing 2pm or you won't be able to get your car until Monday."

noon, above Portland, OR -- Brett passed on long hill by road cyclist. He looks 35. Says a friendly hello. Brett says grumpy hello. Cyclist slows back down and asks about Brett's bike. Brett tells about summer plans and then about theft. Cyclist is matter-of-fact. Says his name is Rob. Says he's an ER doctor. Asks what Brett needs to get back on the road. Brett is flabbergasted. Doesn't know what to say. Rob looks at Brett's jeans and tennis shoes and sweet Goodwill shirt. Rob says he's got all kinds of riding gear. "How about some jerseys and shorts?" Brett enthusiastically agrees. Rob looks at Brett's bare hands. "How about some gloves?"

12:30pm, above Portland, OR -- Rob has to drop off some energy food at a checkpoint for a long ride he and some friends are going to do for his birthday tomorrow. After that, he explains, he can take Brett by his family's house to grab the gear, then point Brett in the right direction to get to the V-Shop on time. But they have to ride fast to make it by 2pm. Brett says he can pound it, if Rob leads the way. They ride hard for 20min, not talking. Brett drafts and pedals as hard as he can. He realizes Rob is fast. Rob realizes Brett is slow. Rob sympathetically turns him around at one point and says he'll drop of the energy food by himself and meet Brett back at a junction they had already passed.

1:40pm, above Portland, OR -- At his house, Rob packs Brett's bag with two pairs of shorts (not just any shorts, really nice bibs), a jersey, a nice wicking shirt, some gloves, two energy bars. He fills a bottle with water and gives that to Brett too. "I stole it off my friend's bike," he says. Rob points Brett on his way and says farewell. Brett is still flabbergasted.

2pm, Portland, OR -- Car repairs mysteriously cost $100 less than Brett had been quoted. V-Shop mechanics smile and say, "Hey, you vacuumed your own glass out of your car." Brett loads his bikes, goes back to hostel to pick up his last things, is given a copy of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot by a hostel resident he barely met, and heads back out onto the road. "In 6 hours," he thinks, "I'll be in Pullman." "Maybe."

3:30pm, 30mi East of Portland, OR -- Brett's Volvo begins to feel strange. Swervy. Like he's driving on ice. Brett turns off music and sits upright. Thinks it might be his suspension. Or it might be nothing. Drives for 10 minutes in state of extreme agitation. Begins to develop a stomach ulcer.

3:40pm, 40mi East of Portland, OR -- Volvo's rear right tire has a blowout. Brett maneuvers to side of Interstate 84. Gets out of car. Exchanges words with car. Christens car "Beelzebub."

3:45pm, 40mi East of Portland, OR -- Brett realizes it is now a game. He's trying to get to Pullman. His car is trying to stop him. It will not stop him. Nothing will stop him. Brett begins to unload bikes. Removes bike rack. Unloads half of his possessions from the rear of his car. Stacks everything neatly on the side of the interstate. A little too neatly. He takes a long time stacking things in clean rows. Gains access to spare tire and jack. Spare tire is flat. Brett laughs. It is loud. Slightly disturbed. Brett digs around in his gear until he finds bicycle pump. Stacks his gear back into rows. Pumps spare tire up to pressure. Laughs excessively.

4:45pm, 40mi East of Portland, OR -- Jacks right side of car up. Removes rear rim and shredded tire. Realizes he put his jack in the wrong position. Car is too low to the ground. Can't get spare tire bolted onto his axle unless he deflates it. He does so. Laughs the whole while. Strange. Loud. A man stops to see if he can help. He walks up and hesitates. "Are you alright here?" "Oh, my, yes." "Can I do anything?" "Oh no. No no no no no." Brett laughs. The man looks at him awkwardly. He leaves hastily. Brett installs the spare tire and pumps it back up to pressure with his bicycle pump. He is talking to his pump. "Good pump," he says. "Good, sturdy pump."

5pm, 40mi East of Portland, OR -- Talks to Dad on the phone. Dad looks up tire places nearby for morning repair. Also looks up camping grounds. Brett and Dad brainstorm about a problem: the spare tire cannot handle all the weight of Brett's possessions. He carries the half that he had already unloaded behind a copse of trees and stashes them for the hour that it will take him to get to the campground, set up a tent, unload the other half into the tent, then come back to pick the remaining gear up. Brett leaves a note on the boxes and bikes that says: "Friend- Please don't take anything. I'll be back in a jiffy to pick this up. I've had so many misfortunes in the last week it's almost comical. Please don't add to them."

6:30pm, 50mi East of Portland, OR -- Checks into a lovely, astonishingly cheap campsite by a creek. Thirsty. Goes to the bathroom to fill up his waterbottle. Sign says "Nonpotable water. Sorry. Camping fees have been reduced."

7:30pm, 40mi East of Portland, OR -- Brett returns and loads up his stashed possessions and bikes. Everything is there.

9pm, 50mi East of Portland, OR -- Digs around in his gear for water filter. Pumps clean water down by the creek. Fills up his Nalgene and Rob's donated bottle. Brushes his teeth. Sets up his tent. Gets into his sleeping bag. Hasn't showered in more than 3 days. Smells himself for a few minutes: spilled beer, sweat, anxiety. Goes to sleep.

The First Leg: Part VI

2009-05-11T03:13:00.003-06:00

Thursday 7 May, 10am, Portland, OR -- Brett wakes. Rides downtown. Wanders bookshop. Reads for a long time from collected journals of A Ginsberg. Buys lunch from bosnian street stand. Decides for sure to start ride in Pullman. "I'm going to do it," he says throughout the morning. Cancels flight to VA and flight back to Portland. Feels weight lift off shoulders.

3pm, Portland, OR -- V-Shop calls. Window glass arrived a little late. Won't be finishing today. Brett decides to go on long ride. Buys map. Realizes he only has one pair of clothes. (Everything that wasn't stolen is at bottom of tightly-packed Volvo back at the shop.) Also realizes his tiny clipless pedals hurt with just his tennis shoes. Instead of long ride today, Brett decides to get ready for a long ride on next day. Buys used platform pedals at The Recyclery. Looks for a Goodwill or Salvation Army. Can't find one. Rides back to hostel and checks in for one more night. Happy greets him cheerfully. Brett in bad mood, but greets him back. Brett goes grocery shopping.

7pm, Portland, OR -- Cooks dinner. Eats and talks for hours with lovely hippie named Jo who is probably not yet 70. Brett says that's his mother's name. Jo is in Portland for her granddaughter's graduation. She doesn't like motels because they're boring. She travels alone and camps or stays in hostels. Jo tells Brett all kinds of stories about trekking in the Himalayas and doing some sort of hippie dance with A Ginsberg at Naropa in the 70s. Someone nearby talks about her MySpace page. Jo says her space is 6 acres of sagebrush in Northern New Mexico.

The First Leg: Part V

2009-05-11T03:12:00.002-06:00

Wednesday 6 May, 6:20am, Portland, OR -- Brett wakes. Brushes teeth. Rides first bike back to car in morning rain, with second bike over shoulder. Feels herculean. Leans bikes against Volvo. Sees crumble glass on pavement out of corner of his eye. Walks around to passenger's side of the car. Front window is broken in. "Oh my," he thinks. Looks inside for a second. It takes a moment to fully register. Realizes everything from the front seat is gone except tent and sleeping bag & pad.

6:50am, Portland, OR -- Tow truck arrives as Brett is pacing the parking lot furious, unstrung. Tow truck mechanic laughs nervously. "Oh, Jeez. That just happen?" Brett runs back to hostel to bring last bike back to car. Locks it up with the other two on rack. Looks franticly in bushes and down street for panniers, box of books, tupperware, duffel.

7:45am, Portland, OR -- Arrives at V-Shop. Tow truck tips car back down onto the road. Tow truck leaves. V-Shop owner arrives. "Oh, Jeez. That just happen?"

8:15am, Portland, OR -- V-Shop mechanics gather around to hear story. Lend Brett a vacuum to clean out crumbly glass. Mechanics raise car up on lift, start investigating ratcheting noise. They tell Brett he can store bikes and rack in the back of the shop. Give him non-emergency Portland police phone number. Brett plugs in phone and starts calling friends and family.

9am, Portland, OR -- Brett leaves mechanics to their work. Walks down to local grocery store. Sits in middle of aisle and plugs phone into floor outlet. Reports break-in to police. Starts thinking about alternative summer options. Screw the tour, bum around the Pacific Northwest? Screw the tour, fly home to VA and go on long rides around the Shenandoah Valley? Screw the tour, get a plane ticket to Europe? Do the tour?

10am, Portland, OR -- Friends and Family start calling Brett with offers to ship gear and send money. Dad suggests new route options from Pullman, WA. Brett begins to imagine he might still be able to ride cross-country. V-Shop calls. Can repair badly burned-out u-joint on drive shaft and replace window for a pretty penny. Will be done by Thursday night.

11am, Portland, OR -- Brett & bike ride back to hostel on bus. Brett arranges a second night's stay with grinning hostel employee Happy. Begins to like Happy. Limitedly. Brett rides back to Wells Fargo parking lot and makes loops around local neighborhood looking for gear. Checks dumpsters. Goes back to hostel for long nap. Elsewhere, friends & family begin making arrangements.

7pm, Portland, OR -- Brett wakes and goes down the street to buy a cheap beer and look at maps. Spills beer on only pair of jeans he has to wear. Bartender gives him another one, even cheaper. Talks to Dad about new route options.

The First Leg: Part IV

2009-05-11T03:11:00.007-06:00

Tuesday 5 May, 8am, Logan, UT -- Brett departs Logan full of renewed confidence. Destination: Astoria, OR. Objective: deposit bicycle and packed panniers. Then drive on to Pullman, WA.

noon, OR/ID border -- New car noises. Very subtle. Pinging? Ratcheting? Brett thinks he is being hypersensitive. Pats the dashboard. Turns up music.

1pm, eastern OR -- Brett certain there is new car trouble. Calls Dad. Asks for phone numbers for Volvo shops in Portland. Arranges for morning appointment at The V-Shop, SW side of town.

2pm, approaching Columbia River, OR -- Noises grow more unnerving. Sounds like Volvo is dragging aluminum bar along the road. Stops car several times and looks underneath. Turns music off. Listens attentively. Creases brows. Recreases brows. Sits upright. Calls Dad. Asks for phone numbers for hostels in Portland.

7pm, Portland, OR -- Brett enters city. Very worried about car. When he accelerates from stoplights, he feels thumping below feet. Resigns himself to another pretty penny, "prettier than yesterday's," he says to himself. Begins to think he might need a tow to The V-Shop. Parks in closest empty parking lot, a Wells Fargo 9 blocks from hostel. Breathes sigh of relief.

7:20pm, Portland, OR -- Walks 9 blocks past at least 200 hipsters and at least 30 fixies. Checks into hostel. Hostel employee says his name is Happy. He is. Irritatingly so.

7:45pm, Portland, OR -- Walks back to car. Calls dad for AAA phone number to arrange morning tow. Phone battery dies. Bums electricity from taco shop. Calls AAA. Buys a taco. Buys another.

8:30pm, Portland, OR -- Grabs toiletries, rain coat, a couple books, journal, some essential files, and wallet from front seat of car. Leaves a note on the windshield that says: "Please don't ticket/tow me. My car has broken down. I've arranged for a morning tow at 7am. Thanks." Brett looks at his bikes. He looks at hipsters. Decides bikes are not safe for the night locked up to the rack. Rides them one-by-one back to the hostel and locks them up inside.

11pm, Portland, OR -- Sets alarm for 6:20am. Goes to sleep in top bunk, bottom floor of hostel.

The First Leg: Part III

2009-05-11T03:09:00.000-06:00

Monday 4 May, 10am, Logan, UT -- Brett schedules 2pm appointment at Salt Lake City Volvo dealership.

noon, Logan, UT -- Dusty & Lisa's preacher, previous auto mechanic, agrees to look at Brett's Volvo. Brett thinking, "It's not that bad. I'll just spend a little more on gas." Doesn't want to pay for repairs. Needs a second opinion. Second opinion is unpleasant: "Take her in, she needs repairs," says preacher. Just before leaving for Salt Lake City, Dusty calls, then Lisa. They want to come down to the city too, wait around with Brett while the car's getting repaired. They follow him in their car.

2:10pm, Salt Lake City, UT -- Brett is late to his repair appointment. One block from the dealership he is rear-ended by a frazzed 18-year-old who is late for some appointment of his own. 18-year-old says, "Oh man, why didn't you accelerate at that green light!? Oh man!" Brett did accelerate. His car was heavy and has tuberculosis. Luckily Brett took bicycles & hitch rack off of his car before he headed South. No damage beyond a few scratches and the mental strain of talking to an 18-year-old.

2:20pm, Salt Lake City, UT -- Car is checked in for repairs. Dusty & Lisa pick Brett up to go find lunch. Eat at Nepali Super Buffet. Brett makes a glutton of himself. Dusty & Lisa pay.

3pm, Salt Lake City, UT -- Call from dealership. Repairs will cost a pretty penny, replace most of the ignition line. Spark plugs, distributor cap, sundry wires.

4pm, Salt Lake City, UT -- Brett and Dusty & Lisa walk around downtown. Explore Mormon Tabernacle. Feels like a foreign cathedral. Brett begins to feel sick. Not about the tabernacle. About the Super Buffet. Waits to see if Dusty & Lisa feel the same. They do not. They are cheerful.

4:30pm, Salt Lake City, UT -- Call from dealership. "Repairs are done. Come pay your pretty penny." Brett and Dusty & Lisa walk back to their car. Brett is nauseous beyond the point of self-delusion. Now is looking for a quiet corner of the city to launch his lunch. Port-A-Jon behind a fence. Opened manhole cover. Flower bed. Tabernacle wading pool. They arrive at their car. Brett bends over concrete tree enclosure. Says, "Oh man." Female pedestrian rapidly turns back the way she came. Brett heaves up Nepali Super Buffet. Dusty stands by. Says, "Oh man." Lisa gets a glass of water and a Pepto Bismol.

6:30pm, Logan, UT -- Dusty and Brett ride bikes around Logan. Dusty points Brett in direction of marsh and farmlands. Brett makes pleasant loop past lowing cattle, through plowed fields, beneath snow-topped ranges. Lisa prepares pleasant simple dinner. Brett leaves kayak and packet of resupplies for when he passes through Logan on bike tour. Sleeps like baby.

The First Leg: Part II

2009-05-11T03:07:00.004-06:00

Sunday 3 May, 7am, CO Springs -- Brett leaves town. Drives North. "A simple excursion to the coast," he thinks. "Three buffer days before my flight from Pullman, WA to VA. Plenty of time," he thinks.

10am, near Rawlins, WY -- Engine hiccups turn into engine tuberculosis. Gas mileage goes from 24mpg to 15mpg. Brett calls Andrew, a knowledgeable friend. He suggests fuel-injector cleaner. Helps a little. Brett begins to grow anxious. Turns up his music.

7pm, Logan, UT -- Brett sputters into Logan, UT. Old friends Dusty & Lisa greet him with fabulous meal, film "Into the Wild", maternal admonition: "Don't disappear into the wild on us, OK, Brett", affectionate cats, allergy medication, and warm bed. Brett decides to stay an extra day in Logan to look for a Volvo mechanic. Dreams mostly about tomorrow's fabulous meal, maternal admonition, affectionate cats, allergy medication, and warm bed.

The First Leg: Part I

2009-05-10T22:10:00.009-06:00

I've now parked my car for the summer. The next thing to do is get on my bike and ride East. Up until a week ago this had been mentally where my adventure began, on my bicycle. But things have changed, mentally. My road trip to Pullman, WA became epic, and therefore got mentally stitched to my bike tour as its first (and surely most eventful) leg. So here, for those who would know, is a catalog of events, a breakdown of the minutes, a breviary of the tour thus far, in (my goodness) eight parts:

Tuesday 28 April, all day, CO Springs -- Brett buys two sheets of Lexan and cuts out backing for panniers. Rebuilds panniers to fit onto bike rack. Engineering looks shady, but will have to do.

Thursday 30 April, am, CO Springs -- Brett discovers tongue on bike rack doesn't quite fit into receiver on Volvo. Drives up to shop of previous employment and grinds bits off of the tongue to make it work. Engineering looks shady, but will have to do.

Friday 1 May, pm, CO Springs -- Brett gathers bike gear together. Chooses appropriate clothes. Bags first 4 days of food into Ziplock baggies. Sorts all of this into meaningful packets and bags. Packs everything into panniers. Gear weighs in at 50lbs. Bike & racks weigh in at 30lbs. Brett weighs in at 150lbs. Two friends bring dinner by. Another friend stops by to say, "Bye." Brett hides the fact that he's already eaten, and gorges himself again, twice.

Saturday 2 May, all day, CO Springs -- Brett spends rainy day packing 3 cubic meters of possessions into 2 cubic meters of space. Throws away vast quantities of once-significant items. Uses pieces of bicycle tube to jerry-rig roof rack so he can strap kayak to the top of the car. Attaches hitch rack and three bikes. Volvo bottoms out on rear axle and expresses Swedish angst with quiet engine hiccups and pleasantly glowing warning lights. Brett waves a dismissive hand. Packs final items into saved front seat space: 4 meticulously packed bike panniers & 1 handlebar bag, box of ~25 books to read over the summer, tupperware of resupply items to deposit with various friends and family, and a big duffel full of summer clothes to leave in VA for wedding and playing.

The New Tour

2009-05-10T21:43:00.007-06:00

As most of you know, I ran into several hitches on my road trip. I was driving in a loop to drop of my bicycle and gear in Astoria, OR, where I was going to be starting my ride, and then dropping off my possessions in Pullman, WA, where I'll be studying physics in the Fall. These road trip hitches included ~$1600 in car repairs and the loss of all of my touring gear (minus my bike, tent, and sleeping bag & pad). Yes, I ran into hitches, but I also ran into immeasurable sympathy and innumerable gifts from friends and strangers making it possible for me to still ride my bicycle [very nearly] across the country.

I've got to start a little later now, because I'm waiting to receive donated and lent gear from a number of friends across the country. Also, because I'm starting later, I'm also going to be starting just shy of the West Coast. Actually, a whole state shy. I'll start pedaling from Pullman, WA on friday 15 May from my temporary residence with Ben, a second-year WSU physics grad student. I'll first be aiming East at Missoula, MT, then directly South through Idaho to Logan, UT. I'm still planning to fly out of Salt Lake City to be there with my sister when this wedding thing goes down.

I'm pretty sad that I won't get to dip my wheels in the Pacific, or camp along the Oregon coast, or ride up and over the Cascades, or visit my friends Jason & Sarah in Bend, OR. But I'm glad I'm still going to get to ride across the country this summer. Really, I'm amazed that I can still do that. I'm still a bit in shock at how my parents and my friends have gathered and shipped nearly everything that I'll need.

Tragedy and Friends

2009-05-06T15:29:00.009-06:00

Plans for the last few days: drive my car from CO Springs to Logan, Utah, to spend the night with my friends, then to my starting point, Astoria, Oregon, to drop off my bicycle and packed panniers, then finally to Pullman, Washington, where I'll be starting grad school in the fall. A bike shop in Astoria cheerfully agreed to store my bike for a week, while I drove on to Pullman, then flew to VA briefly, then back out to start my ride.

Unfortunate, even tragic events of the last few days: Extra day delay in Utah to repair my stuttering engine. Then I got rear-ended by a hasty undergrad on my way to the shop in Salt Lake City. Then I launched my half-digested Nepali all-you-can-eat buffet into a raised garden on a public street in downtown Salt Lake City. The next day I drove in a state of high-strung stress waiting for something else to happen with my car. It did. It began clunking and ratcheting, to the point of tangibly thumping below my feet as I pulled into a Wells Fargo Parking lot in Portland. So another extra day delay, this time in Portland, to repair a destroyed coupler on my drive shaft. I spent the night at a hostel. Then the very worst of all: a midnight break-in to my vehicle parked in the Wells Fargo parking lot. My car was so heavily packed with all my possessions to move into storage up in Pullman that whoever did it decided not to get into the back (more valuable stuff) and stole everything in the front seat (hardly sellable but extremely valuable to me): all of my bicycle touring gear and panniers, my carefully selected box of books, and my duffel of non-touring clothes for the summer. When I discovered my broken front window this morning, arriving back at my car to meet a pre-arranged tow-truck (yep, my drive shaft was that damaged last night), I just about quit. All of the gear that had been given to me or that I'd gathered or built over the last year for this tour was gone, and in its place some crumbly glass.

Good, even excellent events of the last few days: My friend & Mastertech at my old shop gave me helpful initial advice by phone on my car troubles on the way to Utah. My friends, Dusty & Lisa in Logan, Utah, stopped their schedules to spend time with me, even meeting me in Salt Lake City to eat at the Nepali Buffet and wait for my car to be repaired. Dusty also stood by when I puked lunch back up in downtown, and Lisa had a wonderfully bland Pepto waiting for me. And I felt a lot better after doing that. Also, the undergrad's rear-ending of me yielded no damage beyond a few scratches on the fender. Then, later that night I got to ride around beautiful Logan with Dusty, then out towards some marshes for a cool dusk ride. The next day I got to drive along the Lewis & Clark trail down the Columbia River on my way into Portland (although I had no music playing at that point and I was jumping at every little noise my car made.) Also last night, I thought to move my three bikes into the hostel to lock them up for the night. And in the morning, after discovering the break-in, and getting towed to the shop where I'd made an appointment, the guys that were working on my car were super-sympathetic. "Oh, man, that sucks!" "Look, you even put this little sign in your window. And someone still broke in. That's low!" "You can store your bikes in the back of our shop if you want. We'll make sure they're safe." And most of all, my friends and family have jumped to help me. Melanie called a bunch of people to let them know and to figure out what they could do together to help. Andrew & Peter at my old shop asked for a list of what I was missing, so they could post it in the break room and gather donations from fellow employees. Greg is going to mail me a spare set of panniers and some riding clothes and lights. My dad and a family friend, Ron, are getting together some other riding and cold-weather gear. Every friend I've talked to, from my parents to Dan to Dusty to Joey to Melanie to Ken to Jessica to Greg and everyone else has offered to buy me various things and ship them to me, or fly out here to hang out with me, or has just grieved with me on the phone.

Conclusions: I suppose this is a group ride after all, not solo. If I was going at it solo, this would be the end of it. I'd have to throw in the towel. But instead I have this huge group of supportive friends who are making sacrifices to get me out on the road. That shouldn't be surprising, but it floors me. These are grand friends. I haven't figured out the new logistics yet (where I'm going to start, when) but I've decided I'm going to try to make it work.

But man, this is a blow.

Canis Terribilis

2009-04-30T12:23:00.011-06:00

Just last week a new friend of mine, a hardened bicycle tourist, offered me a can of Halt to carry along on my trip. It's just pepper spray, but it's got a picture of a dog on it instead of the usual man with a sock over his head. It claims to be the #1 dog deterrent used by the postal service.

Now I don't have a problem spraying animals with pepper spray. I even sprayed my sister when she was 12. ("Hey, Kim, you hold this napkin up on that side of the room, and I'll spray this stuff at it like a target. It'll be fun.") However, if I'm on a bike and I'm fast, is there really any reason to spray a mean dog in the face with this stuff? Can't I just outrun him? Can't I Dog Whisper him into passivity?

I don't have an answer to those questions. I do have a story:

About a year ago I was riding home along the main north-south trail in town. It was dark, and there were no people around. I was passing through an area that was somewhat wooded. I had just turned a corner on the trail when a giant four-footed black creature moved out of the trees and onto the trail beside me. It was so big that my mind immediately said "bear." More specifically "grizzly bear." I was looking up at it. And it appeared literally beside me. My light didn't do any good, it was shining forward. And anyway, I wasn't thinking about figuring out what exactly it was at that point. I knew it was interested in my thighs. So I sprinted. I remember taking 3 pedal strokes, and then I was going 30mph. I just barely swerved in time to avoid a fence at the next turn in the trail. Finally I looked back and saw that it was a little smaller than I had first thought. Okay, a lot smaller. It was clearly a dog. But it was chasing me at full gallop. I pedaled anaerobically for another quarter mile and lost him.

This little fellow may have just wanted a late night companion to play fetch with, or he may after all have been interested in my thighs. But whatever the situation, the point of the story is that I could have hit the fence. Or I could have been exhausted at the end of an 80mi day. Or it could have been a grizzly bear. Seriously, it could have. So carrying this little can of pepper spray might make the difference. Or maybe the point of the story is that my mind doesn't actually work when it's scared. In which case, I might end up Halt-ing grandma if I carry that stuff around. Grandma, someone has to make a sacrifice.

Leaving Town

2009-04-29T17:02:00.010-06:00

I spent the better part of today biking from one school district headquarters to another. I had left my car at the shop for some final repairs, and I was trying to drop off a little form which had to be filled out by the payroll departments of all the school districts and charter schools I subbed at over the last year. I met a lot of secretaries with names like Mary Lou, efficient names, names that scowl. I walked a lot of halls, and was told many times that I was in the wrong building. And the whole while I was worrying about the 10 other things I still have to get done before I pull up anchor from my home of almost 3 years.

This is what preparing to leave feels like. I wish it felt like death or birth or something big. But largely it feels like sorting mail, making phone calls, getting a hundred forms notarized in a hundred different offices, organizing and reorganizing. I wish I had more time for more important things than administrivia.

I've certainly had some poignant goodbyes already, and there are more to come. CO Springs has become a really great chapter in my life, dense with good and interesting characters. I got to say goodbye over coffee to Moses, my earliest room mate, last week. I had a send-off with my REI coworkers at a local bar called Kinfolks, where Andrew (my shop boss) and his blues prodigy child slipped in a verse of Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited for me. I learned how to make tabouli and stuffed grape leaves from Melanie and then grilled out with her and my 3 other best CO friends on Sunday. Last night I rode home from work with Greg, my touring friend and supplier of many bike parts and other things, and said goodbye to him and his wife and daughter and dog. I'm having a fairwell dinner tonight with a group of guys I've met with on wednesday nights ever since I moved here. And the Allises, good family friends, are cooking me a meal tomorrow night.

So here's to CO Springs. Or rather the people I know and love here.

The bicycle, John Henry

2009-04-15T10:44:00.009-06:00

I finally finished building my touring bicycle, the end of last week. I've christened him John Henry. Here he is above; oh, and there I am. I was originally going to post a sexy close-up. But I felt a sudden too-close kinship with the guys who drive their pimped-out sports cars up and down the avenue, using their rear-view mirrors mostly to check their hair. Who wants to see a close-up of a bike? Well I do, actually. Especially if it's my hair. Bike, I mean. But in this case what you're getting, reader, is better: the bike AND its rider.

In the bike shop there is a term: frankenbike. A frankenbike's parts have been dug up from various graveyards. Frankenbikes are impossible to tune, because nothing in the drivetrain is really compatible. You often find hose-clamps on a frankenbike. John Henry is the quintessential specimen of a frankenbike.

The front end of the drivetrain is comprised of a crankset and derailleur from a 1989 Dura-Ace road racing group, which my friend, Greg, gave to me. "1989" and "road racing" translate to painfully high gearing. To compensate, I have a 9spd cassette in the rear that ranges from 11 to 34 teeth, providing me the lowest gearing I can buy. The low gear feels good, but it'll still be a haul up some of those steep passes. The rear derailleur is an XT mountain bike derailleur given to me by Dan. I needed the mountain derailleur's long pulley cage to be able to wrap up all the extra chain for such a huge range of gears. The crankset rotates on a super-long spindle Shimano bottom bracket that our shop was trying to get rid of for $5. I had to piece together two 9spd SRAM chains to get enough links to handle all the gear combinations and to reach across the extra-long touring chainstays. The shifters are also from Greg's Dura-Ace group. They're down-tube shifters, something that went out of style when animal print sweatshirts came in. And the rear shifter is for an 8spd cassette. To make that compatible with my 9spd cassette, I've switched it to friction shifting. That means it doesn't click into position. It just glides through all of the gears. Picture a trumpet player trying to play a trombone. Or a guitarist trying to play an upright bass. Or Niels Bohr trying to imagine continuous atomic energy states. What I'm saying is it's very difficult to operate a friction shifter.

The front rack was part of a $50 deal for a set of panniers that a co-worker of mine designed and built in the 80s. It attaches to my front fork with two u-bolts that stick way too far out. I'm afraid after all of this, I'm going to have to employ hose-clamps to keep it on.

New Route

2009-03-29T10:09:00.008-06:00

I've changed the western third of my route pretty significantly. My sister and Jacob are getting married at the end of May. Then, at the end of June, they're having a big party about getting married. I didn't know you could do that. Well, they are doing it, and I'm happy enough about these events that I've decided to attend both. So a few weeks ago, I began looking at my maps

(they were pinned around the walls in my room, so looking at my maps meant standing in the middle of my room and spinning my head), and wondering if there were any places along my route that I could leave my bike and fly out and back. I started to think about riding further South, toward Utah, where Dusty and Lisa live. Seeing Dusty and Lisa, and Southern Idaho, and Utah, and Northwestern Colorado sounded like so much fun, that I began seriously rearranging my schedule and route to make it work. Making it work includes cutting about 450mi of Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas entirely out of my bike ride. I agonized over that for about five minutes.

This would be my third major reworking of route and schedule. So I tentatively publish to you the scaffolding of my final route, in six distinct acts:

I) Astoria, Oregon - Logan, Utah (May 13 - 25, 995mi, ~85mi/day)
If my ride has an impossible section, this is it. I seriously don't know about riding that much every day for 12 days in a row. But on top of it, I'll be riding through spring rain (snow?), pretty significant mountain passes, and long sections of Southern Idaho with no human beings. Also, I have a minimal buffer for failure: two days. I'll be arriving in Portland, and taking a bus to Astoria, late on the 11th. With grocery shopping, rebuilding my shipped bike, and all the little things that I haven't thought up yet, my earliest start date will be May 13. I've already purchased my flight out of Salt Lake City to VA for the 27th. That means I've got two days of insurance to cry about sore legs or sit out a late spring storm before my daily quota of miles begins shooting through the roof. I've received a lot of advice about bike touring, and this leg of my tour breaks a good portion of that. This is also going to be one of the more spectacular sections. My first 15omi will be South along the Oregon coast. That gets me really excited.

II) Logan, Utah - Colorado Springs, CO (June 6 - 15, 675mi, ~70mi/day)
My mom and dad are joining me for this section. We're going to drive out to Logan from Virginia after Jacob and Kim get married. Then we'll ride through some pretty awesome sections of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. My mom's been training to be able to ride some with me.

III) Medora, Kansas - Carbondale, Illinois (June 17 - 24, 645mi, ~80mi/day)
My parents will shuttle me across Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas and drop me off in Medora, a little town that seems like a nice place to start riding again. They'll drive on to a family reunion, and I'll begin pedaling hard to get to my Aunt and Uncle's in Carbondale. At the end of this section, I'll fly out from St. Louis to Jacob and Kim's wedding reception.

IV) Carbondale, Illinois - Waynesboro, Virginia (July 1 - 21, 960mi, ~55mi/day)
After I fly back to St. Louis, I'll begin the relaxed leg. I'm planning to ride slower through the East, and take off at least a day a week to explore little towns and interesting parks. This section is especially exciting to me. I hope I can take a side trip down to Mammoth Cave. My only schedule constraint is to meet my CO friends in Waynesboro by July 24.

V) Waynesboro, Virginia - Front Royal, Virginia (July 24 - 26, 120mi, ~40mi/day)
Dan, Melanie, and Jessica are meeting me for this section. We'll pedal up the Skyline Drive. We'll pass a lot of territory that's familiar to me, including the house I lived in from kindergarten through 2nd grade, and a mock frontier home in which my sister and I volunteered to dress up in period costume and call our parents "Ma" and "Pa".

VI) Front Royal, Virginia - Kilmarnock, Virginia (July 28 - Aug 1, 250mi, ~50mi/day)
I'm hoping Dan will join me for the rest, from the North end of the Skyline Drive to the coast. Depending on a few factors, we may wander our way to the Atlantic. We both know a few families along the way. I don't really have any constraints on my finish date. I just have to get out to Grad School by sometime mid-August.

Some of this feels a little too rigorously scheduled to me. Surely it's unwise to try to meet so many checkpoints at such specific dates. Que sera, sera.

New Home

2009-03-29T09:31:00.004-06:00

In the next two days I've got to be completely moved out of my current apartment. Our lease is up. I'll be staying in Dan's living room until the beginning of May, then I'll drive everything I own to my parents' house in VA and immediately fly out to Portland to begin my ride around May 13. So the things I'm packing into boxes will remain in boxes until I begin graduate school in August. This is pretty difficult for me. I had an airy cabinet full of spices and pots and pans; now I've sealed all my cooking things into three boxes. I'm used to a wall full of books; now I've reduced my summer reading to 15 or so. My desk had been pleasantly organized, with office things where they belonged; now I've packed six pens, 10 rubber bands, a tiny stapler, and a handful of envelopes & stamps into a plastic bag. A week ago, I owned four bicycles (a mountain bike, a road bike, a cheap commuter, and my touring rig); now I've sold my mountain bike. And perhaps most difficult of all, I'm trying to sell my kayak. This isn't difficult in the way giving up coffee is difficult (since high school, I haven't paddled more than once per summer.) It's difficult in the way selling your grandmother on Craigslist would be difficult. I've had so many rich experiences with that boat, mostly paddling with my Dad and two good family friends from VA, Ron and Cy. The Lochsa , the Ottawa, the New, the Gauley, the Arkansas, the Youghiegheny...

A Portrait of an Amateur: Part IV

2009-03-06T12:15:00.003-07:00

In the parking lot of Starky's General Store, you slowly get back on your bike and begin pedaling. But it's a slow, miserable pedal stroke, even in your lowest gear. You climb like this, in a daze, for perhaps 20min before you pass a gas station. It's open. You stop, lean your bike against the side of the building, push on the door with all your strength, and take two steps inside. An AM radio station is scratching in the background. An old timer is at the counter checking out a case of beer for a man in suspenders. The old timer takes a long look at your shorts, and then at your face, and goes back to pushing buttons on the cash register. The two of them are talking in cryptic mountain mumbles. You pick up that it's about the forest fire. Standing there still, by the door, you ask something about the fire, and the man in suspenders says it's moving fast. High winds. A woman in the back keeps asking about a phone number. She's trying to call someone who's house is near the fire. You ask if the old timer will take a credit card for a candy bar. He mumbles something of which you only catch, "...$10." You consider buying $10 worth of Snickers Bars and cramming them into your already full backpack. You look at him for a long time, and then say, "Well, thanks anyway," and start turning back toward the door. The he tells you there's an ATM in the corner, and he points in that direction. You withdraw $20 and buy a Snickers, which right now seems to be a stomach-turning edible. In fact the thought of anything edible increasingly turns your stomach. You ask to fill up your water bottle, and the woman, having given up on the telephone, walks you into the back and shows you a sink full of dishes. You fill up your bottle, thank them, and then step slowly out towards your bike.

There is no doubt now; You have felt this before: eight hours into your adventure race last spring, nine hours into your ring-the-peak ride last fall, and now five hours into your Tuesday ride (this must be old age), you are crashing. This is not a sugar crash, which a candy bar would fix. It's not a mental low-spot. It's a whole body shut-down, which you've experienced before, and which you know won't go away until you're done riding. You think about calling a friend, or hitching a ride with a passing motorist. You even darkly fantasize about pulling off the road and lying down in the woods. But you know this body shut-down isn't the end. It's not going to incapacitate you. Like all the times before, you'll be able to ride home, however slowly. It's just that ride (40mi? 50mi?) is going to be exceedingly unpleasant. Even though you don't want to, you get to work on your body maintenance. You start breathing audibly, just to let yourself know you're breathing. You open the Snickers, but you can only swallow one bite before you feel ill. You put chapstick on your lips just for the hell of it. And you pedal.

The wind is now at your tail, gently tugging you back up the Western slope of the pass. But you don't notice this. You are miserable, and the things that would normally delight you are now invisible or worse. You pass a stream you hadn't noticed on your way out, dammed by beavers. You see their huts and long low dams, and they seem muddy and shoddy to you. You are now passing through the smoke of the forest fire, and it maddens your eyes and is sour in your throat. Again, thankfully, your enraged and despairing mind begins to go blank as you push up toward the summit of the pass.

After a little more than an hour of riding upward, and a little dulling out of your extreme mental state, you raise your head and see in the distance a pleasing sight. The road climbs to a familiar high point and then disappears: the summit of the pass. Some thankfulness returns to you and you increase your pedaling strength by small increments. The low sun is exactly at your back and your shadow is lengthened in front of you. The silhouette of your legs is 20ft long, stroking up and down, up and down like a Masai warrior running. You pedal after the Masai, chasing him up towards the summit, and roll over the top like it was the easiest of things. You have before you, you realize, at least 25 more miles before you are home. But it is almost entirely descent.

The aches of your body are now gone, even the illness of your stomach. They have been eclipsed by a heavy tiredness. You eat your apple, but you just want to get home. You pedal in the manner of a man who wants to get home: grim-faced, steadily, in your largest chainring. After some time, you whiz through the narrow concrete-walled section of the highway and enter the large town at the top of the steep section of the pass. You pass the bank again and read the temperature (50DegF) and the time (5:36pm). You do a double take. It's only 5:30pm! You don't even bother to take out your phone to verify this. You know that an hour and a half back, either your phone malfunctioned, or you did, but you had actually turned around at your scheduled time, 4pm. This is a small discovery, unimportant now that you are on your way home, but it somehow changes everything. You stop and put on your lights (it is almost dusk.) You also put on your mittens and windbreaker. You continue to descend.

When you get to the duck pond off the main highway you decide to stop again and eat the rest of your food and see the funny white goose. You lean your bike against the same fence and sit this time at a picnic table. There are no ducks or geese on your side of the pond now. They are all on the far side, swimming sluggishly in a large, melted section. And the white goose is now walking along the shore, now wading into the water, making a steady, almost panicked honk. You look for the other two geese and cannot find them. There is something very sad in all of this. The white goose walks and wades and honks ceaselessly, while you finish your cream cheese, tuna fish, and tortillas. You say goodbye to the goose, and almost form an apology of sorts, but you're soon on your bike and on your way. As dessert, you decide to try the rest of your stomach-turning Snickers Bar. This time it is life-giving. You finish it and, though you are tired, you are increasingly happy about being on your bicycle.

You begin to warm as you descend, and your lights flash forward and backward in a bright pattern. The wind at times is descending at exactly the same speed as yourself, giving you the strange experience of moving fast in the startling quiet. You descend the pass faster than you have ever dared, in perfect control of your bicycle and your body. Cars pass you, but slowly, you are moving so fast. You watch the faces of their passengers as they move by. Descending the last bit into the village at the foot of the mountains, you are greeted by a town fully alive. A few cars are moving slowly along the main street. Families are walking along the sidewalks. You see a bearded man in a flannel shirt walking beside a girl in a simple dress.

It is dark now as you enter the side streets. Warm lights shine from windows, and the clinking of dishes and the smells of cooking float through the alleyway. You smell olive oil and yeast. The smell of marijuana briefly mingles with the rest and then fades. Now in the residential area, you pass an open garage door, and you can see two massive American flags hanging behind the garage detritus. You pass very near a parked, brightly-lit family van inside of which a little girl is dancing and singing shrilly. You come into the downtown of the bigger city, your own town, and the streetlights look like Christmas. People wave at you and smile. You watch a man walking five dogs on five leashes. And finally, at long last, you pull up to the front lawn of your apartment. You have just enough energy to carry your bike up the stairs to the landing, far more energy than you had thought you'd have. You check the time; it's 7pm exactly.

Inside you put away a few of your things and hang up your bicycle. You recall some advice that you read somewhere that for optimal recovery after an endurance workout you should consume 20-30g of protein. You stand in front of your open refrigerator. You look inside your pantry. Then you wave your hand in a dismissive gesture and lie down on your bedroom floor and fall to sleep.

A Portrait of an Amateur: Part III

2009-03-06T11:08:00.003-07:00

You've now climbed 2000ft and the windless day has turned into quite a kicker. As you leave town, the highway narrows briefly into an interstate-like chute with high concrete walls to channel traffic. The wind funnels through these ferociously and throws bits of dust and gravel into your face, some whipping past your sunglasses and into your eyes. You squint for a few minutes until the concrete walls have fallen away to be replaced by wide, alpine plains. The single dominating mountain is now to your South, and you have a whole new view of it than you normally get from your apartment at its base. It always startles you how quickly you move around the monolithic peak while riding your bike. The familiar ridge line is now dramatically foreign. The peak looks long and sloping, with many summits. From this angle, you can't even make out the true summit.

As you continue to climb along the highway, the narrow part of the pass now behind you, you look out into the high, mountain fields and feel your remoteness. You pass an unrecognizable carcass along the fence line. Houses come less frequently now with many acres of ranch land between them. The highway crosses streams with their banks of mud and snow trampled by a million cow hoofs. To your right you notice an ancient sod house built into the side of a hill. You are pedaling hard again, even though your climb has decreased significantly in grade. The wind is fighting you like an elastic band anchored somewhere behind you. You've grown less frustrated with headwinds in the last year of riding, but this is an intense headwind. You try to crouch. You put your hands into an aerodynamic position. You pedal with your knees slightly turned in. Loose weeds are tumbling past you and grasses are bent low. Flags flap in your direction, shivering rectangles. The trees hum. The whole mountain seems to hum. In your imagination, you see Aiolos unfastening his bloated animal skins on the Western slope of the mountain range. He is laughing. "At least," you say to him, "when I turn around, these winds of yours will press me from behind." This thought circles through your brain as it sinks again into the dull repetitions of physical exertion.

Soon enough you arrive at the summit of Ute Pass. 'Summit' is a strange word for this; there is higher ground to the left and right. You come up with a satisfactory definition to clarify the situation: "the summit of a pass is the highest point along the lowest path over a mountain range." You begin your gradual descent with at least 20 more miles to go before you reach Wilkerson Pass, the point at which someone continuing Westward would descend onto the Western Slopes. You will not reach Wilkerson Pass today.

As you descend, still pedaling steadily because of the high winds, your various discomforts begin alerting you of their presence. Your hands have hurt for some time now, but you hadn't noticed; you begin adjusting their positions more frequently on your handlebars. The muscle that connects your shoulder to your neck is cramped and you concentrate on relaxing your arms and shoulders and carrying the weight of your forward-leaning torso with your core muscles. Your legs are sore too, but eating another energy bar seems gradually to give them back their strength. After a while, the ache in your lower back becomes distracting enough that you stop at a pull-out along the highway and try some stretches. You twist around and flop your legs across eachother, trying positions that feel right and hopefully look professional to passing motorists. Slowly you begin to feel your back and even your shoulder relaxing, and you mentally slap yourself for not having thought of this before. With the wind still whipping, and having been off your bike for a few minutes, you suddenly realize you are chilled. You begin to make a causal connection between this new unpleasantness and the cotton t-shirt you are wearing, but stop the logical progression before it makes wisdom out of your friends' advice. You throw on your long-sleeve shirt, check the time on your phone (3:20pm), and begin pedaling again.

You are really beginning to feel your miles now. You don't know exactly how far you've come, but you guess 35mi. Still descending, you pass fantastical piles of rocks, like those you've seen in Joshua Tree and Hueco Tanks. You pass a few more mountain towns, with names like Wagon Tongue and Saddle Creek. You eat your last energy bar, but notice very little increase in your energy. You pass a herd of cattle and moo at them. You cannot tell if you have gone 15 more miles or 5, but you estimate that it is about 4pm, and you turn around on the highway to begin the long process of retracing your path. Facing eastward now, back towards the dominating peak, you notice a long trail of smoke that obscures most of its ridgeline. The particular hue of the smoke makes you think that sappy conifers are burning. A forest fire. And you hadn't even noticed it on the way out. Perhaps it has just begun.

You decide to check the time, to mentally catalog your turn-around. You sit upright in your saddle and pedal without using your hands while you pull off your backpack and sift through its contents for your phone. You look at its display: 5:05pm. "Good," you think. "Only five minutes overdue." Then your brain registers what you just saw. 5:05pm! Five o-clock! You're an hour and five minutes overdue! The sun will set in another hour, and you've been riding for 5hrs already, not four, like you had planned. How could you have made this mistake? You wonder if you misread your phone when you stopped to stretch. Or maybe you blanked out and rode for an hour and forty minutes rather than just forty since your last stop. You look at your phone again to verify that it's really as late as that. It is. You have no idea how it happened, but you know how your sense of time gets warped when you are fatigued. "Really," you tell yourself, "it isn't that big of a deal:" you have your riding lights, and you have extra layers to put on. But somehow the ride before you begins to look utterly impossible.

In the first three minutes after you have turned around, you have plummeted from moderately tired to completely defeated. In near despair you remember again how very remote you are. The food you have left is obviously inadequate. The water you have left is only a few sips. "How could I be so stupid?" you ask yourself. You stop at the general store you passed in the town just 10min before, Starky's General Store. But the lights are out and a 'Closed' sign hangs askew on the inside of the door. It presses on you like a clamp, you've crossed into Hell.

A Portrait of an Amateur: Part II

2009-03-05T11:23:00.011-07:00

Winding through the last streets of the town at the foot of the mountains, before you pull out onto the busy highway that winds up the pass, you stop at one of the countless mineral springs that speckle the mountain village. A hundred years ago wealthy health-seekers would come to the sanatorium here to take the waters, and they swore by their restorative powers. Today there is an earthy new-age community that still thrives in the town. This particular spring is gurgling under a rusted metal sculpture of a kneeling Indian with a jar in his hands. Out of the jar spills a trickle of the ancient waters. You fill your spare bottle with the spring water and take a swig. It tastes heavily of metal. But you put the full bottle into your bottle cage and carry on, leaving behind the expressionless Indian forever kneeling, forever pouring.

It is now 45min into your ride, and you decide to eat one of your energy bars. The sugar is stimulating. You pedal up the ramp and enter the highway, moving precisely up the shoulder. It's not long now before you enter the familiar rhythmic trance of exertion. You used to imagine yourself having lots of time to think during these rides, but this is rarely the case. When your body starts working hard, your mind slows down to a dull churn. The thousands of circles your feet describe are echoed in your mind with thousands of circles of simple thoughts. Your brain begins to loop over one line from the country song you listened to this morning. Cycle. Cycle. Cycle. Then you watch your shadow. You watch your shadow pedaling, pedaling, pedaling beside you for ten minutes, but you don't even realize it, and you certainly don't get bored. In fact, you've wondered whether within this monotonous brain-hum during the hardest parts of your rides your subconscious is actually getting work done. Maybe it sorts and analyzes and imagines, without you being aware of it. Sometimes when you arrive back home, with very little conscious memory of your ride, you have a wholly new idea waiting for you. You continue pedaling up the pass. Miles roll under your wheels. It is not unpleasant for you. It is not pleasant. It isn't anything.

Your reverie is broken at some point by a roaring tractor trailer. You are in the narrowest section of this highway, with about three feet of shoulder. You sense his dangerous closeness as you hear him approach from behind and gently move further away from the white line. Then he roars past you at 50mph, wheels rolling on your side of the white line, only a couple of feet between you. You've learned not to startle and swerve, but your heart rate still jumps towards three beats per second. You catch yourself yelling at his receding trailer, explaining in simple terms his exact standing before God.

You recover and realize that you've almost come to the section where you often exit from the highway and ride a handful of miles along a parallel back road, which climbs through three small towns. You make your exit and breathe in the quiet of this road. People still pass you in their cars, but they all slow down or shift to the opposite side of the road and smile and wave. You pass narrow horse pastures pressed between the steep walls of the pass and a creek that rolls down along the road. The horses stand there, eyes closed in the warm sun, or else necks dropped, lips moving along the surface of the ground. "A horse is the most beautiful animal," you think to yourself. "Or a deer." Snow begins to appear along the edges of the road, which makes for a pleasant sight. You are hot, climbing up the pass, and the sun glinting off the long mounds of gravel-speckled snow makes you feel cooler.

You've been riding now for an hour and a half, and you decide to stop for lunch at the modest pond in the park at the heart of the last town along this road. You lean your bike against a fence and stretch and sit down along the bank of the half-frozen duck pond. The only other person here is an older, stooped fellow walking in slow steps along the edge. It looks to you like he's exercising, making laps around it. Your presence alarms a brotherhood of ducks and three geese who are walking over the surface of the ice, dipping their beaks into little indentations filled with water. As you get out your tuna fish, tub of cream cheese, tortillas, and plastic knife, you watch them. They recover from your arrival and resume their strange exercise. The ducks move about with ease, carelessly padding across the slippery wet ice. When they come to larger indentations, they hinge their legs under their breasts and swim a few feet to the opposite ice bank and climb out. The geese move with much more caution. They sway slowly and stop at intervals to look around and to dip their beaks into the little pools. The biggest goose, a white one, and surely the male, moves with the greatest caution of all. His feet are wide, like those of a novice ice skater. He keeps slipping and catching himself just before his legs fold under him. Usually a goose's neck is curved elegantly, but his is arched into an awkward upside-down 'U', bringing his face down close to his breast. Presumably, he is trying to watch his feet. He is jerkily walking in a random path along the surface, unengaged in the community's work of beak-dipping, merely trying to get his feet steady under him. And he's making the most varied collection of goose noises you have ever heard: honking high and low, squeaking, and even hissing. It reminds you of how a human baby will make noises, oblivious to everyone else in the room, just for the pleasure of hearing its voice.

Finishing half of your lunch food and packing it away for later, you throw a piece of mulch out at the white goose. He slips and recovers and then rocks his head back and forth with crazy intensity, trying to get a look at it. You throw another piece, but then you realize that the old man is now passing behind you. You turn and smile at him. He gives you the same long, scolding stare that you give to teenagers texting in the library.

You get back on your bicycle and make your way back out onto the highway towards the largest town along the pass. In 30min you are pedaling along its main street, and you pass a bank which advertises the time (2:21pm) and the temperature (60DegF). In your head, you calculate your turn-around time, using the rough estimate that you will descend twice as fast as you climb. You figure 4pm is a safe bet, realizing also that this is not going to be enough time to get to your destination. Without much disappointment, you change your route and continue on the main highway out of town towards Wilkerson Pass, instead of North towards Deckers. You'll try again another time.

A Portrait of an Amateur: Part I

2009-03-04T15:22:00.009-07:00

I find that even though I've been riding my road bike regularly for at least three years now, I'm still decisively an amateur. It's not like cycling takes a great amount of technical mastery or professionalism, but I seem to have the gift of perpetual and obvious amateurism. I mean, I still get nervous when I walk into a bike shop: I say the wrong words, calling a wheel a tire, and mixing up the order of the Shimano groups. And I'm a bicycle mechanic, for pete's sake.

Nevertheless, amateurism in cycling has one great benefit: epic rides. Professionals get epic rides too. But they plan ahead for them, and thereby dull their knife-sharp, life-altering effects. A pro plans for days ahead, gets on her bike, cranks out a hundred miles, eats all the right food in just the right quantities, brings just enough gear, and is home within 30min of her target time. She goes to bed pleased with a good ride. I watch her with awe. Because I, on the other hand, frequently almost die. I decide the day-of to ride far more miles than I am capable of riding, and I hobble home way past dark, either freezing or carrying 5 pounds of gear I never needed. I go to bed saying words I've promised to stop saying. But I wake up in the morning and life has a brighter hue. An epic ride. Any novice knows what this feels like.

Tuesday's ride was the most recent in a long history of such rides. For your benefit, friend, and to see one such ride through the eyes of an amateur, I place you grammatically in my shoes. It is long, so here is Part I.

-----

Coming home from work on Monday, an idea strikes you: tomorrow you are entirely free, why not ride to Deckers and back? There's nothing special about Deckers, besides its location 50 miles up into the mountains. And also the last time you were riding in that direction, you got passed by three kids in jeans riding single speed bicycles. They had said, "Hi." You had asked them where they were coming from, where they were going. They had said, "Deckers." And the rest of your ride had felt shamefully 'intermediate'. "So why not ride to Deckers?" you think, driving home from work on Monday. The thought, "to prove yourself to yourself," begins to form in your head, but you don't allow this thought to fully surface. "For the adventure," you say to yourself.

You know you'll have to get a reasonably early start, probably 10 or 11am, so you can make it back before dark, a little after 6pm. But instead of going to bed on time, you get distracted with one of the movies stacked below your room mate's television. You finally get to bed at 1am.

At 8am you wake up without the alarm. You look at the clock and make an agonized noise and close your eyes, thinking to get at least another half hour of sleep. You awake again, suddenly, and sit up in your bed. By the silence of the street out your window, you know it's late in the morning. Your clock says 10:43am. Not to worry, you think to yourself: it won't take long to get ready. You heat some water for instant oatmeal, but discover you only have one packet left. Hardly enough to start the day. So you make a quart of your mother's left-over Christmas tea. You make it far too sweet, like syrup, but you drink the whole quart anyway. The cabinet, you find, is distressingly empty, and realizing you need to take more food on your ride than you currently own, you jump into your car and make your way over to the grocery store. There, a fit looking gentleman with a bike helmet keeps appearing in the same aisle as you do. You smile at him and he smiles warmly back. You grab whatever looks energetic and packable; a stack of tortillas, an apple, a packet of tuna fish, a tub of cream cheese. You add up the Calories mentally, a new pre-ride ritual that makes you feel precise, scientific, like Lance Armstrong. A thousand Calories, give or take; not enough. You go to the aisle of sweet things and bump into the gentleman with the helmet agian. He smiles at you. You browse the Clif Bars and Powerbars and think about your Lenten commitment to abstain from sweets. You deliberate. This is the first time you have honored Lent, and you want to be rigorous. But it's going to be impossible to do long rides without simple sugars. Finally you grab three bars and walk to the checkout line, picturing Jesus entering Jerusalem on a rickety Schwinn, munching on a brown energy bar.

Back in your car, you put in a CD for the five-minute drive home. You choose carefully, knowing that the song you listen to will probably be stuck in your head for the next six hours on your bicycle. It's a sad country song about Richard Manuel and Rick Danko.

At your apartment, you pack the food into your backpack which also carries your water. Your backpack is an abomination, you know; road cyclists don't carry things in backpacks; they put bottles onto their frames and stuff tools and spare clothes and snacks into their back jersey pockets. But you don't want to wear a lumpy jersey for 6hrs today, so you put everything you need into this small backpack. You also put in your phone, your wallet, mittens, a beanie, a long-sleeve shirt, and a windbreaker. You pull your bike down from the wall and get it ready by pumping up the tires, lubing and rubbing down your chain, tightening odd screws. Finally you look everything over. This is the most important step, you have learned, looking everything over. You're always forgetting something essential. You consider the synthetic jersey you picked out. It smells a little sour from too few washings. You pull it off and instead throw on a cotton t-shirt, something your friends have warned against. "But cotton just feels so nice," you think to yourself. "And I'm not going to get any weather today." Besides, when you wipe your nose, a synthetic jersey feels like plastic wrap. Another warning your friends give you is to wear sunglasses, to protect your eyes from wind, flying things, and UV radiation. Despite your aversion to this techno piece of equipment, you know your friends are right. In fact, you have finally ordered a pair. But these haven't arrived yet, so you steal your room mate's shades. "For the last time," you tell yourself.

At last, feeling prepared, you walk out the door with your bike over your shoulder. It's noon. On the landing you realize you forgot your pump. You jump back inside and put your tiny bike pump into your backpack. Back outside you realize, as late as it is, that you ought to bring your bike lights, just in case you need them. You grab these, put them in your backpack, and return to your bicycle. Walking your bike down the sidewalk to the street, you begin to feel that familiar shakiness you always get before long rides. Is it fear? Is it pleasure? You hop onto your bike in one smooth motion, like the pros, but end up swerving ridiculously, trying to get your cleats into your pedals. Then you sprint out into the traffic. The whir of the chain as it snakes through the derailleur has always been a pleasing noise to you, and you feel the ruffling of the air moving through your helmet as you pace up to speed with the cars. A good day. The sun is bright; the air is freakishly warm and windless for winter, and the mountains you will climb loom to the west like a row of clouds.

It doesn't take long to get out of traffic. You move onto the back roads that cyclists always take to get to the West Side. You pass other cyclists, coming home and wave your whole arm at them. They lift their fingers from their handlebars in a subdued gesture. The back streets of the West Side are beautiful, especially as you approach the town at the foot of the mountains. They get progressively more steep and narrow, like those of some villa along the coast of the Mediterranean. You wind through them with the energy and happiness that always accompany the beginnings of your rides. Your mind wanders over many things: the chores you need to catch up on, a friend's predicament, your new feeling of income security. Involuntarily your mind begins to focus on the beginning of an uncomfortableness above your saddle. Then with clarity, you realize that you forgot to lotion up that part of you that contacts your saddle. This is another one of those warnings that you have long received from your experienced cycling friends: always use chamois cream on your ass before long rides. This had seemed utterly useless, even comical to you, like the practice of male road bikers shaving their legs. Until recently. Recently, in the dry Colorado winter, you had been experiencing seriously distracting saddle chafing. So reluctantly you'd taken to applying ample quantities of lotion before long rides, which had eliminated the diaper rash. But this morning you forgot. And now you are beginning to feel an irritation developing in the most uncomfortable of places. Quickly, you think of a solution that will save you the now-impossible 45min round-trip home. Passing a construction site, you pedal up to a Port-A-Jon, lean your bike against it, and step inside, making sure to lock the door. You pull the little cylinder of chapstick out of your backpack and roll up a quarter-inch of the stuff, slicing it off with your finger and smearing it on your palms. Feeling brilliant, then ridiculous, you pull down your cycling shorts and hesitantly apply the lip balm to your ass. You finish the business, pull up your shorts, step back outside, and smile at the man in a construction helmet who is watching you. Back on your bike, you begin to feel a blooming menthol coolness where you applied your chapstick. "This is not an altogether unpleasant solution," you say to yourself, and file the idea into the back of your head.

Long Ride II

2009-02-02T17:36:00.003-07:00

I rode up to Woodland Park today. It's a long climb: about two hours up, one hour down. It was about 45 degrees F when I left my house, and the sky seemed to be clearing: nice riding weather. Still, I knew it was going to be a lot colder at 8500ft. I stuffed my windbreaker, some mittens, and a beanie in my back pocket. Also a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a snickers bar.

Ute pass is about 5 miles outside of Manitou Springs; it's a narrow, cliff-edged gorge for about two miles. It's one of the few passes for 10s of miles along the front range, so if the conditions are right, it can be really windy. The conditions were right, and I had a fairly strong headwind. The remaining 10 miles from the pass were cold. I was looking forward to the descent, with a tailwind and incrementally warmer air. Indeed, I did have a bit of a tailwind for the major part of the descent. But through the pass, the wind seemed to have reveresed itself. I was having to pedal downhill. That was frustrating. Then as the pass opened back up into last part of my ride, the air seemed colder. I mean really cold. Mostly, this was because I wasn't working as hard descending as I was ascending, but also some cooler weather had blown in while I was climbing. I was really frustrated then. The last 30 minutes was a haul with my head into the wind and my toes and fingers numbing.

Some rides are like that. At one point coming down through the pass, I was yelling to get warm, or just to get my frustration out. It seemed like the weather fought me at every point. But then, I rarely notice when the weather is helping me: when there's a soft tailwind, or a pleasant change of temperature for the better. It's kind of nice, on the one hand, to have conditions that adjust to me. But on the other hand, it's better to ride through an untamed atmosphere. Makes me feel smaller and stronger at the same time.

Reasons

2009-02-01T13:26:00.003-07:00

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.

Warm Showers

2009-01-28T17:45:00.004-07:00

Here's a nifty site: www.warmshowers.com.

Warm Showers is an organization that connects hosts and bicycle tourists. As a host, you can offer anything from a lawn to pitch a tent in, to a meal and a bed. Significantly, you have to be willing to be a host at some point in order to receive hospitality at another point. Anyone can sign up as a host, even non-cyclists who are just nice, or interested in meeting people with great stories. I'm currently a host.

Back in September (before I was a member of Warm Showers), I met a Belgian couple at my bike shop. They needed some repairs done on their bikes. It was clear they were touring, so I asked them over to our apartment for a meal. They had loads of advice and stories about riding along the Continental Divide Trail. From the Springs, they were flying down to South America to finish their year-long tour. They were planning to pass through Bolivia, where one of my friends had worked for a year. She ended up offering them great local advice. It was a really delightful evening. That's the kind of thing you might expect by becoming a host(ess): a delightful evening. In my limited experience, it's the rare bicycle tourist who is a creep or a mooch. They are mostly a self-sufficient and gracious lot.

Winter Exercise in CO

2009-01-28T16:42:00.007-07:00

Most of this winter, my exercise has consisted of commuting to work (very occasionally), walking to the library/grocers/friend's, and going for a long ride (literally 'a' long ride: it was at the beginning of January.)

Because I feel somewhat deficient in this area, I've added two things to my exercise regimen in the last few weeks: stretching, and what I'll call trans-fats loading. The first is more difficult for me (and therefore more effectual) than it sounds. The second really has more to do with my saving money for the tour than with preparing to actually execute it. Cheap food is a staple right now as I attempt to buffer my savings account for three months of unemployment.

One may think, from all of this, that I have a ways to go before I'm ready to ride 430 miles weekly. Indeed.

In fact, I've taken a significant vacation from my bike commuting (which has been my main form of exercise up until the last few months) partly in order to try to return to an enjoyment of riding. It would be an awful thing to begin my tour already burned out. But I've begun to step up my commuting again, and it's been mostly a blast.

Two weeks ago I was riding toward the north of CO Springs just as the sun had set behind Pikes Peak. The sky was completely clear of moisture and the moon was new, so I could already make out the first stars and Venus high up in the south, dominating like a flashlight. There were only two colors in the sky. The black across the plains faded perfectly to the deep-water blue above the Rockies, almost too perfectly. If someone had shown me a painting of that I would have laughed and said it was a nice airbrush job, fit for a license plate. It was a rare sight, something I don't ever see from inside of my Volvo.

So commuting's good exercise. But that's not why it's good.

Advice About Journals

2009-01-26T12:01:00.005-07:00

I am pedaling east from Astoria, OR in roughly four months. I have decided an online journal of my preparations and adventures would be a pleasant thing: for my friends, family, self.

Nevertheless, I do not take on such a bold exercise (journal, not bike tour) without a word of caution from a good friend. Old Mark Twain says: "If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal for a year."

He wrote that at the beginning of Innocents Abroad, which is a sort of journal he kept for a year.