When we boldly
began planning for this adventure last summer, none of us had a really clear
idea of how it would all work. We were
pretty inexperienced, and just sort of trusted that it would all click. We realized there would be a lot of working
it out on the fly. In particular, Sue’s
role as our support person was a mystery.
But we just jumped in and trusted that we could problem solve our way
along. And that is in fact how it played
out, mostly with success.
Looking back, I would have to say that in many
ways it “wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
The big surprise in the early going was the
traffic. We knew of course that the
route would take us on regular highways, but the amount of traffic was a
surprise. We persevered through Oregon
and most of Idaho, and talked to the Adventure Cycling folks in Missoula. They told us that the roads would have less
traffic as we got into Wyoming, and indeed that turned out to be true and we
felt more comfortable on most of the roads afterwards. But those first six or eight hundred miles
were often terrifying.
But the
rides! The rides were wonderful. I just loved getting up and riding 60, 80, a
hundred miles each day, and getting up the next day and doing it again. The early morning has always been my favorite
time to ride. Vigorous exercise clears
the mind and stimulates creative thought.
The mountain climbs out west were sometimes long and exhausting, but for
the most part they were manageable. And
then when you got to the top , the descents were glorious. It is hard to describe the feeling of
exhilaration on a long descent from a high pass in the Rockies. And it was of course made more enjoyable on
the days when we found a nice café near the bottom, to get coffee and pancakes.
It took a while
for me to get comfortable with my bike.
I had bought it just a few days before we left home, a last minute
decision to replace my old bike that was having a few problems. You might think all bikes are pretty much the
same, but when you spend every day riding the way we do each little variation
in how it shifts, or steers, or how it brakes makes you feel like you are
bonded to the bike, committed to working together, like a partner on the road,
trying to achieve a common goal, dependent on each other.
It was an
almost spiritual experience, learning to use the gear train, feeling the
connection through the shifter cables to the cassette and chainrings, fine
tuning, tickling the shifters, going up a gear, or down a gear, trying to zero
in on the sweet spot, to optimize the combinations to match the environmental
factors – how much wind? How steep the
grade? How fatigued the rider? I became one with the bike, happy to work together
to complete the climb.
Early on, we
decided to get up early and try to beat the traffic. That was necessary in Oregon along the coast,
and on the busy highways we encountered.
Later on, it was good to beat the heat, too. Mostly, we would start by six am. Even though I am an early morning
person, I would have liked to start a bit later, after a hot breakfast and a
cup of coffee or hot chocolate. And
then, we would be finished with our ride by 1 or 2 pm, having covered maybe 80
or 90 miles. That is a pretty good day’s
ride, and we were tired. But it often
felt like too early to quit to me, even though we had done a lot of miles. When hiking the Appalachian Trail, I would
usually get up at first light, eat breakfast, hike until almost dark, trying to
cover as many miles as I could. But with
the way we were riding, we had to identify a potential camping location each
day and so many times we stopped due to the limitations of camping sites. That’s one of the ways the experience “wasn’t
what I thought it would be.”
Just as on the
AT hike, I loved the experience of being outdoors for days on end. We camped virtually all the way. The only time we slept indoors was one night
in Missoula, one night in a camping cabin, a few nights in church hostels (and
once a volunteer fire department), and two motels in Virginia near the end. Camping is a lot of work, but the experience
of being outdoors for me is wonderful.
We fortunately had good weather, very little rain, so that helped a lot. Jeff and Jack expressed a few times that they
didn’t enjoy the fact that every day they had to put up and take down their
tent. I was a bit luckier – usually Sue
would stay in the sleeping bag until we were gone, so she took care of the
tent. But I was used to the daily routine from the
AT experience. Nevertheless, when waking
up in the middle of the night, I frequently took a minute or two to figure out
where I was. Since being home, I am
still a little bit uncertain of where I am when I awake during the night. But it’s coming back to me.
Another subtle
pleasure I had along the way was color.
I get a feeling of pleasure at the vibrant colors of nature that
surround me as I ride along. A brilliant
blue flash of a bird crossing the road in front of me, bright yellow sunflowers,
streaks of red rock on the side of the road, purple flowers, white banks of
snow, green fields of corn – each sensory delight I am blessed with brings joy
to my heart as I ride along. And there
were thousands of such moments along the way as we cycled across the land.
Near the
beginning, I thought we would quit. In
fact, I was hoping that Jack and Jeff would bail out and say let’s go
home. The ride was hard, and traffic was
abominable, and I was struggling to keep up the pace that Jack and Jeff were
setting. It “wasn’t what I thought it
would be”, and I was willing to give it up.
But after a week or so, it was clear that Jeff was committed to
continuing, in order to complete the commitment he had made to the MPS society
to do the ride as a way to call attention to the childhood disease that his
daughter Aly suffers from. That
motivation, I think, changed the way I perceived the ride, and motivated me to
continue, to be an assistance to Jeff in completing the ride. Without that motivation, I would have given
up. So, a big thank you to Jeff and Aly
for keeping me on the bike.
One thing that
struck me repeatedly, especially when we stopped for pancakes and coffee in the
morning, was watching people headed off for work. Here we were, riding across the country – me
retired, Jeff and Jack both teachers spending most of their summer riding – and
here were all these people dutifully headed off for work. I spent most of my life working, going to
work faithfully every day, but still I felt a bit guilty, like I was playing
hooky from my responsibilities. I am a
very lucky fellow to have this opportunity.
Early on, it
was very cold. We started many mornings
off with temperatures in the thirties. I
have done many rides in the winter, but usually no more than an hour and a
half. Here we were spending the entire
day riding in the cold. Later on, of
course, it was very hot. In eastern
Colorado and Kansas, and on into Illinois and Kentucky, it was often in the
nineties and for a while it was over a hundred.
On such days, you can only imagine what a pleasure it was to be able to
fill your water bottle with ice and water.
At several of the cafes we stopped at, clearly the waitresses were
accustomed to having cyclists stop in, and they volunteered to take our water
bottles and fill them with ice and water.
Those ladies will surely be blessed with a special place in heaven for
their kindness. Of course, it also had a
bearing on the tip I left, too.
As noted, we
often stopped for pancakes and coffee in the morning. Especially out west, there always seemed to
be a nice mom-and-pop café in the small towns that was the gathering place for
the local folks. It is difficult to put
into words how good a cup of coffee can taste after riding thirty or forty
miles, and pancakes with butter and syrup bring waves of pleasure to the taste
buds. It must be something about the
physical exertion that heightens the senses to new levels of experience. If you don’t know what I am talking about,
you should try it – push yourself to the limits, and indulge in whatever
culinary pleasure you like and see if it is not enhanced to the point of
ecstasy.
When we came
to hills, Jack was the one hammering his way to the top. He seemed to just love the challenge of the
climb. He gloried in the pain. Me, I pumped for a bit, but quickly gave in
to the temptation to reach down into my lower gears and crawl my way to the
top. Especially after it got hotter, I
was sweating up a river. The sweat would just pour off of me, running in little
rivulets down off my nose onto the handlebars.
I could watch the accumulation as I struggled up the hill. On one day in Kansas, on the day I suggested
we go beyond our 65 mile planned target and go another 40 to Landen, and it
meant turning south into what surely was 35 or 40 mph headwinds for about 18
miles, I dropped way behind Jack and Jeff.
Sue came and rescued me by enabling me to refill my water bottles. I inched my way against that wind, watching
my odometer drop to 6 mph, then 5, sometimes stopping every mile to rest, my
head hanging on the handlebars, dripping sweat.
I finally pulled into Landen long after they had arrived, but I was exhilarated
by the fact that I had made it successfully.
I will never forget the winds of Kansas.
In the beginning, we rode mostly together, in
a pace line. Riders in a pace line can
conserve their energy, drafting off the person in front, resting a bit, waiting
for their turn in front when they have to set the pace. This actually worked fairly well, although I
was always the weakest rider, and they had to slow down for me at times. But later on, we decided to ride our own
pace. Jack would always trudge
ahead. As time went on, Jeff became
noticeably stronger, and he would pretty much keep up with Jack. I was the slower one, and reluctantly resigned
myself to the fact that I was going to ride alone and get into camp long after
them. Once we got into this routine, I
was actually much happier, although it was sometimes lonely to ride alone most
of the day. But just like on the
Appalachian Trail, you have to settle in to your own pace. Hike your own hike, ride your own ride.
On the long
climbs, and the long lonely rides after we started riding separately, I had a
lot of time on my hands. One of the
reasons endurance events such as this and the AT appeal to me is it helps me to
purge out the bad stuff – bad memories, guilt, anger, despair, bitterness. And it seems that in such endeavors, I
instinctively fall back on the template that I learned in my youth, and I
pray. Sometimes it is simple rote
prayers such as the rosary – it took a lot of Hail Mary’s to climb some of
those hills. I also have used the format
of morning prayer and evening prayer from the Prayer of Christians. Even though I have in recent years become
less and less bound by doctrine and dogma and ecclesiastical authority,
nevertheless I still feel the hand of God in the world, and so I pray. In morning prayer, there are two optional
invocations. One is “ Lord, open my lips
and my mouth will proclaim your praise!”
The other is “Oh God, come to my
assistance, Lord, make haste to help me!”
Which one feels most appropriate on a given day depends on how hopeful
and optimistic I feel, or how bad the traffic is, or how beautiful the surroundings. But always,
prayer helps me to center myself and put aside the negativity and try to do
good. And so I prayed as I pedaled.
We met another
east-bound rider in Kentucky named Lyle, from Hawaii. He was a retired teacher, and had biked
around Hawaii all his life. Literally, a
round Hawaii. He would do a ride in a
circle and always wind up where he had started.
The great thing about his ride for him was that he was seeing different
stuff every day. And we had the same
experience. Every day, every ride was
something new to us, different around every bend. It will be hard to adjust to doing the same
rides over and over again.
Would I do it
again? Probably not, although I would
like to try some short unsupported overnights closer to home. Would I recommend it to others? I have some strong concerns about the route
that we followed. Some of the roads
were, in my opinion, not suited for cycling.
I am sure there are some other routes that would be a bit safer to
ride. To anyone interested, I’d
recommend looking into other routes. Or
at least be flexible enough to time your rides to take advantage of any
low-traffic times that might be available on the roads in Oregon and
Idaho.
And I cannot
say “thank you” enough to Sue for her patience and perseverance in providing
support to us on the trip. Living with
the three of us for two months like that in camping conditions was way beyond
difficult. We could not have done this trip without her. She had to endure a lot.
And yes, it is truly great to be back home,
If anyone has
any questions about our experience, feel free to leave a comment and I am sure
one of us will be happy to reply.
