Ad Hoc Adventure Time

Recapitulation

Arrival

On July 14, 2011, Mike and I rolled across the golden gate bridge. We’d traveled just under 3600 miles from when we’d started our trip in northern Virginia, 59 days prior. When we were halfway across the bridge, my front left pannier gave out and tumbled off my bike. I’d joked throughout the trip that I expected my entire bike to crumble similarly, right when we crossed the city limits, like at the end of The Blues Brothers.

The afternoon air was thick with fog. The damp air settled on us as we dismounted from our bikes on the other side of the bridge. It was surreal, finally being in San Francisco. It didn’t seem like a big deal. It was just another day of getting up and riding somewhere. No showy fanfare. No psychological breakdowns. No sudden rush of sage enlightenment. Just a big, rust-colored bridge and a pretty skyline veiled in the mist.

We biked through the city to the Haight, where we stayed with our kind hosts, Nancy and Mike, on Broderick and Divisidero. I spent the next few days trying to collect myself, mostly in isolation and trying to avoid action. Mike, characteristically, spent those days exploring the city determinedly on his bike.

On Broderick, in SF.

When I would lay down to go to sleep at night in Mike and Nancy’s living room, memories from the past 59 days would whirl under my eyelids and overwhelm me. From the biking through a Tulsa park at night, sluggish on beer, to the terror and beauty of going up the Blue Ridge mountains, to the desolate towns of Arkansas, to the quiet desolation of Nevada, all in rapid succession. It resulted in something like vertigo.

Mike in Nevada.

By the time we got to San Francisco, we’d crossed the wind-tunneled valleys of Utah; we’d fared highway 50, the loneliest highway in America, through the mountain-passes and deserts of Nevada. We’d entered California (by way of Lake Tahoe) and I’d gaped at her immutable coolness. Along the way, we’d stayed with incredible people who deserve to be written about.

Monarch pass, the highest point of the trip.

Lake Tahoe

Loss

We’d done these things without me chronicling them along the way. The terrain was massive and demanding (had been since the Rockies) and I was out of steam. It was all I could do to bike through a day and find a place to sleep at the end of it.

Outside of Payson, Utah.

Now, in February, I kick myself for not taking the effort to record the minutiae, the good stuff. But I’m still not sure if I could have done it. In any case, the matter was closed when my laptop kicked the bucket in a hotel outside of Sacramento.

I do feel raw about leaving this blog unfinished. I have tried a few times to sit down and complete the entries, but the detail has vanished from my mind. I know in plain terms what we did each day, and I have the rich, overwhelming memories, but they’re scattered and unindexed.

I don’t have the mental faculty to call to mind what I was thinking about on each of these days, what I was experiencing. Without that information, this blog would be nothing but a map and an impersonal itinerary. I can’t continue the writing in the same fashion as when the days were fresh in my mind and for that reason I do not have plans to complete the blog.

I apologize to the people who tracked with us through the journey. Your support and writings were so appreciated.

We got loaded with townies in a bar one afternoon in Grand Junction, CO. I never wrote about the weirdness that ensued.

Observations

It’s rare that a day goes by when I don’t think about this trip. Sometimes the nostalgia pulls hard, and I close my eyes, pretending I’m back in the Rockies with Mike and my bike; or in Payson, Utah at the Caldwell’s house; or in Bumscrew, Arkansas, collapsed in the Hillbilly Motel; or waving bye to my family, early on a June morning.

Some of the recurring things I thought about during the trip follow.

Pain

The pain, the physical intensity of this trip, is what made the experience. Without that, I would’ve just been watching TV; sitting behind glass with the country drifting by. It was the hardships of not having a hotel, a motor, a shower, a constant source of food that made this trip so unimaginably foreign and remarkable. It was because we we were acting vagrants that we met the wonderful people we did.

There is no free lunch. The lows set the context for the highs. Holding back tears in the Kansas wind made the passes of the Rockies all the more enjoyable.

I’m happy I took the risk. I now realize that discomfort is a necessary prerequisite to any life-changing experience.

The Caldwells in Payson, Utah are awesome people.

Time

Real adventures take months. I realized I have to plan on a grand scale; it takes more than a week or two to get into a trip, to adapt to whatever odd lifestyle I’ve adopted. It took me until we were in the middle of Colorado to get up in the morning and jump on the bike, fully primed to face whatever was next.

It takes my mind a while to break out of the patterns that it creates for itself from day to day. I’m not saying these patterns are bad, but giving myself a chance to break out of them every few years probably isn’t a bad idea.

Outside the place we stayed in Davis, California; home to a sweet couple in their 60s who completed a cross-country bike tour the year prior.

Less is more

Having everything I needed to live strapped to my bike was a luxury. Being completely mobile is a luxury. On the scale of years, I’d find being nomadic unproductive and maddening, but for a few months it’s refreshing.

Bills, career, friends, traffic, housing: these things (or their results) enrich my life for the most part, but a break from them was wonderful. Physical exertion, an unbounded diet, and the occasional bout of writing was just what the doctor ordered for the quarter-life crisis I was having.

In closing

I haven’t reached the kind of closure with the trip that would be put me fully at ease. Even had I finished the blog completely, I don’t think that would’ve granted me the kind of ending I expected. Six months afterwards, I’m still stewing on the events of this trip, and I expect that contemplation to continue for a long time.

I can say with certainty that this trip is one of the best things I’ve ever done with my life. As we were rounding a particular bend on the Flume trail, precariously situated a few hundred feet above Lake Tahoe on mountain bikes, our guide told Mike and me that the first experience only comes once and you can never recreate it. I’m grateful that my first cross-country tour was alongside Mike; he’s a stand-up guy.

Every day since, part of me wishes I were back on the road, continuing the adventure. I haven’t asked, but I can only assume Mike feels similarly.

Thanks so much to the wonderful people we met on this adventure; I can’t express my gratitude in full over a web page. I think of each of you often. You’ve given my life new depth and dimension, and here I’ll also venture that Mike feels similarly.

Beside Highway 6, statistically the deadliest in America, in Utah.

I encourage anyone inspired by this blog to make something of that inspiration. Make big plans. Save money¹. Find a partner to keep you honest and on schedule. Whatever you do, just make sure you’re aiming to experience the world and the people in it. It’s wonderful out there.

Yours,
James
February 1, 2012

Until next time

it doesn’t take as much as you think
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Temporary hiatus due to broken laptop

As I write this, my laptop battery shows a charge of 11%. That 11% is the last I’ll get out of it until I send the laptop back to Asus’ shop in Taiwan for repairs, which, in all likelihood, will take close to two months.

Needless to say, this throws a wrench into the production of posts and the upload of pictures. Coincidental that such a failure should happen just as I gear up to repay a serious writing deficit that was encouraged by long days spent riding across the barren deserts of Utah and Nevada.

Our clever machinery has actually hurt us here: because of the software that Mike and I wrote to generate the elevation profiles and because of our slick workflow (publish via git, hosting by github, etc.), the environment required to post is very particular and very Linux-based. Rabbit, my netbook, is all set up to accommodate this. Library computers are not; far from it.

I’m still deciding how to handle this. I’ll assuredly be cranking out posts for later transcription to the net (since I want mitigate the toll that time takes on memory), but probably in longhand, on paper, since I no longer have a laptop and I sure as hell won’t be doing writing on my cell phone¹. Pictures may not hit flickr for a few weeks.

While I’m at it, I might as well mention that Bob Barker found a serious bug in the website: for a long time, the link to my email in the page footers has been to an incorrect email address. This has been fixed; I apologize to anyone who has tried to send me an email and received no response.

The site isn’t dead, but it’s sure in a coma. Thanks for reading so far. I’ve really enjoyed posting and hopefully will figure out a way to continue to do so.

James, at 6%

Despite a popular trend in Japan
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Day 38: Tough road to Westcliffe

Day 38, June 24th; morning light streamed into a bedroom and I sensed nothing but quiet. I rolled around, trying to forget what day it was and what I knew the day would entail.

That day, we’d be leaving Pueblo and entering into the Rocky Mountains. Getting up was difficult and wonderful¹ for a variety of reasons.

When I finally did rise, around 10AM, I found Mike downstairs. He’d been up for at least an hour and a half. He’d changed, cleaned Food Bag 2, adjusted my rear derailleur, and did not appear pleased with my late arrival. He told me brusquely that he was going out for food and would be back in a few minutes. I said okay.

I mimed through a morning routine, cleaning my teeth and dropping contacts in. I walked back upstairs to find Patti in the kitchen. She heated the remains of her breakfast burrito for me, which I promptly scarfed down.

Mike returned and we assembled for inspection by the front door. Patti hugged Mike, then held me awhile. We shared a goodbye peck, then she jumped in the Honda and drove off to work, passing us as we pedaled down the street. She blew me a kiss and I tried to ramp my memory up so I could stow the vision for later, when I’d need it more.

We rode through Pueblo, just grazing its nerve center and cutting out west to 78. I asked myself why I was leaving this place, responding in rapid succession that I wanted to finish this trip. The same back-and-forth resurfaced many times.

Outside of Pueblo, civilization dropped off quickly. Before an hour, all I could see was sandblasted desert and orange mesas rising up out of a jagged floor. We pedaled on into the quiet heat and I felt a little creeped out.

Into the desert.

After passing a sign for a federal wildlife office, I realized that I’d forgotten to fill my water-bottles. I yelled over to Mike as much. He dismounted and stood on the shoulder while I hightailed onto the exit, past an archery range, and to a lone structure in the middle of a sandy nothing.

I walked into the office, bottles in tow, and a portly man in a chair spun around and gave me a look that would suggest I was trying to lift 18th-century art. I asked him if I could use his water-fountain, conveniently positioned by the door, and he gave me the big okay.

I filled the bottles and pedaled back to Mike, who was waiting patiently.

The two of us glided further into the desert. Very abruptly and without my full awareness, the scenery became lush².

We approached a stretch of road that rose steeply in grade, looking like a highway to some lower mezzanine of heaven. I yelled to Mike that it had been nice knowing him. Here come the Rockies.

We started the climb and, shortly into it, spotted a small grocery on the side of the road. Large, white letters on the roof advertised “STORE.” We stopped into the place, which was cute, and munched on gas-station sandwiches and talked about the terrifying climb ahead.

We finished up with lunch, exited store, and resumed the climb. I leaned into the hill, grunting. We kept at it and ended 4000 vertical feet later, our jerseys soaked with sweat in receipt.

Scenery during the climb.

After we’d finished the ascent for the day, I was greeted with an awesome view of the next round of Rockies. I set my bike down to snap a few pictures of the incredible vista, Mike far ahead by that point.

The sky was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Are those things intimidating or what?

Not Photoshop, just Colorado.

I caught back up with Mike and we snapped some pictures. Afterwards, we ran into a biker who had quit the Washington, DC life to move here. His license plate was “DCGUI.”

He's not really that dark. Yet.

Hey, rockies.

We rolled into Westcliffe, our destination for the night, exhausted but pleased. We locked up next to the first restaurant on the east side of town and walked in. A thick, middle-aged woman seated us and took our orders — beers and pasta. I fell asleep three times during dinner, each time waking up almost immediately with a snap of the head³.

We paid up and left, heading south a few miles to a campground. On the way down, I felt a cold, jittery ache run down my body. Probably just the wind hitting my sweat. Maybe fever.

Through Westcliffe.

We hung a right and pedaled carefully down a dirt road. Dirt roads are tough: you’ve gotta watch your balance and try to let the road guide your bike, otherwise you’ll shift your weight one way and the tires will go another.

Down the dirt road.

The campground was situated at the foot of the mountains; there was no human object between the rectangular patches of grass open to campers and the bases of the rocky inclines. Each patch of grass had its own tree. The campsites were extremely scenic and comfortably out of place in the open expanse.

I sauntered into the front office to find a man, graying and probably in his forties, bumbling around the desk. I asked for a campsite and found out that he and his wife had bought this place recently and were fixing it up.

I gave him plastic and he showed me around to the bathrooms (!), which included showers (!!!), and a laundry facility (!). He then showed us to our plot of grass, which had an area specifically designated for tents by a perimeter of cinderblocks.

Camp.

I rejoined Mike outside of the front office and found him talking to a Texan couple. John and his other half, both faculty at a high school, were really interested in the trip and asking lots of questions in a slow, sure drawl. We enjoyed talking to the two; John promised to bring us over a few beers and offered us chili, which we declined⁴ after having had dinner.

I showed Mike to our plot and we set up the tent, which at this point is nearly automatic. John showed up with two cold bottles of Shiner Bock and we about swooned. We said thanks and I, fearing whatever caused the chills from earlier, downed my signature cocktail, which consists of acetaminophen (1000mg) and a men’s multivitamin washed back with dark beer⁵.

The cocktail worked. I hit the sleeping bag like it owed me.

Goodnight.

mostly wonderful
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We found that a rapid transition between arid and green was typical around the pueblo area.
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flashbacks from high school
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stupid, I know
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Mike doesn’t believe in painkillers or vitamins, so he didn’t partake. Too bad for him.
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Day 37: Bishop's castle, bike polo, and a Napoleon

Before bed the night prior, Patti had suggested that we go to Bishop’s Castle the next day. Seth had also recommended this place, sort of ominously, on Lisa’s back deck, saying that we wouldn’t “see anything like it anywhere else.” We were piqued, so we agreed and a visit to the castle was slated as first appointment for the day.

We lingered around the house for a while, using up the early morning. Patti and I hung around and played Guitar Hero while Mike took care of something or other; I can’t remember now.

Eventually we got moving and left the house for Coor’s Tavern, the birthplace of a local dish called the Slopper.

Inside of Coor's Tavern.

A Slopper is an open-faced cheeseburger slathered in green chili, which is a weighty, gravy-like substance that’s more yellow than green and rife with pork. Mike and I drank beers while the three of us chowed down on our respective messes.

Slimy, but satisfying.

We finished at Coor’s and hit 78, trailing southwest in Patti’s Honda. The two of us took turns playing DJ, sparking clusters of conversation about the choices we’d made and bursts of “oh have you heard _______?”.

Down 78.

On the way to the castle, still a mystery to Mike and me, we dropped by an old cabin that Patti’s family owns. We snaked through rural curves, passed a small town, and eventually settled the Honda on the edge of a driveway hidden in the woods. The gate guarding the driveway had a broken lock, so we left the car there and hopped the fence onto the property.

The cabin, too, was locked, so we circled it and peeked inside after unsuccessfully trying to gain entry through the windows.

Nothing doing.

We wandered through a creek behind the cabin and then up to a large shed, where an antique car rested, dilapidated and cobwebbed. Patti said that if she had the cash, she’d fix it up. Mike went into the technical feasibility of something like that, which made a job like that sound like a lot of work.

Found it.

The prognosis ain't good.

I asked Patti if she had ever come up here with her laptop and to telecommute for a week¹ and enjoy the remote wilderness; she said she hadn’t, but had thought about it. She told us about a party she’d thrown up here, and the stargazing and high-altitude hangovers that’d ensued.

We left the cabin and stopped at an overlook along the road. I pulled the two out of the car for pictures.

Is that Kansas?

A few more miles down the road was Lake Isabel. The surface of the water was calm and seamless; we stopped for more photos.

Doing well, Iz.

As I sat on a steep staircase for pictures, Mike slid down the railing and almost knocked me on my ass. We laughed like idiots as I fought to maintain balance and Patti snapped a picture of us with her DSLR.

We got back into the car and drove for a few minutes, finally arriving at Bishop’s Castle. As we walked up to the plot of land, we saw a few carefully hand-painted signs, warning visitors that they were waiving liability by entering onto the grounds and seeing the castle.

Oh boy.

So here’s the deal: one guy, Jim Bishop woke up some morning and decided to build a castle. By himself. In the middle of the Wet Mountains of Colorado. Patti explained that he gets heaps of trouble from the county and state, but somehow brushes them off and keeps the place going. After seeing the castle, I bet that even the stiffest of bureaucrats marvel at this crazy place.

We worked our way over a moat, still in construction, and through the skeleton of a drawbridge. Then we saw the castle.

One man did this. Himself. Against state and mountains.

Various pieces of construction equipment and pickup trucks littered the surrounding area. A shack of a house, which I took to be Bishop’s home, allowed entrance to a small gift-shop. More hand-painted signs sat warning and preaching.

Old Jim dabbles in politics... in his own way.

That's pretty neat handwriting.

After staring and gasping, all that was left to do was climb the precariously narrow staircase up and into the castle, which is what the three of us did. When we completed the climb, we walked around carefully, scared out of our minds, on the thin wireframe floor that creaked and popped at every other step.

This. does. not. meet. code.

We explored the castle, Patti and I climbing into the Ball of Terror and Mike going another route up to the tallest spire on the castle. The metal encasement surrounding us (and protecting us from a huge fall) ebbed in the wind, scaring the hell out of Patti and me.

Scared.

Really scared.

But in awe.

One of many stairwells in the castle.

View from the top.

One guy did all this.

After we’d seen almost every bit of the castle, including a bridge to nowhere that hung suspended at least a hundred feet above the ground, we descended. Patti and Mike sat at a picnic table while I talked to the kid running the gift-shop who’d known Jim, the creator, for a few years.

On our way out of the castle, we saw Jim working on the drawbridge, ranting about the federal reserve and the gold standard. I yelled “fiat currency sucks!” in support of whatever crazy and moot point he was making and he shifted the spray of words over to the three of us. He went onto describe an apocalyptic black-copter scenario in which the federal government recreates the holocaust using cattle trains secretly stockpiled in the Coloradan hills. I asked him when the movie was coming out.

Jim is a nutcase, for sure, and it’s no wonder that minimal-government folks get a bad rap with characters like him around, but you’ve gotta respect someone who builds his own castle in defiance of both nature and state.

We hopped in the Honda and sped back to Pueblo to get ready for bike polo. We arrived at Patti’s house to pack up some leftovers from the barbecue² and some residual beer. We trucked up to Springs to more of Patti’s music. It’s pretty rare that someone can hold my attention with a playlist, probably due to a little snobbery on my part, but Patti manages it with her extensive taste.

We arrived at the windy tennis courts in Springs, traces of a storm threatening to bloom into something much wetter. After some confusion, we made our way to a different set of courts, allocated specifically for bike polo. Plywood had been screwed into the corners of the court and behind the field-hockey goals. Tall George³ was sitting on the court, tending to his bike⁴, when we arrived.

A gang of motley polo’ers showed up steadily and, though we had arrived at the alleged start of the session, we were told that the group operated on “polo time,” which meant the games could start anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour late.

We pulled furniture out of nearby shrubs and opened a few of our own beers. Patti and I sat on a blanket we’d brought, munching the picnic food, while Mike got acquainted with riding a polo bike, complete with mallet. Seth had brought a few loaner bikes, one of which Mike used.

Poloers: Mike, Tall George, Adam Smith, and Trey.

I told Mike that this chick would knock him flat.

Seth stepped out on a PBR-run, leaving Patti and I entertained by the rest of the poloers. Occasionally I’d say something to Patti and she’d knock up against me in pretend-assault. The beer took effect and I felt a warm anesthesia while we watched a polo game start.

Patti entered the court and stuck to the sidelines, snapping pictures of the game. I watched the yoke of dusk crack and trickle red over the edge of Springs.

The polo court.

The matches went on until dark, then we all decided to go out to a bar for a post-game celebration over cheap tallboys of PBR. A short drive later and we were walking to Tony’s in downtown Springs, Seth doing cartwheels on pavement and Patti seeing his cartwheels and raising him a handspring.

We made it to Tony’s and packed into the crowded bar, a din of drunk Olympians ringing in our ears. We coincidentally ran into Dave, the writer that we’d met in Monitou the night earlier, who was sitting at the bar and drinking alone.

The polo crew wrangled a table and we sat down right in front of a band setting up. The kick-drum told us they were named The Americans, so we settled in while they soundchecked about twelve times⁵. Luckily, we were kept entertained by Adam Smith’s wit and the various antics of the other poloers.

Patti and I waded up to the bar for a pitcher of High Life. We came back and the band started to play heavy rockabilly. They were roaring; I wondered if Chuck Berry had taken up possessing white kids from California. After a few songs, Smith grabbed Patti and the two danced a mean swing in front of the band.

The Americans, if you couldn't already tell.

The band paused for a break, so Patti, Mike, and I decided to leave for home. We rode southbound through the dark; Patti put on an Edward Sharpe western love tune and I took her hand in mine.

We got home. After cleaning up, I reprimanded two girls for being in bed together and detained one of them. Doors closed, dogs were rearranged, and an immaculate Napoleon just a little past its prime was unboxed somewhere in the warm dark.

Patti’s a senior software engineer, meaning she can get away with tricks like that
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most notably some guacamole that Patti had made with a lot of salt and lime.
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dude is Tall.
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Bikes used for polo are very specifically customized. The use of only one chainring is allowed. Bikes are sometimes outfitted with drive-side spoke shields, and the left brake lever is modified to actuate both front- and rear-pads since a player’s right hand is devoted to swinging a mallet.
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okay maybe not twelve, but it was something ridiculous.
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Day 36: Rocks and bars in Pueblo

I know updates are becoming more and more infrequent. We’re entering an extremely demanding leg of the trip, with long rides across windy, uninhabited desert. I’m on a rest day right now and I’ll push as many updates as I can while in civilization.

Updates from here on out may be sparse until we’re through the majority of Nevada. This is dependent on signal, time, and whether or not I’m still alive. In any case, I’m not abandoning the blog.

My legs were bent at the knee when I woke up on Patti’s downstairs couch. Day 36, June 22nd, Pueblo, CO: a rest day.

Mike had been stirring for sometime and I had listened to the sounds of his motion in a half-daze. After a few minutes, I rose and dropped my contacts in, regaining mid- and long-distance vision.

I sauntered to the upstairs and took stock of the midlevel. Nobody up. I didn’t need to check the garage because I figured by default that Mike was in it working on our bikes.

Patti passed in and out of the kitchen quickly wearing a blue bathrobe. Her brown hair was dark and weighted with water. I might’ve taken a picture, but then she might’ve smacked me.

I lingered in the kitchen awhile and eventually Lisa showed up looking for coffee. I voiced sympathy and so we made plans to meet Patti at a coffeeshop in downtown Pueblo. Mike wandered in from the garage and the three of us piled into Lisa’s white Dodge and drove downtown listening to The B-52’s and Blondie. We passed a huge, modern-looking library that looked great for lounging.

We arrived at the coffeeshop, a place called The Daily Grind, after Lisa had taken a scenic drive around Pueblo. Mike ordered a breakfast burrito and I did the same, supplementing with a hot coffee.

We took a wireframe table outside and our food was delivered. Up came Patti, touching feet to pavement casually as Mike and I gorged. Patti took a seat and we watched cops on horses and ate breakfast.

Patti ordered a burrito and had eaten about a tenth of it by the time Mike and I were through with ours. After breakfast was done and the coffee finished, we returned our dishes to the coffeeshop and left.

Patti took us on a stroll down the street and she ran into friends, Inaiah and Mo. They sat perched outside a graphic design studio. Mike and I got acquainted with both and found out that Mo owned the shop, Lastleaf Printing. I quickly got talking with Mo about his business. We were invited inside and went.

Mo in his shop.

Shopfront.

Mo told us about how he had inadvertently gotten into the graphic design business and had opened the shop’s doors with $100 in his bank account. His two-man firm had gone on to design a variety of posters and brands for bands and events around the country, without Mo sinking any money into traditional advertising.

We said goodbye to the two artists and walked to Patti’s black Honda. She drove us to a bike shop, The Great Divide, along the way pointing out an automotive service center turned bar owned by a friend of hers. We arrived at the bike-shop and purchased tubes after meandering around a little.

Sunny Pueblo street.

We drove back to Patti’s, sat her barely-touched burrito in the fridge, and split for Red Rock Open Space, a park just outside of Colorado Springs. We planned to meet Josh Snyder, our rambunctious friend from the GMU math department now stationed in UC Boulder’s applied math PhD program.

Patti guided the Honda out of Pueblo and onto I-25. We blew threw the arid dust surrounding the interstate and I gaped at the mountains to our left, snapping photos and videos like a real tourist. The snow-capped Almagres loomed to the east, Pike’s Peak jutting up stoically into the blue afternoon sky. The roadside environment fluctuated wildly between greenery and beige, sandy desolation.

Patti played music over the stereo from a Colorado Springs-native musician and friend. The songs were soft arrangements and they amplified the loneliness of the mountainous desert around us. I looked out the window at the ethereal landscapes and asked Patti if she’d ever gotten used to seeing mountains like these. She said she had.

In under an hour, we made it to the outskirts of Springs. Patti landed the car in the parking lot of Red Rock Open Space, an old quarry that had been donated by the owner to the county under the condition that it remain an open space. We opened the doors and stepped out into the dry heat. Within the first few steps, my flip-flopped feet had a coating of sand.

Since Josh, our math buddy, wasn’t yet in the area, we decided to take a walk around Red Rock. We stared at a trail map for a while. Mike wanted to hike something called The Contemplative Trail, which was rated as difficult. I told him I’d give him something to contemplate.

We began to meander into the park and down one of the trails that Patti often takes. We saw a sign that fiercely prohibited “Rock Scrambling” and so for the rest of the walk I was sure to remind Mike frequently that he couldn’t do any Rock Scrambling whatsoever, despite the burning inclinations he undoubtedly had.

Three amigos.

Walking through Red Rock.

Descending from a light climb.

Something about the austere, severe rocks complimented Patti's features. The park seemed to belong to her.

Finally, Mike received a call from Josh, who’d arrived at the Garden of the Gods, a park just down the street, so we returned to the car.

Back through the dust.

After some driving and wandering through the Garden of the Gods’ gift shop and parking lot, we found Josh. I gave him a big hug; it’d been a year or so once we’d seen one another. Josh was a founding Fustilarian in the GMU math department¹ and he remains a good friend of mine, so I was happy to see him. He immediately started in with his brand of outrageously boisterous humor and had us in stitches.

Josh next to rocks.

The three of us were hungry after the walk around Red Rock and so we commandeered Josh and his incredibly-clean Honda to take us to a barbecue place nearby. We all ordered sandwiches and deserts in large quantity; we ended up coaxing each other into bites out of a vat of peach cobbler in an attempt to finish it off. A notoriously “homely” buttermilk pie went almost untouched.

We finished off lunch and went back to Garden of the Gods to walk around the monolithic red rocks. Patti and I were more or less bored of the rocks and were gunning for a turn-around to crawl local breweries, but Josh’s company and our recollecting of the GMU days led us to one particular rock face where climbers were ascending the harsh, steep stone.

What a lunatic.

We watched them, fascinated, for a while and made comments ranging in timbre from wonderstruck to irreverent. At one point, a climber was making a transition from one rock face to a much steeper sheet above it. In order to do this, he had to spread-eagle himself on the face of the rock, hugging the face with legs almost completely in splits.

The guy was obviously struggling (it was a tough sell), and made a few attempts, each time returning to this awkward position. I noted that if he happened to raise a boner, he was dead. Josh responded, “that would certainly put him between a rock and a hard place.”

Watching the climbers.

We finished up at the Garden of the Gods after taking a band photo beside “the balanced rock.” We watched tourists come and go. Patti tried to scramble a rock but found no good route.

The band photo; Josh and I aren't angled obliquely enough.

Next to balanced rock.

After Garden of the Gods, we went into Springs proper and Patti led us around to local breweries. Josh took Mike in his car and I rode with Patti. She played indie cowboy music as we talked, stuff like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

We stopped at a few places, notably Bristol Brewing Company and ultimately Trinity Brewing. Josh doesn’t like beer but Mike and I do (emphatically), so we kept trying to force our tastes on the kid. He played along, providing hilarious responses to timid sips, eventually describing one IPA as “what you get when you take the strings off of bananas and grind them up into a juice. Disgusting.”

As we sat in Trinity, Patti ran into some friends: Seth and another guy whose name I don’t remember. Seth was a wiry, animated guy who looked to be in his early-thirties.

After a few drinks in Trinity, we decided to get a growler of beer and go up to visit Lisa, a friend of Patti and Seth’s, in her house nearby. We gained a few hundred feet of elevation in Patti’s Honda and found ourselves outside of a large house on an incline. We walked into the spacious house and met Lisa, a bubbly and welcoming blonde. We sat on her back deck for an hour or two watching dark fall on Springs, which was spread out below us.

I talked with Seth awhile about a business plan he had to utilize abandoned urban areas to grow boutique vegetation for local, upscale restaurants using hydroponics. The plots would be mobile so that whenever a given area was bought for development, the crops could be moved easily.

This, of course, led into a conversation about politics which ended up being involved and rewarding. Seth was in the corner of big government, so we had a lot to talk about.

You can’t ever expect to change anyone’s mind in a political discussion at dusk on someone’s deck, but you can usually expect to have your reasoning prodded, which is useful for self-examination. We traded point for point and I think we both came away with some new insight²³.

Night fell and the city lights radiated below us.

Seth got to talking about the local bike polo league and Mike bludgeoned him with questions, all of which Seth was more than happy to field in his eloquent way of firehosing the conversation with information. We promised to show up to a game tomorrow. Mike was excited.

Patti shuffled us off of the deck and out of the house, onto our next appointment: a writer that Patti had just met wanted to interview us. She’d told us at lunch that all she knew about this guy was that he was a mostly-academic writer and wrote about the effect of medium on communication⁴. The only other thing she knew was that he had gone to Sweden for a conference and had missed his own talk to drink liquor and watch porn in his hotel room. Mike and I were both morbidly curious, so Patti, Josh, Mike, and I split back to the Trinity parking lot to drop Josh off at his car.

We arrived at the parking lot and said goodbye to Josh. He gave us a giant paper bag of baked goodies for use on the road. He drove away in his SRV and the remaining three of us hopped into Patti’s Honda. She guided us through dark roads and into the quiet streets of Manitou.

We parked in an empty street full of soft light and wandered down an alley to a wine bar, where the writer was allegedly waiting for us.

The alley leading to the wine bar, Swirl.

We walked into the wine bar, taking our steps with uncertainty, to find a lavish, European interior that looked like the setting of one of Van Gogh’s wet dreams. Slow, cool trip-hop⁵ dripped from the bar’s stereo and bathed the scene in bluesy sophistication. Five or six people were seated at the bar. My first thought was that a few drinks here would blow a day’s food budget in very short order.

We walked up to the bar and found Dave, the writer, and an artist friend of Patti’s. Patti introduced us to both and began talking to the two. Mike and I looked on as Dave and the other guy dipped into an expensive-looking plate of cheese.

In tie-dye and shorts, we were way out of our element.

Nonetheless, Dave ordered us all a round of Estonian beers that were probably fermenting while I was incubating and asked us questions. Patti left with the other artist to recover a dessert from his apartment a few blocks away.

Suave, Mike, suave. Dave is far to the right chatting up some defenseless barfly and Max, the bartender, is visible second from left.

After the typical round of questions about the trip petered out, I began to ask Dave questions and we moved from the bar to couches a few feet away.

Dave was slightly squity-eyed and looked to be in his early forties. He was born in Kentucky and had moved between there and Colorado over the years, working academic gigs. He is finishing a book called The Funeral Must Go On, a black comedy. I asked him if he could recommend me a book and he responded with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance⁶.

Dave ordered another round of the Estonian fare and we sat talking about Bukowski and writing until a new, sort of cozy woman appeared at the bar, whom Dave gravitated towards immediately. I’m not sure if he was running game or just making friendly conversation, but it looked like the former. Mike was perched on the couch opposite me, leisurely dazing.

I approached the bar to return Dave’s favor with another round and heard Dave make a stab at the woman’s phone number. With some hurried conversational positioning, she escaped without giving Dave her contact info (”I’ll get your number through a friend,” she says).

Patti returned and so the two of us sat on a couch, watching Mike do a glassy-eyed, mental walk of The Contemplation Trail and Dave socialize with the only other couple remaining at the bar.

The two of us enjoyed the arcane ’80s hits⁷ that played over the stereo. We watched the bartender, a man we later found out was named Max, tear jokes out from under the couple he was playing Trivial Pursuit with. Max seemed like the cool drama kid from high school; he had mutton chops, was slightly pudgy but wore the weight well, and donned plaid. He had a clear, fast, loud voice that commands laughter and he came across as worldly and tough.

He had great taste in music; Patti and I called out artists, guessing as new tracks streamed over the stereo.

Patti and I ended up closer to one another and reminisced about ’80s movies⁸. I had a solid buzz and so didn’t have trouble exclaiming about the strange, optimistic, and otherwise-wonderful zeitgeist of ’80s teen movies. We watched Max, Dave, and Mike, making commentary about all three scenes just between the two of us.

Max closed the doors, since he thought it was later than it actually was and didn’t want to attract cops or additional clientele.

After some time, the Trivial Pursuit couple left and Patti, Mike, and I made steps for the door. We said goodbye to Dave, who was properly soused, and Max walked us out. He asked his round of questions about the trip and I happily responded. I asked a few about the bar, which he ostensibly owned. He wished us luck, shook our hands, and Patti snapped a picture.

Outside of Max's Swirl.

We walked a block back to the car and started home. Patti and I alternated choosing music and Mike fell asleep in the back. We drove fast on the interstate, cutting through the thick dark, south towards Pueblo. Patti passed her phone to me so I could cue up a track and our hands brushed on one another’s for a little longer than necessary.

We got back to Patti’s after midnight. Mike went to the basement immediately while I hung around in the kitchen.

After a little talk, Patti said she was going upstairs to work on an article for the local paper. On her way out of the kitchen, she signaled for an embrace. I took her and, on a hunch, pulled back and kissed her. That could’ve landed me on the lawn for the night, but it didn’t.

We parted and I went downstairs to the couch, a little short of breath.

the Fustilarians were a group of unruly math researchers who annexed the math computer lab and turned it into an office for themselves, along with rooting and disassembling various computers, undertaking time-lapse photography projects, stealing surplus whiteboards, and generally making sure that the lab was in good working order (god knows the sysadmin Dwayne couldn’t handle that). The original group consisted of Tom Stephens, Jeff Snider, Josh Snyder, Mike Atkins, and myself.
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for myself: If someone has a coal plant down the road and I cough three more times a year because of it, should I be able to get the government involved? In other words, to what degree does a negative externality have to be harmful to constitute “force” and therefore government intervention?
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for Seth: if he thinks people should be able to screw themselves up on heroin if they like, it is a contradiction in thinking for him to simultaneously hold that the government should enforce fiscal protections from self, like minimum wage and social security.
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i.e. OMG WE CAN’T COMMUNICATE ON THE INTERNET, according to this dude
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a track I recognized as Groove Armada’s Inside My Mind (Blue Skies)
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a book my father had given me a while back. I never got beyond the first few pages, but I was pretty young so I’ll have to give it another shot.
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The Human League, New Order, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Alphaville, etc.
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John Hughes flicks and Real Genius, with Val Kilmer.
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Day 35: The girl in Pueblo

We awoke, surprised, in the shade. The portable storage unit that we’d camped behind in the soccer field had shielded us from the morning sun. June 21st, La Junta, CO.

That day we were headed to Pueblo, where we’d be staying with Patti, a friend of Vanessa’s. Excited at the prospect of a rest-day, we packed up quickly and rode for a fastfood place to change our clothes.

We made it, ate, and split for Pueblo.

Coming into La Junta, the terrain had taken a turn for dry and rocky. The ride into Pueblo showed us even more of the beige, arid emptiness that we’d seen the night previous. It felt nice to see the flavor of wilderness change again.

The ride was predictably uneventful. We passed another cow city or two and experienced the accompanying kick of dung-scent. It was an uphill ride, but our cadence was steady out of excitement for a few soft days of rest at Patti’s.

Dunno if I've recovered from that smell yet.

In the early afternoon, we hit the outskirts of Pueblo, which were fairly desolate. We saw a turnoff for the Pueblo Chemical Dump; Mike asked if I wanted to visit that scenic landmark. I yelled back that they must have an awesome gift-shop.

We entered a residential area and, after a few turns, we hit Patti’s house. We dismounted, I took off my helmet, and smoothed my hair.

I didn’t know what to expect; we’d been talking to Patti for months over the internet, albeit sparsely, and she’d been following our trip since the beginning. This was the first time I’d be hearing her voice, let alone meeting her in person. I was piqued.

We walked through the front door and saw a slender girl with chestnut-brown hair, which was shoulder-length and had subtle, light streaks. I said hi and she welcomed us nonchalantly in a warm, calm voice like finished rosewood. She showed us the downstairs that we’d be annexing for the next few days.

The house was clean and relatively spacious. Art made by friends was scattered around the middle level of the house with a few primary pieces featured in the living room.

Mike and I took showers simultaneously (there’s a new trick) in two different bathrooms. I finished washing, slipped my mesh shorts on, and padded down the stairs to talk to Patti. I stood on one side of the kitchen counter while Patti stood across from me on the other side, making guacamole. We traded questions, both answering coyly, while she traversed the kitchen making other preparations for the barbecue to be held tonight in honor of us crazies¹.

This guacamole...

Mike joined us after finishing his shower and, characteristically, went right to work on Patti’s roof trying to fix the air-conditioner. Patti and I sat on her shady porch after helping Mike ascend the ladder to the roof. We talked leisurely and I looked her over like a tipsy detective studying the femme fatale.

After Mike yelled down from the roof, signifying that he hadn’t died, we steadied the ladder once again and he alighted from the roof.

Mike again at ground-level, we decided to go on a beer run. Patti gave us directions to a liquor store that she couldn’t identify by name but told us it’d be next to a pet grooming place named K9-Cutters on Norwood. We met Patti’s roommate, Lisa, and promptly thereafter were given keys to her car for the beer run.

I jumped at the keys. Since Mike is weary of automatic transmissions, the rare privilege of driving a car wasn’t something we had to rock-paper-scissors for². We hopped into Lisa’s white Dodge and were off³.

The reduced field of vision hit me as soon as I landed in the driver’s seat. Going from 2000 contiguous miles on a bike to a short ride down the street in a car is like going from a go-kart to the Millennium Falcon. I went at a snail’s pace down the road, looking around neurotically in wait for a family of five to jump onto the hood of the Dodge.

A few long minutes later, we got to the liquor store and negotiated the lethargic Asian teenager working the counter. Another round of white-knuckled Oregon Trail later and we were back at Patti’s with a fair amount of beer⁴.

We sat out with Patti on the porch, talking pleasant miscellany and enjoying our new home, however temporary. Patti queued up Rome, which is a collaboration between producer Dangermouse and some Italian spaghetti-Western composer, on her vintage stereo. She only dug the songs that featured Jack White.

The drinking began and guests started to show. The first round of arrivals were a group of three: Randy, Andy, and Alan⁵. Randy and Andy were a couple: Randy a lively girl of copper complexion and Andy a native-Coloradan welder with an Illinois accent. Alan was heavy-set and initially very quiet, although he turned out to be well-educated and good for talk.

Patti began grilling and we mingled with guests. Gabriel, an artist and a friend of Patti’s, showed up and we talked about working shitty jobs to build character and grinding lucrative careers to fund explorations into less secure lives. Gabriel was polite and friendly and a pleasure to speak to.

John, a publisher, showed up. John was witty and bearded: he told me about the tribulations necessary to properly format a book of poetry in Amazon’s MOBI markup. I cornered him for his opinion on Oxford commas⁶ and Randy jumped in, emphatically agreeing that the commas are necessary to resolve ambiguity. We high-fived and went through all the congratulatory rigmarole of meeting someone with grammatical competence.

Gabriel (duck and cover), Patti, Lisa.

We moved the discussion outside, where Alan jumped in and argued that the comma is “superfluous.”⁷ The conversation then progressed into language and economics and about 10 other subjects that I can bluff through but have little-to-no formal training in.

The tablewide conversation then took a turn for the topics of prostitution and erotic dancing. One girl, whose name I don’t remember, told us that she had taken her boyfriend to Vegas and ended up with a $700 tab for a lapdance she didn’t order. We talked at length about that.

Andy then told a lewd story that everyone laughed at. The story is in the footnotes because I’m sure not all readers will appreciate its vulgarity.⁸

The backyard darkened and mosquitoes antagonized the majority of us, so we moved the party inside. After a few rounds of Apples to Apples, Randy, Andy, and Alan split; John followed suit soon afterwards.

Guests slowly and evenly tapered as the clock worked.

The end of the evening had Patti, Mike, and I sitting in the living room. Patti and I did the conversing as Mike stared into space.

Patti sat in an armchair and I sat on the floor facing her and asking questions. I told her she had beautiful feet⁹ and I had a strong compulsion to hold her but restrained because this isn’t the Paleolithic and you can’t simply hit a woman over the head and drag her into intimacy.

Ruby the dog on the left.

Mike and I forced our stiff legs down the stairwell and we fell asleep in the basement, Mike on a collection of pillows and me on a couch. A surplus of guacamole and beer was left in the fridge.

and the summer solstice, but who cares about weather when you’ve got lunatics
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or more realistically, roshambo for
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Mike will tell you that I almost got into an accident reversing out of Patti’s driveway. This isn’t quite the case: Mike alerted me to a truck coming down the road, approximately seventy feet away. I woulda caught it. Probably.
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after a case of High Life and a box of Franzia had gone uninjured at our going away party, we’ve learned to temper our preparatory buys.
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begging for a sitcom? maybe a song-and-dance trio?
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I do this to everyone I meet who has a responsibility to know English especially well. I’m set in one particular argument (the commas are necessary) but I do it for fun anyway.
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pfffffffft.
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A friend of Andy’s brought home a stripper and her boyfriend to his apartment. The stripper and boyfriend immediately began screwing violently on the poor kid’s couch with an innocent, awkward bystander betwixt. Another roommate walked in from work. The shocked entrant screamed, “GET YOUR CUNT OFF MY COUCH!” and began beating the stripper.¹⁰
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which she does; they are small and sculpted with gradual, even curves.
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Dollars to donuts that every one of you read that footnote.
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Day 34: Push to La Junta

Mike woke me up in a frantic scramble. It was June 20th in the artificially-lush city park of Lamar.

“We’ve gotta pack up the tent. Like now. Thunderstorm.”

And, accordingly, a boom of far-off thunder followed shortly, like in a bad TV drama. I bought the likelihood of an oncoming rainy tantrum, so I shook the sleep from my eyes and began to steadily, mechanically roll my sleeping bag and stow my electronics in the Trek’s panniers.

I realized wistfully that the Trek’s position, propped up on the side of a big shrub, had not shielded the bike and bags from the sprinklers. The damage wasn’t too bad, but there were muddy puddles in my sandals and the bike clothes were slightly damp.

We packed the tent up in no time flat and tackled the bikes. Before I was half-awake, we were pedaling down Lamar’s main drag, following a beeline to our sanctuary: McDonald’s. The thunder pounded around us like a temperamental god tossing armchairs around heaven.

Get to the arches. Get to the arches.

We made it to McD’s just as the dark skies opened up and let loose a downpour. We got inside, along with all of the equipment that signifies a long stay. We were unsure of when we’d leave.

Here’s a day, a situation, that exemplifies pretty well a major difference between Mike and I.

I set up shop immediately, ready to trench into the fastfood joint like a b&b, caring not how long we stayed so long as I wasn’t wet within five minutes of leaving the golden arches.

I’d splayed my stuff across two tables, dipped into the wallpower, and had myself surrounded with hot food. Mike had done much the same, but I could tell he was nervous.

Mike gets antsy, pessimistic, and generally short of patience when we don’t get out on time in the mornings. In an abstract way, I can sympathize; I understand that there is release in getting into the thick and pounding out your daily sweat. I understand that we’re on a schedule, and that we’ve got a respectable average to maintain.

What I didn’t understand is why Mike wanted to leave a half an hour after we’d arrived, in the midst of a very-pissed Mother Nature dishing out trouble in the form of a serious thunderstorm.

Mike was pretty adamant that we ride on, saying that we’d get wet at some point today anyway, but I told him flat out that I wouldn’t be leaving the restaurant anytime soon. This he didn’t like, but he agreed to stay.

In any physically-intense, prolonged situation requiring that a group of people work together, there are going to be conflicts¹. So far, it’s amazing how minor the friction has been between Mike and I. Given the circumstances, we are incredibly functional. That’s not to say we don’t have disagreements on how to run the trip.

Mike is very organized and very rigorous. He has a way of doing things; a schematic, a schedule, or a blue-print, and that’s the way he gets it done. Classic mathematician. Most of the time, he’s completely right and his work is dead-on. This methodology makes him a great mechanic, router, and bicyclist.

I am, as Gene said, “the party guy.” I take cracks at exerting only as much effort as necessary and I make a constant effort to enjoy myself as much as possible, even at the cost of route progress. I take pictures, blast music, and spend hours at lunch writing verbose blog posts. I propose rest-days and ask, “do we really need to peg the rain-fly in?”

Without Mike, I dunno when I’d pull into the bay area. Without me, I don’t think Mike would even take pictures, let alone stop to look around.

In the absence of one another, we’d each pull closer towards the center. While working together, we play our extremes like good contrarians. At any rate, we both like beer.

Mike was anxious awhile, but eventually calmed down as the storm continued to rage. I think he realized that escape from Lamar anytime soon was unlikely and made some kind of peace with it. Out of the big windows I could see sheets of rainwater pounding the pavement, the wet surface giving a ragged reflection of the crumpled-newspaper sky above.

We spent a good few hours in that McDonald’s, studying radar images and talking to hitchhikers caught in the storm. One burly, bearded hitchhiker gave us a played lottery-ticket worth $2 and told us about the bridge he’d slept under in town. He advised us to stay there if we weren’t going to make it out of Lamar tonight. We considered this seriously and thanked him.

Eventually, the rain abated and we began preparing to leave. My bike had a flat, so I brought the tire and tools inside and went to work changing the tube. I didn’t seat the bead onto the rim correctly, so when I inflated the new tube to near 80PSI there was a huge BANG that scared every employee in the place shitless. I apologized sheepishly and went out for a new tube.

After the tire was fixed and the two of us had changed, we left the McDonald’s for the light rain. It was about 2PM.

After an hour, we traded rain for a wicked headwind. I don’t have any hard data, but I’m guessing the winds were around 30MPH. Somehow, I borrowed some of Mike’s masochism and began to enjoy pumping my legs endlessly against the wind, nearly stationary and perpetually in my two lowest gears.

No rain, but plenty of wind.

We made our way slowly, slowly, into La Junta, passing through the darkened desert outside of the junction town. The setting sun bled through the clouds like a lit match touched to layers of white cloth.

Sunset outside of La Junta.

We slid past the desert hills and through the industrial outskirts of town. Near the edge of La Junta, we stopped at a restaurant called Boss Hogg’s. The place was open and well-reviewed on GMaps, so we went in.

For an appetizer, Mike and I ordered fried cow nuts, a local specialty². I ordered something called a Hogginator which turned out to be a one-pound hamburger with green peppers and mushrooms. The hamburger disappeared and when the waitress asked where it went, I told her I’d blacked out.

We sat in the diner, then closed, watching the lights dim and the chairs flip. We listened to pop country play over the radio. Mike enjoyed some tune about a guy going through a series of jobs and then concluding after each dismissal “at least I’m pretty good at drinking beer.”³

The waitress tipped us to a soccer field within the junior college that she claimed to be sprinkler-less, so we thanked her emphatically, paid up, and made tracks for the field.

In an hour, we were sitting cool as crocodiles in a tent on the dusty soccer field of Otero Junior College. Not a sprinkler head in sight.

sociology masters thesis done.
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they’re surprisingly bland. I mean come on: cow balls. You’d think they would ooze spice or have you aurally hallucinating the withered voice of Johnny Cash or something.
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Beatniks and Rednecks: The Great Union, my new book coming out in August.
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Day 33: Quiet cent to Lamar

I’m abbreviating these posts so I can get onto the more interesting days while they’re still fresh in my head.

We woke up June 19th from an uninterrupted sleep in a single at the Flamingo Motel, Dodge City, KS. We plowed through the typical morning routine quickly, packed our bikes, then went to cash in on the continental breakfast offered beside the check-in desk.

Mike and I wandered in and began loading up on discount pastry, despite the absence of anyone else in the windowed room. Eventually, an Indian guy poked his head out from a room behind the desk, and decided after a moment’s thought that we weren’t just vagrants and had some probability of being real customers. After we passed his sniff-test, he receded into the room and we didn’t see him again.

After I finished the warm coffee, we hit the road for Holly, Colorado.

Clouds, trains, and wind.

Other than a few mechanical failures, we plowed through the countryside without anything particularly interesting happening; just gray fields, idle farm equipment, and telephone poles.

I enjoyed a leftover Modelo while Mike was changing a flat.

Kickin' it on the roadside.

We decided midway through the day to crank a century to Lamar, a town larger than Holly, because the wind was with us. As we found out the next day, this turned out to be a good decision.

Pretty good epitomization of Kansas. Except you can't actually see the wind.

We passed a cropduster. I think the dude piloting tried to divebomb us a few times.

We crossed over the Colorado border, and thirty miles or so down the road we got into Lamar. We ate at a burger shack called BJ’s. The burger joint was odd; all orders were to be made via telephone from booths. The man on the other line had a booming, deep voice and you could hear your own responses resonating over a loudspeaker in a kitchen hidden by papered glass. About ten minutes after you got done with the booming voice, an unenthusiastic teenager would saunter out with a plate of food and take your currency into the veiled kitchen.

After dinner, we set up our tent in the city park. We did a thorough search for sprinklers and realized we were in a minefield of manmade hydration. We did our best to set up the tent at an angle to each sprinkler we found, and did a fair job of that.

Setting up in the park.

The sprinklers tried to antagonize us, but we’d put the rain-cover on the tent. Instead of having us soaked, the night was punctuated with blasts of water hitting taut plastic. Better the plastic than us.

Day 32: The Flamingo in Garden City

We woke up in puddles. June 17th, day 32, Dodge City park.

I lifted my head from the damp sleeping bag and prepared to take stock of the damage. Mike was just stirring, so we sat up in tandem and moved our dripping sleepware off of the concrete.

Last night, in the thick of the sprinkler attack, I hadn’t considered that wet sleeping bags can’t be rolled up and stored during a day of riding, under threat of mildew. I hadn’t considered that I’d find my bike clothes sitting in a pool on the concrete, heavy with water. I guess I hadn’t considered much.

We stood around a while, arms folded, trying to figure out what to do. The ride to Garden City, our stop for the night, wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe 60, 65 miles.

Finally, we decided to head to the McDonald’s in the center of town and dry our soaked gear off on their picket fence.

Drying out

While we were laying our stuff out on the fence, a Mexican janitor named Miguel started to talking to me. He walked up and wished me a good morning, then patted me on the shoulder a few times. I think he sensed we were from out of town. As we later found out, Miguel himself was new to Dodge City. He’d only been in America for six months, but his wife and kids had been here eight years.

I didn’t ask him what caused this delay, but I told him I was glad he’d made it.

He had an honest face and he smiled a lot; clearly happy to be where he was, tending the front yard at McDonald’s. He told me with a laugh that “it’s all about the money.”

We hung out for a few hours, periodically checking and rotating our fenced gear for a uniform bath in the morning sun.

After the gear had dried and we’d eaten several meals’ worth of calories, we decided to start for Garden City.

The wind was agreeable, but large stretches of the road were poorly paved. Our bikes fared miles of rough pavement and at some point we passed a giant cluster of cows¹ in an industrial-looking feed yard.

Cow city

Outside of cow city

Watching the dust

We finally arrived in a quaint part of Dodge City, where we stopped in a bike shop. The shop was very clean. There were two female mechanics behind the counter. The kid who rang us up, the only other employee in the shop, was oddly nervous and his collar was fully buttoned. Maybe he was trying to impress the mechanic girls.

We split for a coffee shop and spent some time figuring out where we’d sleep. It was my birthday, so the de facto plan was to find a motel and buy some beer. We called around to a few motels, eventually deciding on The Flamingo Motel since, aside from the name, it offered the cheapest rate we could bargain for: $40.

We set off for what one reviewer called the “rough part of town,” which was dicier than downtown but about as rough as any part of Herndon and we found the Flamingo. I did a disappearing act while Mike got the room.

"Rough part of town"

After Mike passed out on the king-sized bed, Kerouac perched on his chest, I scoured for beer and came up with a six of Modelo. For the rest of the night, I sat on the bed, flipping between modern² detective novels³ and sipping the light Mexican beer. Thunder outside rattled the motel windows. It was a fine birthday.

probably worth a few million
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’70s on out
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they all seem forced after Chandler
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Day 31: The sprinklers at Dodge City

We sat like early-rising catatonics, watching Animal Planet at 7AM in Gene’s house and eating fruity pebbles while the kids climbed on us. We packed up the bikes and said our goodbyes.

We biked through towns with behemoth windmills and curious roadside decorations. We stopped at a place for lunch with homemade pies where we talked briefly with two waitresses¹.

Names like Dante, Clinton, Agamemnon...

Much of this

Our destination for the evening was Dodge City. We made the trip there pretty easily and without event; I think there was one flat.

On the edge of town, we rode a few miles through gray industrial grit. We rode past uninviting wire fences and grain silos that looked like soundless, ivory memorials to strange years long dead.

We passed historic storefronts that looked like leftover props from The Magnificent Seven.

Dodge City looks like it’s run by crooked cowboys gone yuppie. I liked it because it was a new flavor of the west for me.

Mike split off to go find postcards at an antique train station while I began to set up camp in the McDonald’s. I pulled up to the golden arches and hunted around for a booth next to an outlet. I came up short and settled for a booth near the corner, where the last remnants of daylight came in through the window beside.

Later, Mike arrived with postcards. We picked three or four items from the value menu to pay our unofficial fare for loitering, then took turns walking across the street to order take-out from Taco Bell.

We sat eating tacos in a burger joint and trying to contend with the noisy kids ten feet away playing tag around a plastic wagon-train.

Soon, the sun through our window started to fade and the city lights punctured the resulting darkness like a bunch of expensive stones laid on a piece of dark marble. We packed up and left to go sleep in the city park.

Dodge City Lights.

Mike got a flat on the way out, so we stopped by an old train and I milled around while he went to work.

After Mike finished up, we biked through the mostly-empty streets, and even saw a few kids in tight jeans and plaid pearl-snaps standing outside a bar. Of course a crooked-cowboy town has hipsters. The streets were windy and cool. We ascended a few hills heading north.

Along the way, Mike slipped his completed postcards into a post-office dropbox.

We got to the city park in a residential part of town. The park was a large span of grass with a good-sized playground at one end and a roofed picnic area toward the center-rear. We glided the bikes over to the picnic area and began to set up.

The hovel

A Hispanic family was playing quietly in the park, and they began leaving with casual slowness when we showed up. I thought about going up to them, telling them we weren’t crazies, but I figured that would only make them even more suspicious that we were crazies. They strolled up the hill with their kid in a wagon.

Just as we had our bikes locked and packed away for the night and our sleeping equipment laid out on the sheltered concrete, claps of thunder, wind, and lightening began to stir in the sky above.

There was no rain, but the wind gusted through the little hovel, rustling our sleeping bags and moving any small, loose objects. Separate patches of lightening lit up the clouds above with startling frequency. The sky looked like it was full of broken, strobing florescent bulbs. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was directed by David Lynch.

I laughed a few times at the absurdity of the situation and got my phone out and tweeted like hell. I tried to video the storm, but all the camera picked up was black. It was about midnight.

I laid between the two picnic tables in the hovel, my bike rested against the picnic table to the right of my feet. Mike laid behind the picnic table to my left, beside his bike, which was also leaned up against a table.

I laid on my back, zipped up in my sleeping bag and excited at the unruly weather. I felt the satisfaction that accompanies watching a pissed Mother Nature from the comfortable safety of human shelter. I closed my eyes and drifted off…

Until I heard a crash. I dunno how many minutes had passed, but I looked over at Mike and his bike was on top of him. “You okay?”

“Yeah. The bike just fell on me.”

The wind had knocked his bike over. He scrambled up, pushed the steel frame off of himself, then moved his sleeping mat and bag over next to me, between the two picnic tables.

The wind was screaming now. I’m not sure what the speed was, but sometimes I felt as though I’d be picked up and carried off into the field, sleeping bag and all. Someone was still fanning the big lightswitch in the sky, but we hadn’t felt any rain so we were happy. I closed my eyes and drifted off, thinking of apple pies and women past and the coffee machine at home…

Until someone was pouring, POURING, water on me. I snapped my head up and a current ran through my body that tried to get me out of the downpour. The dousing stopped. I looked around. No rain. Sprinklers. A sprinkler system!?

Mike got it the worst. He jumped up from beside me and moved his sleeping mat to the front of the left table where, ostensibly, he’d be unreachable by the sprinkler.

He was wrong. Wave two came funneling in and got Mike good. He cursed and jumped up and moved his mat diagonally across the shelter to behind the picnic table to my right.

He settled down and I felt no more wetness, so again I drifted off into warmth…

Soaking. I came up for air from the depth of sleep and I was absolutely sopping wet. My bag was covered in water and the waves were coming in more frequently now. I jumped up, completely unsure of what to do. The entire concrete floor of the shelter was under a pool of water.

“The hell can we do?” I thought. Going to a motel was nearly out of the question: even setting aside the cost, it’d take us at least half an hour to get packed up and biking in this weather was a bad idea. Plus, our stuff was drenched.

The sudden exit from the fog of sleep had me frantic. Trying to think felt like running a marathon with a suitcase full of bricks.

Mike had moved back to his original spot beside his bike, completing the horrible game of musical beds. My last option was to try to get behind the right picnic table and hope to God that was out of the range of the active sprinklers.

I laid my mat down in that edge of the pool and saw that the mat itself was covered in water. My sleeping bag looked shriveled and felt soaked, but I crawled in and covered up and felt my chest tighten. After a quick coughing fit, I resigned myself to a sleep in the artificial rain. I looked over at Mike, who was just a dark bundle, and assumed he’d also given up.

The bag was wet but reasonably warm. I fell asleep with my head in the shadows of the hovel, just missing the brightness thrown down by the towering park lights. The storm had settled but the occasional wind gusted, just to keep our worn hubris in check.

It’s no cakewalk being a vagrant in Dodge City.

don’t get any ideas; they were mother and daughter².
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don’t get any ideas about that one either³
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God I need an editor
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Day 30: Beautiful American Family

I woke up in Mark’s basement in a king-size bed. I remember feeling immediate distress at the idea of leaving that bed.

Mike walked in the door and said, “better get up. It’s going to be a hard day.”

“Headwinds?”

“Headwinds. Both our rear tires are flat.”

I propped myself up and looked around. Light from the open door streamed into the otherwise dim room. That kind of light always gets me up.

I brushed teeth, dropped contacts in, and put the bike clothes on. I found Mike and Mark in the front yard with the bikes splayed out in the grass.

We found our respective leaks and patched them while Leanna ran out the door to go off to a medical certification class. After the flats were treated, the three of us went back inside for some cereal and a long, hard look at the weather report for the day.

Mike and Mark poured over wind maps while I enjoyed a cup of coffee. The good sleep, pleasant company, and hot coffee made me feel new. We relaxed at Mark’s kitchen table for a while, savoring the last few minutes of a morning spent indoors.

We thanked, waved, left, and were pedaling west of Wichita before too long.

Outskirts of Wichita.

A few miles down Maple Avenue, the road had been blocked off and, beyond the orange and white traffic signs, was completely demolished. Clods of uneven dirt were in place of pavement.

We didn’t feel like turning around, so we walked our bikes onto the side of the road and then through the wreckage. Large machines drove around us. We walked ten feet in front of some foreman and a lackey who were talking, but they didn’t acknowledge us.

We cleared the construction area and made around ten miles down 54. We watched the dark pastel colors in the sky to the northwest. Every now and again we caught veins of lightening running through the big clouds. I kept my eye on the faraway storm while I pedaled. I wondered about the little cluster of farmhouses below that angry sky.

By then we had a nice tailwind boosting us through the plains. We were cruising. Before then, I had thought that a good tailwind made you feel as though you are biking through a vacuum, simply compensating for the air you move in front of you for a zero-sum. Then, I realized that a serious tailwind can actually be felt propelling you forwards, which is slightly scary but undoubtedly awesome.

The sky above us got darker. That made me kind of giddy.

I snapped some scarier photos, but somehow in my upload process they were lost.

Since the wind, our tailwind, was blowing southwest, it was a reasonable assumption that the storm was moving our way. We heard thunder and traces of rain began to fall around us. The wind got more and more fierce.

The daylight had nearly vanished now and we were left alone with the highway and the trucks and the looming clouds above us.

Ahead of us, we could see a large volume of dust being picked up by the wind and moved from farmland into the middle of the road. I wondered about tornado warnings but managed to stay giddy. Cold gusts hit us, which was refreshing but threatening.

A mile later, we came to a concrete overpass. The wind was really roaring now and the tunneling of the overpass made the effect even more dramatic. We stopped on the shoulder under the overpass and I had to hold my bike in place to keep it from moving forward.

I ripped open Food Bag 2 and ate a reconstituted Snickers in around 20 seconds after throwing Mike one.

We talked about our concern with the weather. We checked the forecast: no tornado warnings, but a few for severe thunderstorms. We briefly considered taking shelter in a ditch under the overpass, but then decided that this was the tailwind of our lives¹ and that the skies to the west looked clear. Mike donned his rain-jacket but I figured hell with it after stashing the camera in a pannier. We mounted the saddles and tore pavement in the mid-twenties of MPH.

After pockets of rain, skies cleared up and we somehow came out of the storm with the tailwind intact. We rode that sucker all the way to lunch. On the way to the McDonald’s, we spotted a beautiful earth-sheltered house that was built into the side of a hill.

Out of the storm, into town.

We ate the typical value-menu slew for lunch. In between bites, I looked at a few of the local girls with a little lasciviousness but mostly just out of curiosity. We called our CouchSurfing host for the night, Gene, and told him we were around 30 miles outside of town and would be in around 6PM.

We rode a weakened but still considerable tailwind into Pratt and admired the small town. The streets of its downtown were undergoing an upgrade from brick to pavement, so we wheeled along the sidewalk and caught sight of things like coffeeshops and a movie theater. I liked Pratt instantly: it made me feel nostalgic for the small-town America I’d never experienced but had seen in movies.

Pratt: straight out of a Stephen King flick.

We pulled up to the Messick house, just a few blocks from downtown. Gene, Megan, and some of the kids were standing out front and greeted us as we rode in. We got hearty handshakes from each, then Gene’s friend Nick walked up and introduced himself.

The Messick property actually has three small houses on the grounds clustered very closely together. Gene, Megan, and the kids live in one, Nick lives in the other, and the third is used as storage. Mike and I, after being charmed by the folks and the town, were drawn immediately to the possibility of fixing the place up and calling it home for a while².

Each house is almost a miniature, but they’re all very cosy. The Messick house proper, especially, is well decorated and efficiently organized.

The two rear houses.

Within half an hour, we were drinking beer and grilling chicken. Gene, Megan, Mike, Nick, and I stood outside in the pre-storm weather talking and drinking and grilling. I looked at the portion of downtown I could see from their property.

Nick and Gene met in the navy and have been close friends ever since. Gene is originally from Texas, and met Megan while stationed in Washington state, where Megan grew up³. We learned all of this while watching in awe as the grill remained on fire even after we’d disconnected the propane tank.

Gene, Nick, and Megan.

Miracle #2 (Miracle #1 being that we didn't get shot in Memphis)

Rain had been sprinkling and finally the chicken finished, so we grabbed the tray of cooked meat and brought it inside.

Many beers and a lot of eating followed.

At one point in the night, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, I told Gene that he had a young, beautiful American family. Gene and Megan demonstrated to me a way of life that I hadn’t seen before. They’re a young couple with a cool house in a storybook town and they go at child-rearing with an incredible, casual energy that seems available only to those in their twenties. Their family is their life’s work, and it shows.

Both Gene and Megan hold down jobs, though they’ve rigged the schedule so that the kids are never alone. Should the kids ever need care, Nick is at home fifteen feet away. Gene works as an inventory manager at Walmart⁴.

Their kids are all well-behaved and very sharp. Kierra made two pictures for Mike and me after answering a few math questions. She said she loves math, which of course made suckers out of the both of us.

The beer-drinking went on until about 1AM and, after more than a few profanity-inspiring rounds of MarioKart, Mike and I collapsed on neighboring couches.

Night in Pratt.

however short
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pipe dream
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very coincidentally, Megan is from Everett, WA, the same town Mary Jean Jordan is from, and Gene, like John Jordan, was in the navy when the couple met. Wild, huh?
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and loves the profit-sharing scheme that Walmart features for its employees — maybe one of the reasons the company is such a success?
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Day 29: Wichita, The Vagabond, and Mark

We awoke in the sunny Ark City park. The concrete was surprisingly comfortable, so I rolled away from the sunshine and towards the metal frame of a picnic bench for a few extra minutes of shuteye. Mike, of course, was up and halfway through the routine of 23 things he does every morning before I can even make words.

After a few minutes, I gave up the ghost and opened my eyes. My nose was congested and my throat a little sore, but this goes away fairly quickly. I bought into the extra three feet of elevation and walked over to my bike. It was a little after 7AM.

Not a bad place to crash.

Mike finished packing before me and seemed eager to start, so he charged off to a donut shop while I finished packing. We agreed to rendezvous at a McDonald’s and, minutes later, we sat down in a booth and set up our exhibit for the onlooking locals. Some elderly trucker-type¹ made a comment, loudly, that I was shaving in the bathroom. He then observed, “NOW THE FELLER’S PUTTIN’ SUNSCREEN ON HIS FACE.” Good work, Encyclopedia Brown. I waved at him for fun.

We finished up with the facilities, wolfed down our breakfast in olympic time, and then split for 77/15 west towards Wichita.

Not much happened on the ride up. Now that I’ve barred myself from listening to music through headphones, I just replay select pieces in my head. I think about earlier parts of the trip, how far away they are.

The wind was more reasonable than the day before; we were only subjected to a slight crosswind instead of a full-on headwind, and the terrain had flattened out. The riding wasn’t too bad. I got low on the aerobars and layed on the pedals, resting very little of my weight on the saddle and the rest on my haunches and legs.

We pulled into a small town, Mulvane, for lunch. We made a beeline for the Pizza Hut when Mike remembered that often the Huts offer a lunch buffet. We confirmed this with the enthusiastic brunette working the front. She looked late-thirties and stood all of 5’6”.

She sat us down at a high table near a power outlet, at our request, and then took our orders for drinks.

The woman was a dynamo. She would zip back and forth across the diningroom floor in an upright sprint, clearing plates, replacing pies, snatching empty glasses and replacing them with full substitutes. Three of her could run a good-sized post office. I’m not sure why the woman showed so much electric alacrity. She may or may not have owned the place.

We ate a wheelbarrow’s worth of pizza each, then paid up. We left, but hung around behind the building for a while since I wanted to catch a nap and we hadn’t spent much time at lunch anyway.

I passed out for a short time, waking to heat and a lot of sweat. I sat up and ran my hand through my wet hair, trying to adjust to the hot den of the living. Mike was sitting against brick reading more of the Keruoac book.

We were set to go, then Mike realized he had a flat. While he went to work, I sat down, looking at my skin and checking to see if every visible bit glistened in the sun². It did.

Mike finished his repairs, so we got back on the saddles and lit out for Wichita.

As we neared the city, roads widened and traffic congealed. Mike had found a WarmShowers host on very short notice last night in Braum’s; a guy named Mark. I knew nothing about Mark other than that he lived somewhere in northwestern Wichita. Mike had the details, as Mike often does.

We rode beside a lake, looking up at the few figures on the Wichita skyline. The smallish city reminded me of Reston Town Center but with more shopping and sprawl.

On the way to Mark’s, we wanted to stop at a coffeeshop to take care of a few things. I entertained the idea of getting a little writing done³. We used the phones to find a place en route to Mark’s called The Vagabond. A perfect fit.

We pulled up to the front of our stop. There were two locals talking on the patio, sitting on the thin metal furniture. One, a bald, gnarly looking dude who could’ve been a bouncer, was enthusiastically orating to the other about Wichita ska bands. Mike and I locked up and went into the coffeeshop.

The Vagaband was a coffeeshop, but it served beer. When we found this out, we bounded up to the counter for a cool pint each. I asked the plain barmaide what she had on draft and she rattled off a list of unfamiliar beers; I told her the pale ale.

We sat, enjoying the sluggish warmth of half a beer after a seventy mile bike-ride. I actually got a little writing done.

After not too long, we decided to head over to Mark’s place. We closed out our tabs and left the plain barmaide to tend to a chatty couple and an older man seated in a booth reading a newspaper.

We pedaled the ten miles to Mark’s place through suburban Wichita, which isn’t much different from the suburbs of northern Virginia and, I imagine, any other suburb. When we thought we’d hit the right house, we dumped our bikes onto the front lawn and rang the doorbell. In a few seconds, the door swung open revealing a fit guy who looked to be in his mid-fourties. We said hello and he welcomed us in eagerly.

Mark exudes energy. He moves and talks very quickly in a Kansan accent. He’s very easy to talk to and very genuine without being abrasive. Mark meets the spec for a gentleman about as well as anyone I can think of.

He took us on a quick⁴ tour of the downstairs, which included such exotic sights as a sofa, a shower, a laundry machine, and a king-sized (!!!) bed. He then left us to our own devices, telling us to come grab him whenever we were ready for a dinner out on the town.

Mike and I salivated over the king-sized mattress for a while, taking showers and changing at points in between. After we were made human again, we went up to recover Mark.

Mark drove us to a place called Shorty Small’s, an casually-upscale eatery with delicious pulled pork and fried twinkies⁵. We grabbed a table and the three of us ordered AmberBocks in tall mugs. Mark asked us various things about the trip, talked about the Aussies that had stayed with him just before us, also touring cross-country, and his own biking adventures around Kansas.

Mark spoke with youthful excitement and he questioned with real curiousity. At around sixty, the guy is younger than most people I know.

Mark had called his wife, Leanna, who’d just gotten off a twelve hour shift, and invited her out. We drank the cold beers and shot the breeze while we waited for Leanna to show.

Leanna came in shortly afterwards, sitting down and entering seamlessly into the conversation. She talked about how surprised she was at the many CouchSurfers that had sent requests out to the two, despite their location “in BFE⁶.”

Leanna played her sardonic wit off of Mark’s cheery enthusiasm, and they continued an entertaining volley this way all night. Another testament to the yin-yang arrangement I’d mentioned earlier, during the stay with Samantha and Richard, that is so prevalent in successful couples⁷.

At the suggestion of M&L, Mike and I ordered a plate of deep-fried twinkies for dessert and ate the strange and wonderful dish with the vigor of game-show contestants.

Completely satisfied after a delicious meal, a fair volume of good beer, and near-continuous conversation, we sat a while and let our bodies catch up.

After driving back to the house, we sat cross-legged on couches in the living room, discussing politics.

I was hoping Mark would bring up politics. Talking that kind of shop with people I find interesting is almost always a rewarding experience, even if they don’t have a disposition compatible with mine. Many people may find politics a shallow or inflammatory topic of conversation, but political opinion is a common and profound denominator among people: everyone has one, and usually they reveal key characteristics about their owner.

For example, take healthcare. If someone is of the opinion that government should be involved in the distribution of healthcare (beyond the basic level of preventing fraud), it can be inferred that that person thinks that each human has an enforcable responsibility for the health of every other human alive.

It can also be inferred that the owner of that opinion is willing to let the government force others into maintaining the health of those around them, which is implied by the nature of government involvement⁸.

Through someone’s political views, you can figure out his most basic tenets: how he thinks humans interact, what he thinks people should be forced to do (or not do), what he thinks is right and wrong, and even how he reasons about the world. Getting this information lets you check your own reasoning; you see where and why the disconnect happens between another line of thinking and your own. Usually, people I talk to are cool enough to recognize the disconnect and let it lay.

So we sat up talking politics for a while in M&L’s livingroom. Mark had generously sat two chilled Shiner Bocks in front of Mike and me, so we drank the brew while explaining our gripes with social security. I enjoyed listening to Mark’s well-reasoned criticisms of the federal budget’s largest entry.

Mark later showed us a startup project he was working on, bokdeals.com, a groupon-clone for Kansas locals that is being bootstrapped through Mark’s publication. I found it inspiring that though Mark could probably retire comfortably⁹, he was still pursuing adventures in the marketplace.

The right hour came, so Mike and I said goodnight and went down to the basement where a certain king-sized bed sat invitingly. I took my place on a mattress that could comfortably seat three nuclear families¹⁰.

Then, all the lights went out and I slept like it was Christmas afternoon.

possibly a former member of the Good Ol’ Boys
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at the end of the day, I can feel the dry, crystallized sweat all over my upper body. It’s like being covered in a fine layer of sand.
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yeah right
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literally. We were moving quickly.
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I imagine if I ever have a pregnant wife (read: highly unlikely), this is the kind of weird food she’ll have cravings for. But I guess I’m an optimist.
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stands for BumFuck Egypt. Mark said that Leanna can talk like a truck-driver when she needs to.
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jamesob, love doctor.
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one of government’s only distinguishing characteristics is that it is the only entity legally permitted to force people into doing things. Try not paying your taxes; you’ll either end up in a cell or shot.
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entirely speculation on my part
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and their German Shepards, all named “Skip”
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Day 28: Laugh it off to Ark City

The day to Arkansas City (pronounced “r-kansas”) was one of those days. One of those days when I dream about Greyhound buses and spend most of the day wondering what kind of moron bikes 3600 miles across a jagged landmass when there are machines that do the job eight times faster and with considerably less pain.

We left from Caney heading north. We still had a tailwind going, which helped us up the long hills and shot us down the other side. This lasted for about ten minutes, then we turned southwest onto 166.

The shoulder narrowed to only 18 inches wide and our nice tailwind turned into a wicked crosswind, partial headwind. Ten-tonners flew by every so often, only a few feet away, and each time scaring me shitless and throwing my bike around in the smallish shoulder.

You use all kinds of weird muscles trying to straighten yourself out in the wind, which saps energy quickly. In winds 20-30MPH, the sort we had that day, if you lose focus for only a few seconds, you’ll find yourself careening into the nasty roadside terrain, which exists only to house exploded Armadillo carcases¹ and puncture tires.

The wind kept me in the bottom chainring for 90% of the day. Our ten mile breaks were seperated by seemingly endless stretches of low-speed struggle.

The day had the same awful iteration of hill-climb and -descent that I described very early on, somewhere around Charlottesville, but in Kansas it’s stretched out. The hills are probably the same height, but crest-to-trough is probably like 2 miles.

So I’d get to the top of a hill, heart feeling like it’s under a dragnet, and see about 4 miles in front of me, knowing it’d take around thirty minutes just to get to the next crest.

Up one of these incredulously long hills.

It was demoralizing. I had started the day feeling jittery and tired, and the wind sapped any initial enthusiasm I had very quickly. Allergies (or something) had my nose dripping and my throat sore.

Early on, all I could think about was what a bad idea this trip was. I’m not a biker; I don’t particularly enjoy biking—it’s just a way to get around—so why the hell should I bike across the country?

I guess, as one tourist has said before me, I didn’t want to miss out on a great experience. A cross-country bike trip sounded like a great experience. It sounded huge. It sounded Hemingway. It sounded like a fine way to see the country, to build character, to meet people, to become more worldly.

Build character? All I could think about was how pissed-off, tired, disgusting, congested, and weakened I was. I was miserable; I wanted to stop, sit by the road, and weep. That’s building character?

But the thought of all this misery made me keep going. Another reason I started this trip was to face emotional poles and walk away unscathed. Or at least walk away.

I could see how low I was and somewhere I knew that the lows make the highs.

So I thought about Bukowski and his going into the post office for a 12 hour shift horribly hung-over and I smiled and kept pedaling, however ineffectual each stroke was.

I thought about a high-school anecdote my friend Jake Perrone told me: he was ordered to carry around lacrosse goals for hours one practice. It was brutal, but he got it together and just started laughing at the horror. He laughed his way through the practice and ended up in one piece. Jake may not even remember the day he told me that years ago, but it stuck with me and I think about it whenever I’m in a spot.

Would I do another cross-country tour again next year, knowing what I do now? No way.

That’s not to say there haven’t been wonderful parts of the experience so far. I’ve met fascinating people, seen wild and strange things, and I’ve learned how to camp out behind convenience stores and live off the value menu, for whatever that’s worth. I’ve found a new city that I’ll someday call home for a while.

But much of the trip just seems like irrational self-flagalation. How would I do it instead? I’d bus or drive and take leisurely weeks in a five or six cool places with CouchSurfers. Maybe that way I’d actually get to write for more than a few hours everyday (maybe even outside of fast-food joints!).

All the griping aside, I’m finishing this trip. I want to get to SF more than any gain to be had from spending the next month in a sane way.

Do I regret doing the trip? It’s too early to tell, but I don’t think so. There are probably a bunch of subtle benefits that I don’t realize yet.

We stopped at a convenience store for lunch, since it was the only source of hot food for miles. We sat outside at a picnic table eating the surprisingly decent lunch. A few minutes later, I fell asleep under a tree in the midday heat. The townspeople probably thought I’d died.

We pounded out the remaining 30 miles to Arkansas City. By the end, it was all I could do to keep pedaling and not fall down.

We dropped by a bike shop and I replaced my rear-derailleur for $20, since the old one had fallen apart before we left Caney. I’m convinced that when I get to Lombard St., the Trek will explode into its atmoic parts like the Bluesmobile outside of the Calumet County assessor’s office. Mike poked around for some kevlar tires while I watched the mechanic twist a 20-year-old spring with two sets of pliars. He looked unimpressed.

I made an effort not to ask the mechanic if I could buy one of the drinks from the small refrigerator he kept under the desk.

We got dinner at Braum’s, some combination ice-cream/hamburger stand, which was simultaneously awesome and horrible. The decor looked like it hadn’t been updated since the early nineties (awesome), but the burgers were extremely salty (horrible). Thankfully, an after-dinner milkshake made up for the burger.

We slept on the concrete floor of an outdoor pavilion in the city park without asking anyone. This went down fine, except when a pack of high-schoolers showed up after midnight, yelling and stomping around like a pack of enraged Ricki Lake fans.

Surprisingly good place to sleep.

These heartless kids even came into the pavilion, saw us, verbally acknowledged their sighting of us “sleepers”, and then proceeded to hang out for half an hour doing a profane rendition of Riverdance on the pavilion’s stage.

Primitive Kansas Teens: 1, Ad Hoc Adventurers: 0.

You wouldn't believe how well sound carries from there.

The damn irony of it was that we couldn’t do a thing: the public park belongs just as much to these kids as it does to us, if not more so, and nobody was supposed to be there after dark. Eventually they decided to go buy some weed, allowing Mike and I to sleep peacefully during the remaining hours before sunup.

I have seen more of these in the past week than I have had hot meals
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Day 27: The stray in Caney

I’m sitting on a bench in the windy city park of Caney, Kansas. Big incandescent lights throw pools of orange down on most of the park. This ocicat, probably a stray, sits next to me, occasionally making brave stabs at scaling my keyboard and mucking up my text file.

It’s ten o’clock at night, but that doesn’t stop the locals from running around, within earshot of the park, trying to catch a rabbit. At one point, the small-time hunters were outside of my tent. Two of them passed and all I heard was one say to the other, “the kid ain’t crazy, he just readin’ in a tent!”

Several families are playing with their kids in the park. At ten o’clock at night, when it’s dark and windy. I’m not sure if this is typical for the state of Kansas. It is surreal and oddly comforting.

Late

This cat’s still next to me, statuesque and waiting for attention.

She’s been following me around for the past 50 minutes. Lurking outside the tent while I read Bukowski. Coyly slinking ten feet behind me while I walk around the park, enjoying the coolness and the wind. Rolling in the grass when I finally stop to look around, check my phone.

Mike’s over at another corner of the park, writing by booklight. I don’t understand how the guy keeps a handwritten account of the trip. All that wrist movement must force economy of words.

A windy ten o’clock in Caney, Kansas.

Mike and the stray.

We got up and out of Wen’s today with record leisure. Wen made a beautiful breakfast of greens, pancakes, and an elaborate omlette. The meal even came with some yogurt-drink she’d whipped up. She said it contained all kinds of good bacteria.

We ate for a while and slowly, talking with Wen and Derya about their jobs and hometowns. Shortly afterwards we skedaddled because we were behind schedule, not to mention the poor women had a few things to do besides entertain fools like us.

Wen saw us off, asking questions about biking right up until we pedaled away down South Boston. The girl is so sweet and inquisitive.

Mike and I booked it hard out of Tulsa. We averaged 18MPH for the day, but early in the ride, we were clocked officially at 23MPH. I had waved to a black dude riding with his kid in a red mustang; the dude throttled his speed to ours and hovered beside us as we were trucking down Peoria. He opened the window and I asked, “hey man, how we doin’?”

He responded, “you boys are going 23MPH!” We cheered and he cheered and drove off. His kid was probably dumbstruck. I’m glad we got a solid sendoff from Tulsa.

We pedaled and pedaled and tore through the Oklahoma flats with a tailwind so heavy you’d think Apollo was blowing out birthday candles behind us. Before not too long we’d changed a flat and picked up enough mileage to stop for lunch.

We stopped at a little shack in a three-store town called Ramona that promised Hamburgers and Donuts. We walked in and chose the burgers. We ate the greasy, satisfying stuff while getting accosted by a crooked-eyed guy called Jim who may or may not have worked there.

Jim was missing three teeth and the majority of his monologue consisted of telling us to have a good day and avoid getting sucked into the vacuum created by large trucks. These are nice things to say, but repeated more than twice makes a listener tired.

I have been talked at by a few people in the past few weeks who make it very hard for me to decide whether or not they’re crazy. There are probably degrees.

It’s a moot question; I’d talk to them in any case since I’m always the hell out of town in an hour.

We left, having paid immediately after ordering, to make the remaining thirty-something miles to Caney.

Blowing through nothing.

Midway through those thirty miles, we stopped at a McDonald’s where I had a conversation with a girl who had seen the two of us earlier in the week at a gas station in Sinclair. She sat down right next to us without revealing this and immediately asked our names. We talked while I tried to edit a draft. I was weary from Jim, but I warmed up to her after a while.

She told me she’d dreamed of being an artist but decided to become a mortician instead because that gig pulls down $130k on your very first year. She said she was close to securing a spot doing this sort of work with a friend of her dad’s, the only thing preventing her being child-labor laws. She spoke clearly and quickly and was thirteen years old.

I gave her tired, snappy answers to actually-pretty-good questions.

At the end of our conversation, she asked if I was a wizard. I told her I was more of a zen-master. She said, “no-no-no, like a mind wizard.” I asked what that was. She explained that, usually, she’s mean to strangers, but she had been nice to me throughout our meeting, so that made me some kind of a wizard. She hypothesized (more realistically) that maybe it was because I reminded her of her sister’s cool ex-boyfriend.

She left the McDonald’s to go back to the football training camp she was working at for the summer, hustled out by a stocky, bald football coach who called her “tiger.”

I later walked out, wishing I had given the kid my email address so she could drop me a line, tell me how she’s doing every once in a while. I could watch her letters grow up. She sounded like she’ll make it okay.

The ride into Caney was easy with the tailwind and the plains. We ate at a sandwich shop without event. We found the city park a block down from the sandwich place and obtained permission from a police dispatcher to camp. It didn’t take too much effort.

Now I’m at a picnic table, still enjoying the shush of the wind through the trees and the dark Kansas evening. I hear flag-poles further down the street, the poles knocking against the metallic bases on the wind’s time.

Provided the cat lets up with the tent-pawing, I’ll sleep like an old country beagle in a heatwave.

I tried to get a picture. She did her best being friendly.

Day 26: Jenny at Coffee House

Rest day in Tulsa. Will fill in later.

Day 25: Tulsa swing

Tulsa is everything that Coppola’s Rumble Fish led me to expect; all manmade gleam, western neon, and noiry art-deco.

*Rumble Fish*, 1983.

We came into the city through the west along 412, a sun-soaked strip of discount body shops and Mexican restaurants. The roads were reasonably well-paved, especially relative to the outskirts of Memphis. Zagging neon lettering already advertised Tulsa’s fascination with the modern as envisioned in the hopeful fifties.

Tulsa is a hip half-indian cowgirl toting a laser-tipped popgun, eating a greasy burger in a streamlined, chromium diner and blasting rockabilly through cheap headphones. I knew this when I saw the skyline, riding in, framed by the coffeeshops, rusted garages, and pool-halls below.

Tulsa, and I imagine Oklahoma in general, is confused and unique in part because of location. It isn’t quite the south or the west, but some strange meeting of the two. Oklahoma is the buffer between Texas and Kansas, standing behind the brash, dip-spitting former and gazing into the unending empty plains of the latter.

Mike and I made quick tracks through the hinterlands and into the city, our legs primed and pumping at full capacity from the day’s ninety-mile ride. We turned off of 15th onto Cinnci and found our host’s place, a spacious two-bedroom in an up-scale, victorian cluster of apartments¹.

Tulsan hinterlands.

We met Wendelene outside of the complex just as she was setting out for downtown. After a quick hello, Mike and I changed in the apartment, stripped the gear off our bikes, then took the unburdened frames out for a ride to find dinner.

Wendelene's courtyard.

Wendelene's balcony

After meandering around a strikingly-beautiful (but dead) business district, we finally found an upscale restaurant to eat at. The place was pricey, but Mike was starving and therefore not long on patience. When you travel in a group, you have to take into consideration the hunger-level of every constituent; one collapses and everyone is miserable. I’ve been in a similar spot and I know it isn’t fun, so I agreed to stop despite the pricey appearance.

It'll BOK.

We walked in. The lavish silverware arrangments and dark wood scared the hell out of me.

I sat down and warmed up to the idea of a good meal, watching a lone serviceman nurse a plate of chicken in a booth across the room from us; he looked eager and friendly but had the bashful loneliness that’s tough to shake when alone in an unfamiliar city.

Daily Grill

We then ate about the best $25 meal I’ve ever tasted. I ordered meatloaf, served with mashed potatoes and broccoli, and a pint of Shiner Bock. Our waiter was a slick mulatto with a voice that had a thread-count of at least 300.

During dinner, a heavy rain swelled for a few minutes, eventually petering out like a spat between temperamental newlyweds.

Dark and wet, but the air was clean.

To the bicycle race, down spilt-watercolor streets.

We finished up at the Daily Grill and called Wendelene; she had just rode down to Archer and Main, where a bicycle race was being held. I almost passed it up because I was beat; glad I didn’t.

We biked down to Archer and Main through the fresh, wet streets. After a few blocks, Main was walled off to motorists and we biked into a throng of onlookers, all staring at a street closed to traffic and reserved for the flock of racers who would periodically rush by, whipping air and coaxing excited yells from the crowd.

Blur

We looked around a moment at the convoy of trucks branded by bicycle companies and the bars across the street. The sun was just setting. We continued the hunt for Wendelene by crossing the racecourse at the go-ahead of a cop working the crossing.

All sides of the closed street were pulsing with laughter and drinking. The crowd was large enough to make us believe we were in a city but small enough to feel like a comfortable, successful block party. Music spilled out of the bars and flooded the sidewalk. The sun was just setting; artificial light began to overtake natural.

We kept north on Main still in search of Wendelene. Mike got antsy and hopped into a bar, returning with a beer, when I got a call from Wendelene giving us more detailed directions.

We met her and some friends in front of a bratwurst stand. It was Wendelene, Jenny: a hilariously outspoken girl; Derya, Wendelene’s Turkish, electrical-engineering, and delicate rooommate; and Daniel, a well-built, blonde Californian about 5’10” also couchsurfing with Wendelene. Daniel was in town for a century around Tulsa, starting early the next morning.

We chatted for a while with the group, then I accompanied Jenny to Crystal Pistols, an atmospheric saloon where Elliot Smith played over the speakers. Jenny paid the barman $10 for five cans of PBR and we smuggled the cans out in my backpack while the barman cooperatively turned his back. We repeated this same routine two or three more times throughout the night.

Inside Crystal Pistols.

The drinking began.

We watched the race for a while and it got dark. I was ecstatic, taking in the energy generated by the crowd and standing in the shimmering Tulsan lights. The mammoth skyline sat cooly a mile away and searchlights swung smoothly through the darkened sky. The flow of beer consumed in open air lightened me and the group talked and laughed until the apogee and end of the race.

After the race ended, we hung on for a while at our post and then started south on Main to a bar. Jenny, Mike, and I hung outside in a dim area beside the bar, enjoying the night air and talking the talk of blossoming drunks. I admired Jenny’s pocket notepad, which contained a skeleton itinerary for each day of the week, handwritten and doodled.

Derya eventually pulled us inside the bar, where I no longer needed to stash beer in my backpack like some off-color Santa Clause. We got drinks and then hit the dancefloor. The DJ spun 80s remixes and even an LCD Soundsystem track. Tulsans can dance. We moved with unencumbered, cartoonish freedom and we danced with a glow reserved for coming-of-age movies about high school house parties. I think the place was called The Soundpony Saloon.

Dancing in Soundpony

Outside the bathrooms.

After a few tracks on the floor, we left the bar and stood outside it in the middle of the street. The girls were oggling a group of spandex-clad racers while Mike and I joked around with Daniel.

Daniel had landed a job in McAllister, OK working at an ammunitions factory. He’d met up with Wendelene through a CouchSurfing potluck held in Tulsa. He reminded me a lot of a good friend from home, Alex Katzenstein. A cop car, lights active, crawled by.

After a while, we peeled the girls off the bikers and began the bike to Joe Momma’s, where, allegedly, pizza could be purchased in giant slices and cups of High Life could be had at $1². Everyone in the group unlocked their bikes and we rode south on Main.

Jenny was drunk off her ass, so she tore out ahead, running a light and climbing the bridge on Main. We tried to stop her, since she was about to ride the wrong way down a major one-way street, but our shouts were only met with more pedaling. I tore off after her while the group tried to figure out what to do.

A minor misadventure followed, eventually putting us all at Joe Momma’s after a wild chase after Jenny down 1st and going the wrong way.

Outside Joe Momma's, around midnight.

We saddled up to a big table at Joe’s and ordered a large pie and some beers. We snapped the first pie up, then placed an order for a replacement and two pitchers (two pitchers) of High Life. Jenny somehow found an electric guitar and began to serenade us, much to the delight of another customer who was suit-and-tie’d and named Joshua.

Despite our best attempts to kill the pitchers, we ended up pouring the remnants into our waterbottles³ and leaving Joe’s.

Jenny again escaped on bike, choosing an impressively dangerous route back to Wendelene’s apartment. This time, Mike chased after her.

Daniel and I biked together, the other two girls following close behind, and we talked while passing the High Life waterbottle back and forth. I liked biking discombobulated on the darkened pedestrian trail

This whole night was made possible, I realized, by the strangers we’d met on the internet. We were tight with a group, even if we’d only known them for a few hours, and that made the night. When you’re traveling, other people are your greatest resource. Tap the locals and you are far more likely to have a good time in a foreign place.

Someone driving my body carried my bike up the wooden, outdoor staircase and rested it outside of Wendelene’s door. The same ghost had me take out my contacts and unroll my sleeping bag. Daniel, Mike, and I crashed in the living room at approximately 2AM.

I slept like I had been wandering drunk over a mutt city after biking ninety miles.

to give you a idea of how incredibly cheap Tulsa is to live in, Wendelene’s awesome, centrally-located apartment can be bought for $100k. $100k!
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as you can probably guess by now, any attempts at avoiding Joe Momma’s would be futile
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like any self-respecting, lush bicyclists
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Day 24: Edge of Arkansas

We woke up in the airplane hangar and did the usual morning stuff using the upstairs bathroom. When we finally made our way down to the main floor, Marvin and his son, Matthew, were grilling sausages just outside the hangar by the de facto diningroom table.

We met Matthew, who likes Jim Carrey and Mystery Science Theater 3000 and had spent the last three years in Monterey running some branch of the Army’s language school. He was a funny, down-to-earth guy, and I enjoyed talking to him.

We finished up with a full breakfast and reluctantly left the hangar.

We bombed a few hills and before too long we were out of Huntsville. I decided to stop listening to music for the foreseeable future, since it’s something I do frequently at home, so doing it on the road dilutes the trip.

Downdown.

The ride was uneventful until we hit Springdale 30 miles down the road, which is a large-ish town with most modern amenities. We stopped at a McDonald’s briefly. On the way out, I took a huge sneeze, got thrown off-kilter, and wound up on my ass on the McLawn. Unknown to me, something had fallen out of my jersey pocket. I recovered from the daze and kept trucking.

Springdale.

We stopped at a Mexican place for lunch. A healthy hispanic presence in the town made me feel more at home. Our waitress was nice but nearly incomprehensible. We chowed and chilled and paid with plastic and left.

Just as we were biking out of Springdale, I patted my right jersey pocket. Huh. No lump, no weight. No camera. Shit.

We pulled over and I figured I’d left it at the Mexican place during a hurried tear-down of the fort we’d built in our booth. We turned around and made the hike back to the restaurant.

No dice. They hadn’t found a camera and it wasn’t in our booth. Outside, it hit me that there was a high likelihood it’d fallen out during my crash.

I biked like hell back to the McDonald’s while Mike made a smart use of the error and headed for a bike-shop to get tubes. I’d begun adjusting to the fact that I’d lost my $200 camera and the pictures I’d taken in Huntsville and Ozark, and began mentally composing a sour tweet to the Arkansan who’d swipped my Canon.

I biked and biked and finally made the few miles back to the scene of the crash. Lo and behold, there was a black square of metal laying in the grass. I’m not sure if the spot was just inconspicuous, but I’ll give the folks of Sprindale a big thanks anyway for not lifting my camera.

I met up with Mike at the bike shop and we headed west and out of Springdale.

Western Arkansas.

After 25 miles or so, we hit our destination for the evening, Siloam Springs. We were slated to stay with a professional photographer, but he was out of town on a wedding shoot so he’d punted to his roommate.

The roommate, Jesse, had a play to act in from 6PM-10PM, so he left the door unlocked for us. After hanging out at a small cafe for a while, we biked over to their place, let ourselves in, and cleaned up.

Downtown Siloam.

Mike ordered a pizza, which we polished off in short order.

We hung out until a girl, Nicole, showed up looking for Jesse. She knew about the play, but apparently had plans with Jesse for afterwards. We sat with her awhile talking about the town and what she was doing there (graphic design).

After an hour or so, Jesse showed up and we welcomed him into his own house. Jesse grew up in Nevada, so we spoke about a few places we should hit in the west: ranchers we can visit with and springs that’ll provide us with water.

Jesse and Nicole then split for a club, which meant bedtime for us. I stayed up a little later than usual working on an update. After finishing that and hooking rabbit up to the wall-juice, I called it quits.

Day 23: Pain, pain, pain in the Ozarks

I’ll be condensing the entries for the following days up until Tulsa. Giving each day a full treatment has proved to be too demanding given the amount of downtime we’ve had in the past few days.

Mike and I woke up in the Hillbilly Motel and got the hell out as fast as we could. We ate biscuits and gravy at a gas station and stocked up on carbs for the ride through the Ozarks, where we suspected there would be little to eat.

We started the ride and pretty immediately hit a good little climb. Okay, fine, can deal with that.

Looks innocuous, right?

The second climb was worse. I was sweating more profusely than I had at any other point on the trip despite the relatively mild heat. I blew the dust off the breathing patterns and mental chants¹ from the Blue Ridge Parkway and worked my way up the hill.

At one point, the climb wore me down and I shouted “BREAK SOON.” Shortly thereafter, Mike pulled over into a shady spot by the side of the narrow road, a downward incline on the other side.

We’d packed the two extra, awful beers that we had left over from last night in Food Bag 2. As I laid my bike down, panting like a heavyset Labrador, I asked myself how I could make this situation more ridiculous.

Only one answer came shining through, and it drove me to immediate action. I tore open Food Bag 2, ripped one of the loose beers out of it, and twisted the cap off with a dramatic explosion of beer.

I poured the tepid brew down my throat. Mike’s deadpan response was, “that’s stupid. I don’t care if you die.” I shrugged and signed off on a mental seal of agreement, then made one more dead soldier for the state of Arkansas.

We got back to the climb, hit the crest, and snapped some photos. We descended and the wind through my sweat-soaked jersey felt like a sheet of ice on my back.

The horror ended when we hit a small town, St. Paul, that had a closet called the Snack Shack that served one of the best hamburgers I’ve ever eaten. The locals asked us questions and expressed surprise upon hearing that we’d biked up the Pig Trail (those horrible climbs). Whenever Atkins tells you to take a “scenic route” on bicycle, think twice.

Took a while, but it was worth the wait.

We made it to the town of Huntsville, where Mike’s third cousin Marvin lives. In an airplane hangar.

We went to the Walmart in town and stocked up on supplies, first sitting outside and drinking sodas. I was totally content with sitting in the foyer, watching people enter and exit the ‘Mart. After a hard day of biking, any activity that doesn’t involve pedaling is a joy.

We had ice-cream at a gas station and then got a call from Marvin during which he revealed that he had cold beer in the fridge. This perked us right up and we biked up a few wicked hills to the airport, which, according to Marvin, is the highest airport in Arkansas.

Into the airport.

We got to his hangar and talked to him for a while, poking around his tool-stuffed, nonstandard house. I loved that place; the huge collection of tools reminded me of my Dad.

Marvin is an awesome guy with a DIY-mentality. Everything he’s taught himself, he said, he did so by diving in and starting a serious project.

Where's that phillips head...

Marvin makes his living fixing up old airplanes and doing niche work on airplane parts. He told us many interesting things about the industry, one of which was that there hasn’t been any innovation in non-jet planes because of FAA regulations.

Sleep area.

He told us we had free-reign of the upstairs portion of the hangar, so we went up there to shower and change.

Marvin in the diningroom.

We spent the remaining evening talking with Marvin about various things² while eating delicious hamburgers and drinking cold beer. I slept like a football player at an opera.

changing the subject of all swears and profanities from “Blue Ridge Parkway” to “Ozarks”
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his friend being beaten up, abducted, and returned by drug lords in Mexico; his son Matthew’s various adventures in the army; his own adventures riding planes around the continent.
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Day 22: Hey, what's a century?

I woke promptly on Wednesday, June 8th, on Richard’s living room couch. Mike was sprawled on an armchair under the cover of a blanket. I raised my head out of the warmth of the couch’s corner and looked around slowly like a groundhog surveying a cold winter morning.

We eventually brought some motion to the living room and made a few visits to the bathroom, waking up Richard in the process. Samantha followed him out shortly afterwards and began to cook potatoes and fry eggs over-easy.

Minutes later, we sat at the dining-room table halving yokes with knives and shoveling potatoes while R&S looked on. We didn’t talk too much, but I’m not sure who does at 6:40AM. The potatoes were extremely well-prepared and the breakfast was delicious and filling.

After the meal, we finished packing and gathered outside for a picture. We rolled our bikes out front and said goodbye to our hosts as they pet the neighbor’s pack of mutts. R&S were good to us and I’d welcome them into my home any day of the week.

D'aww.

Mike and I biked on. Long day ahead; we had around a hundred miles to Ozark. We biked quietly through Conway, a typical, sprawling Arkansan town. We waded through the light morning traffic without event.

Outside of Conway.

Beautiful, flat nothing.

The ride for the day took us along the Arkansas river. We rarely caught sight of the water, but our elevation relative to the foothills surrounding us throughout the day made us know it was always close by.

I can’t now recall what sort of thoughts I was having during the ride; I think most of the day was directed by music.

Sometimes we did see water. Lots of water.

Around lunchtime, we pulled into an especially well-decorated McDonald’s and I saw the most depressing newspaper front-page of all time.

TIGER NO US OPEN!?

We found a corner of the McDonald’s, towards the back, to claim for ourselves. The mod decor and cushy seating lured us in and before ten minutes had gone by, we had the fort fully set up. I was a little winded and didn’t feel like writing, so I read a sample of some Bukowski novel, Post Office, which I really enjoyed. Bukowski is a lewd, drunk son of a bitch, but his prose is lean and colorful without being gaudy, arbitrary, or presumptive like the work of some contemporaries¹.

Bukowski didn’t write in mystical, marketable generalities or ungrounded abstractions like many peers, but he described specific things and events and gave you enough of a narration to piece together what he was getting at. The guy had subtlety and he used words as purposeful tools. He had reasoned principles and stuck to them unwaveringly, whether or not he lost a menial job, missed out on fast cash, or got into a one-sided fight.

I escaped into the hilarious, crude anecdotes for a while, then quit that and talked to Mike about the route; we’re² planning a deviation from the Adventure Cycling maps come Colorado. I pulled up a map of the US on my phone and saw our progress at a macroscopic level for the first time in recent memory.

Almost halfway.

We talked a little with a black truck-driver, who initially came across as very chatty, but ended up being a gentleman. He was wearing a headset, which made him look as though he was working an air-traffic control shift remotely, and BearShare’ing³ on a laptop.

I went back for another pass at a fudge sundae and a chicken sandwich⁴, then we were outta there.

Plenty of miles and a few hills later, we were ten miles outside of Ozark and pedaling still only because the scent of barbecue two-stepped across our memories. Mike signaled the number of miles remaining by holding digits up above his head and I cheered whenever this happened.

Roadside flowers.

So close to Ozark.

We finally pulled into the cozy vacation town, which was littered with liquor stores. There are a few dry counties in Arkansas, so I assume the cluster of booze-wells put one of them nearby. Either that or there isn’t much to do in Ozark. We made a few turns off of Main and found Rivertowne Barbecue, the restaurant that had served as the carrot for the later half of the day. Four and a half stars on GMaps’ aggregate index can’t be wrong.

And it wasn’t. The place had atmosphere, service was impressive⁵, and the food was awesome. They even offered us free cake at the end on account of the place’s 11th birthday.

Oh hey dinner.

We finished up at Rivertowne and walked outside, en route back to the bikes until we were stopped by a server at Rivertowne. This dude, maybe in his mid-forties, didn’t speak the Arkansan twang. He asked us the basic trip questions, then got to asking about DC; he revealed he’d been a mover around the capital area for a few years and described a few of the places he’d worked with alarmingly accurate characterization. He told us he was originally from Boston and moved around a lot. He said the humidity and heat that comes with proximitiy to the AR river was killing him.

Shortly after we started talking to him, our waitress stuck her head out of the front door to call him in, saying that someone was upchucking something fierce in the back and he was needed. He waved her off and continued talking to us, as though uninterrupted, for a few more minutes. He had an easy way of moving and talking; the both of us enjoyed meeting him.

We had called around to a few motels in town during dinner and the cheapest sat at an intimidating $45. We weren’t too excited about the fee, but tomorrow threatened a rough ride through the Ozark mountains, so a motel stay was probably wise. We agreed that I’d buy beer while Mike would scope out the motel with me conveniently out of sight.

I bought some awful swill⁶ and gave Mike a ring. He told me that, while he hadn’t found the Ozark Inn, he had found an unlisted prospect: the Hillbilly Inn, which offered rooms for $30.

The motel wasn’t constantly manned, so Mike had to call the proprietor and wait on him. I 10-4’d in response and started biking for the Inn.

When I made the turn into the Hillbilly Motel, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was the phrase that came to mind. The place was totally dilapidated; paint peeled, wreckage lounged, and an uneven gravel road framed the shoddy row of rooms.

Where's Mike?

The “front office” was a darkened hovel with furniture scattered around inside. I saw Mike’s bike and rode over, placing mine up against his in the typical locking fashion that economizes space best. I looked around for Mike — nothing.

The Hillbilly Inn check-in desk.

“Oh god,” I thought, “they’ve got him.” Just as I wrote Mike off as having been axed in half, he walked out of a room four doors down, beside him a stout man with beet-red cheeks, apparently the proprietor. He had the seedy, dingy look of a guy who has night-sweats over dog races⁷ and forgets to pay his utilities. He probably does neither, but that’s the way he looked. Mike paid him 30 dollars in cash and he went on his way.

As we were walking into the room, which smelled vaguely of piss and onions, Mike told me that the proprietor had said he’d thought the previous occupants had started a fire in here.

A cathode-ray-tube television sat comatose on a speckled plywood table. A duct-taped doorknob promised indoor plumbing. Our bikes rested comfortably against the rough drywall.

This motel was perfect.

Home sweet home.

Mike and I unpacked the brews and downed two each, then bolted the door and unloaded onto the reluctant mattress. The sheets were clean.

The Snickers knife volunteered for the night-shift on the bedside table.

Burroughs, I’m looking at you, you hack. I could rewrite your catalogue over a rainy weekend with three dry Bics and a bad case of food poisoning.
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Mike, that is, with very occasional suggestions from me.
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welcome to 2002.
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total cost of $2.22, or thereabouts
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I had my Dr. Pepper refilled three times before the food even came.
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Bud Light Golden Wheat — yeaacchh
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and not in the cool Robert Redford, Lucky Number Slevin kinda way
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Day 21: The rainforest couple

We woke up Tuesday, June 7th, to McCrae’s small-town morning heat. As is typical, Mike got up before I did and, though I heard him rustling around the tent, I rolled over, shut my eyes, and told myself to keep sleeping. The heat has a way of discouraging that.

No reason to rush, though. We had an easy day ahead: only 35 miles to Conway. Sometimes we inevitably have short days because of the locations of willing CouchSurfer hosts. After the 95 the day beforehand, we welcomed a lazy morning.

We decided to let the tent stand awhile to let the morning sun dry away the dew. We walked over to the convenience store, banking on quaint McCrae not to steal or vandalize our camping gear.

Temporary home beneath the water-tower.

We sat at our table in the store, practicing our usual pastimes, Mike at Jack and me at rabbit. I sipped a hot, black coffee drawn from an industrial-sized pot.

After we’d both used the facilities to clean up, we went back to the tent and disassembled. Before getting out of town, we wanted to drop by City Hall to thank Pam, grab a picture, and use their assuredly cleaner facilities to change into the bike gear.

We wheeled to City Hall, meeting some guys in a pickup truck outside the Hall who were familiar with our story. Apparently, a good portion of the town was keeping tabs on us. I guess when you live in a town of 600, unkempt cross-country bikers are a hot rhubarb.

When we went into the small building, Pam generously offered us the bathroom to wash up and do whatever else. The bathroom was attached to the town’s courtroom, which we found incongruously formal and therefore very entertaining. We changed and filled our water-bottles and I should’ve hit Mike with the gavel but didn’t.

"Bailiff, get these idiot bikers out of here."

We got a picture with Pam, that sweet woman, and another gal from the office, then were on our way.

Mike looks more like Blackbeard by the day.

The ride was uneventful; I don’t remember any of it.

I do remember getting into the McDonald’s around lunchtime, which was adjoined with a Shell station, because our roosting there was contingent on the presence of a power outlet available for use. I had to search the place high and low¹ after Mike had come back saying the well was dry, eventually finding a hanging extension cord snaked behind a gambling machine of some sort. The ladies at the register told us to have at it, so we set up shop for a few hours there.

We split from the McShell headed for the outskirts of Conway, where our host Samantha and her boyfriend expected us at 6PM. We pulled into their neighborhood looking like Mormon missions in a Blondie video, timidly unsure of the house we’d be knocking on. Luckily, Richard and Samantha stepped out of a front door and welcomed us onto their property.

We took the bikes into the backyard and locked them into Richard’s shed, afterwards stepping into the climate-controlled comfort of their home.

Mike and I chatted with Samantha and Richard and showered alternately, as has become the routine on arrival to a CouchSurfing host’s place. We learned that Samantha (and, by association, Richard) were planning to go live in the uninhabited rainforest for a year carrying only a machete and a fire-kit, which I thought was crazier than a shithouse rat², but it sure made for interesting conversation.

Awesome hosts, doing what awesome hosts often do.

Samantha and Richard had a very entertaining dynamic that I’ve noticed trends with successful couples: Richard would often give Samantha a hard time in good humor. He’d play counterpoint to most any stance she’d take. Mary Jean and John Jordon had a similar way of rustling the other’s feathers.

These lightweight disagreements create a healthy, playful tension between any two people, especially a couple. Perpetual agreement is boring and who the hell wants it soft all the time anyway?

Samantha whipped up a delicious meal of chicken and pasta. Mike and I sailed through our plates while S&R told us about Samantha’s trip to Italy, her stay in Miami studying various tattoo artists, and a spontaneous vacation the two had taken to New Mexico, sleeping in cars and exploring caverns.

After the table had been cleared of food, the four of us sat in the living room, each using a computer in some way. Samantha, Richard, and I all sat on one couch. I half-mindedly recaptured the route for the day in GMaps while joining Richard in wisecracking on the object of Sam’s pastime: Sex and the City 2. Sam listened to the movie through earbuds while we tried to figure out what in gods name the dumb bimbos were doing, sans sound.

After a few sweet minutes of this, Mike and I dropped hints indicating we were ready to lay a headstone on the day, which Richard immediately picked up on. Before we even had the electronics tucked in, Richard had laid out enough sleeping material to suffocate a small elephant. We dug in and let the couches anesthetize our senses away.

I really wanted to write and chow on apple pies
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and, if you’ll recall, I’ve been spending 8 hours a day on hundred-degree pavement, chased by 10-ton trucks, and surrounded by pungent, dead animals.
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Day 20: A flat 95 to McRae

We woke up behind the FlashMart, the tent moist with dew, and groggily wandered into the convenience store, our hygiene gear in tow. The lady working the counter was different than the one that’d seen us lounging around last night, so we got a healthy, bewildered stare. We weren’t wearing our bike clothing, so, for her, the probability that we were vagrants was significantly higher than if we were wearing spandex. The bike gear helps indicate to clerks that we’re just crazy white guys with enough money to bike to remote areas like Parkin and camp behind their one convenience store in town. This then indicates that we’re less likely to cause trouble.

Good morning, FlashMart.

We shuffled around the convenience store, still waking up while gathering cheap confections to compose a breakfast. We scavanged about four dollars worth of sugar each, then presented ourselves to the still-chilly clerk. We paid and sat at a booth and inhaled calories a while.

After we’d eaten, we took turns brushing teeth and changing in a bathroom. After a few weeks on the road, the details of one convenience store bathroom vs. the last run together, and a strange familiarity can hit you even if you’ve only been in the john a few seconds.

While Mike took his turn changing, I sat talking to one of the locals for a solid few minutes. What this rural, hatted black dude was saying was almost incomprehensible, but I gave the occasional nod and tried to grab onto what few shards of coherent thought the guy threw at me. He was a nice guy, but mostly repeated himself and had a hard time taking a hint.

We changed, packed the bikes up, and pedaled out of Parkin.

We spent a lot of time biking, but it didn’t seem that way. The meditative lull that I’d strived for on earlier days came easily with the flat terrain. A uniformly frequent pedal-stroke was all it took to keep moving, so that left me alone with music.

About the closest we'll get to a swimsuit edition of Mike's Ass.

Some people may find it unbearably boring, pedaling for hours on end through empty farmland, but I’ve had practice since early on. Back in grade school, come near summertime we’d cross the hot blacktop to the church for a strange ritual called “Stations of the Cross.” We’d spend three hours alternately kneeling and standing in the varnished pews of the church, readjusting our bodies every 20 minutes or so to face a new scene of the crucifixtion depicted in a one of the stained-glass windows.

The process was punctuated with prayer and painfully boring, but my feelings toward it were mixed: after all, three hours spent in church is three hours spent outside of the classroom.

This ritual taught me how to ward off boredom and entertain myself with thought, despite otherwise being a waste of time.

We pedaled through fields of muddy, dusty nothing, eventually getting to a little town with a restaurant, Ralph’s Hamburgers. We locked our bikes to a sign out front, taking one last bath in the thick heat, then we ducked inside for some cold drinks and hamburgers.

Locking up outside of Ralph's.

Ralph’s appeared to be run by an old Greek man, and I only guess at his being Greek by the fact that he put tzatziki sauce on hamburgers. I shouldn’t say “hamburgers;” what we ordered he called “Hubcaps,” which were hamburgers with patties about twice as thick, the condiments on the wrong side of the patties, and, as I said, slathered in tzatziki sauce. I loved the mess.

Now that's a tasty burger.

We sat a while in Ralph’s. I banged out an update and Mike continued on with Mr. Keruoac. At around 3PM, we paid up and left, unlocking the bikes and pedaling into westerly dust.

We hit one straightaway that ran parallel with a railroad; it continued on for over 15 miles. Biking it was like starring into some kind of optical illusion. I kept my gaze mostly low and let my mind wander to the throb of music.

N-n-n-nothing!

Without really being aware of it, we hit around 90 miles and pulled into the small town of McRae, population near 600. McRae, unlike almost every other small we’d hit so far, was charming. Town was centered around a quadrant about a sqaure mile in area; the only buildings open to us were the Post Office, a country restaurant (closed when we arrived), and a convenience store.

Little McRae.

Mike had called ahead and talked to a very friendly clerk at City Hall who’d said we’d been cleared to camp in the city’s parking lot, so we knew we’d be sleeping here tonight, but the town didn’t offer us anywhere to buy a hot dinner.

We walked into the convenience store and talked a little with the guy working the counter. He told us that just down the road, “no more than four miles, no less than three,” there were a few restaurants we could chow at, but he also had some hot food for sale. I almost immediately figured he wasn’t from here; I said something to that effect and he revealed that he was born and raised in Brooklyn. Both surprised and unsurprised¹, we asked him what the hell he was doing out here. He spread his hands out to emphasize the innards of the convenience store and said, “business.”

Mike and I decided to truck the few miles down the road for pizza, so we thanked him and left.

So worth it.

We finished the trek and had a wonderful meal in Pizza Hut. The Hut was decorated in brick and dark wood, unlike the bad Taco Bell imitations that pass for Huts in Reston.

We trucked back to set up the tent. As we pulled into the city park, situated right beneath the town’s water-tower, a cream-white Prius pulled up behind us and Pam, the woman Mike had talked to on the phone, drove up to say hello. She also brought with her a plate of beef brisket and carrots. Sweet, heavenly woman!

The McRae convenience store. Mike and I hypothesized that Ray was actually on the run.

We went back to the convenience store and talked a little more with Ray, the Brooklynite, then we found a bench to annex and stayed a while reading and writing. Mike got tired before closing time, so he ambled back to the water-tower for a head start on some sleep. I stuck around the store, still working on the Memphis update, and got into a conversation with the janitor, another New Yorker who’d spent some time in the California State Penitentiary. He was a cordial, socially apt ex-con with a few inconveniently placed tattoos.

Eventually I bagged it for the tent and fell asleep in the dark heat. The night was littered with train whistles and the thunder of fraight cars rumbling by.

he had spiked hair, earrings, and a flatbush accent. c’mon.
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Day 19: Escape from Memphis

After ingesting a batch of beer and misadventuring across Memphis, we slept like rocks. We rose at 7AM; back to business.

Mike made 4 packets of oatmeal to split between the two of us and it took less than 5 minutes to renew our memberships in the Clean Bowl Club. We dressed, packed, and loaded our bikes outside Brittany’s door. One last sweep of the apartment and we were gone, traveling the same route we had seen twice yesterday.

Before long, we hit the red, dusty streets of Memphis proper and pumped our legs through some familiar avenues. The city looked like a busted antique in the unrelenting morning sun.

After a few turns through the labyrinthine west, the De Soto bridge was in sight. How exactly we could access the bridge was not obvious; we had to stop in a nearby park to study maps before seeing a concrete staircase that led to the bridge’s sidewalk. We shortcut onto the pedestrian walkway through the park.

Crossing the Mississippi wasn’t as I had imagined it would be; it’s nothing so striking as crossing one of the bridges over the Hudson. The river is wide and silty, giving it a thick brown color and an unobvious depth. The bridge itself was grimey and bare; the walkway we biked on was thin and dirty.

Across the De Soto.

After a few minutes, we arrived at the other end, officially exiting Tennessee and entering Arkansas. Easy, right?

Not so. Arkansas apparently isn’t interested in anyone entering who is unable to do so on an interstate, so the walkway dumped us into the thick, tall grass beside I-40. To boot, there was no clear way to get west.

We didn’t expect the harsh welcome; through our two previous states, there were usually auxiliary roads that ran parallel to the massive concrete veins of the interstate. GMaps seemed to think there was no such convenience here. How the hell do pedestrians and cyclists get from Memphis, TN to West Memphis, AR?

After a few minutes of shrugging our shoulders and baking in the morning heat, Mike devised some hackneyed route consisting entirely of back roads that would drop us into I-40’s first exit. Since our choices were limited to either braving the back roads or thumbing on the side of the interstate, we began to wheel down through the dense greenery and onto a dirt road leading under the bridge we’d just crossed.

A sign of things to come.

We pedaled hesitantly; I wondered what kind of terrain we’d find around the corner.

Under the bridge, the road had been flooded, but it wasn’t dire enough to deter us. The water was only a few inches deep, so we rolled through, disturbing the even surface of the warm, colloided water. I stuck around snapping a few pictures while Mike pedaled ahead.

Looks like a scene from Final Fantasy 7. Did someone bean me with a PlayStation?

As we went down the road, the foliage became more and more aggressive and we felt increasingly farther from civilization. The place felt calm, but I wouldn’t wanna stick around for the after-dark showing.

Okay, so I'm actually in a video game now.

After a mile or so, we cleared the structure of the bridge and made our way into an absolute vacuum. The only things ahead for miles were dust, water, and a few telephone polls.

Riding on gravel is a little unnerving. You get almost no traction and your weight is continually shifting involuntarily because the rocks throw your wheels around, so it’s easy to wreck. But after you get into it for a while, the brutality is kind of fun. A few times, one of us would laugh when the other would almost eat shit.

Once in a while we’d point back to Memphis, only a few miles away and gape at the rapid deterioration. Mike said, “how is it that 300,000 people live right there and we’re biking around in this?” It was then I realized that I was a long way from home.

Memphis to godforsaken wilderness in 10 miles flat.

We biked on through the gravel, getting a few miles at snail’s pace. I felt like someone had shipped me back 100 years in time.

The gravel led to a slipshod bridge, so we crossed that and then took a break in the middle of the road. Believe me, no one complained. We cracked a few jokes about the absurd situation we found ourselves in, took a few shots of water, then continued on into a stretch of road shadowed by trees.

Mike was just loving it up that morning. Do you see the foam coming out of his mouth?

The shadows had concealed a surprise: a giant, dead tree was blocking the road. Someone throw me a colored t-shirt, ‘cause I’ve just entered an episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple. We let out a hybrid groan-chuckle that’s been polished to a sheen in the past three weeks and then began hoisting our bikes over the trunk’s two-foot diameter.

Instead of helping Mike, I "photo-document."

After clearing that obstacle, we rode through more gravel until we got to an intersection. Our choices were left for north, right for southeast. Memphis was cool and all, but we kind of wanted to stay in Arkansas, so we turned left and pedaled down a grassy, wet path to an odd scene.

"2BR+1BATH FIXER-UPPER. WATERFRONT PROPERTY GOOD SCHOOLS QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD. SEND SMOKE-SIGNAL TO (23.30972740, 8273.18138) FOR DETAILS."

A variety of wreckage awaited us down the road. An apparently-abandoned, elevated house sat next to some rubble; an RV crashed into a tree sat decomposing; assorted and weird flotsam sat quietly in the afternoon light.

Gets great mileage, though.

We were properly creeped out, so after ducking under a disconnected power-line, we naturally took a break right in the middle of the wreckage. This was convenient, because the continuation of the “road” led right into a freshly-minted lake.

Game over, man.

We stood around laughing about the bizarre situation we found ourselves in. Mike said aloud something I’d been thinking: “you know, if I were home, I’d just call my Mom and say, ‘Hey Mom, I’m in the middle of the desolate wilderness. Can you come pick me up and drive me down the freeway?’ But we’re not at home. We’re in goddamn Arkansas.”

I’d faced similar scenarios countless times on a PlayStation as a twelve-year-old. Clearly, the solution here was to go into the creaky, elevated house, find the giant, brass hand-lever, push x, and have a freshly-paved road slowly rise out of the flood in front of us with a mechanical whine.

In reality, I wouldn’t be setting a foot within ten feet of that strange hovel.

So that left our options at

Swim the lake.
Try faring the brush to the right of the lake, hoping that would connect up with something man-made down the line.
Turn around and redo the horrible obstacle course we'd just finished and risk getting dead on the interstate.

(1) was out from the get-go. We opted to leave the 20-pound machete at home, ruling out (2), so we went with (3) and reluctantly turned our bikes around, dodging a shock from the torn powerline a second time.

It’s ridiculous, hopeless situations like these that the trip is about.

Just after clearing the log again, we saw a pickup truck down the road. We waved our arms and shouted, hoping that the driver would see us and stop, but the show was to no avail. He kept driving down the road.

Luckily, the driver would stop periodically to clear brush from the road. Eventually, we caught up with him and asked him if there were any paved roads nearby — any way at all to get west of here. He laughed and basically said he didn’t know. He drove away, and we decided to try our hand at the interstate and hope for non-lethal injuries.

Flower on the side of I-40.

We scaled the green hill to the side of the violent highway, we wished each other well in the afterlife, and then we began biking in the shoulder.

It actually wasn’t that bad; I think we’ve found ourselves in more dangerous situations earlier in the trip. We passed a State Trooper laying a ticket on some motorist; all he did was give us this look that said, “what are these idiots doing?” We were happy that’s all he gave us, because one of the other main deterrents to taking the interstate was the fact that it’s illegal for non-motor-vehicles.

As we flew down the interstate, we caught sight of the wilderness we’d tried to traverse in vain. It tasted something like triumph, but the sweat made it a little more tangy.

We saw the sign for the first exit and got off the interstate as fast as our cranks would let us. We left the ramp, got onto Mound City Rd., and the world went flat.

Welcome to Arkansas.

We rode the level, alien sprawl ten miles to a town called Marion. I discovered my first flat of the trip on the way, but we made it to the McDonald’s before patching the tube.

After lunch, we hit 64 west and pounded out a few miles. I had someone’s electronic music shattering my headphones. Mike hit a flat, so we stopped and he fiddled with tire levers while I admired the windy void.

At this juncture, I should probably explain how we eat Snickers bars, since it’s a pretty major part of our day. The bars are extremely high calorie per unit cost so we love them; only problem is they melt like a sonuvabitch. We cut the tops off and suck out the chocolatey contents, as Brittany said, “like a Go-gurt.”

I find it slightly ironic and completely unsurprising that, so far, the only thing I’ve used my unsubtly-titled-“Extreme Ops” combat knife for is cutting the tops off of melted candy bars.

The flat fixed, we tore through the low-grade roads for a while, then stopped at the town of Parkin, which has a population of less than 2000.

Parkin is mostly a quiet nothing.

We biked through the town, starring at the empty and deteriorating buildings, and looking for somewhere we could buy a hot dinner. I saw two girls walking through the street, rode up to them, and asked if there were any restaurants in town open. They half-looked at me and said that if there were, they wouldn’t be open right now, but that I should try the “FlashMart” up on 64.

Parkin's ghostly city hall. Unsure if it's still in use.

Per the girls’ advice, we rode up to the FlashMarket and, hallelujah, they had hot food, seats, and power outlets. We chained our bikes to a fence in back of the ‘Mart, unloaded and settled in to the convenience-store ambiance for a few hours.

A typical scene.

On one of the trips spent carrying gear from the bikes into the FlashMart, an SUV pumping gas was blasting some funky R&B at an incredible volume; I could feel the vibrations on my chest. Dude must’ve been playing FlashJamz, vol. 1.

I swapped my contacts in the mart’s bathroom and did a little typing while Mike read more Kerouac.

Nightfall came and we set our tent up in back of the mart, under the cover of some brush. I half-thought that sleeping behind a convenience store was a recipe for getting rolled, but we slept undisturbed in the warm night.

Day 18: Memphis and The Kings

Light was streaming into Brittany’s living room through a sliding glass door when I came to on Saturday, June 4th. I was on a leather couch caty corner to the kitchenette. Gentle knocks of glassware connecting with counter-top came from nearby arrhythmically. I looked up to see Brittany making coffee; if she was aware of my consciousness, she didn’t show it.

I spent a few minute rolling around and taking occasional glances at her as she moved deftly through the small kitchenette. There’s something very soothing about being half-awake and watching a pretty woman make coffee in the quiet AM.

After a few minutes of playing dead on the couch, I rattled my sooty vocal chords enough to signal that yes, please, I’d like a cup of coffee. Brittany drinks her coffee black, so I poured myself a cup as dark and we began the sacrament of early morning coffee-drinking in its purest denomination.

Meanwhile, Mike stirred on the couch parallel to the kitchenette. The three of us wandered a sparse conversation as Brittany made herself a sandwich for work. She told us that she may not be back tonight since she was scheduled to babysit late, but it was fine if we stayed at the apartment without her.

We said our thank-yous and goodbyes and she left, forgetting her sandwich. Mike and I took it slow, since it was a rest day. We eventually collected ourselves, ate a few toaster pastries, and got moving for Memphis.

Brittany had told us about a bike path which leads from Cordova directly into midtown, so we scouted that out on our phones.

We tried like hell to find the path, but all we managed to do was cycle through tall weeds for a few hundred feet before deciding that we were lost. We short-cut back to the main road through someone’s yard and finally found the path after a mile or so.

East Memphis or West Africa? In search of pavement.

When we hit midtown, we exited off of the path and headed towards a UPS store. Mike had some maps and a book he wanted to ship back and I had a notebook I hadn’t touched the whole trip. I think the only handwriting I’ve done thus far has been on credit-card receipts.

We found the UPS store, locked the bikes, and went in. I gave Mike my netbook and milled around the store, freezing in my own sweat, while he talked to the lady tending shop. The radio was tuned to a local station playing overly-sugary, Auto-Tune’d R&B that was a caricature of itself.

Our next stop was a bike shop. I went in to the place while Mike rummaged around in a convenience store for cheap nourishment.

Mike and I suspected that my rear races and cones¹ were pitted, so I told the well-kempt redhead at the counter as much. She asked in response if the wheel was out of true and I told her no, no, I’m pretty sure it’s something in the hub. She then started into this spiel about oh well you know that’s something we’ll put you on the calendar for and I’m not sure there are any mechanics available today and… etc. I then told her that this wouldn’t be possible, since I was riding cross-country and would be leaving town tomorrow.

This had her totally recalibrated. She let out an “oh that’s awesome!” and ran to the back with the Trek, telling me that she couldn’t promise anything but she’d see what she could do.

I meandered around the store, complimenting one of the employees on his selection of the Hot Chip track that was playing softly over the stereo. A stout black mechanic with a pierced eyebrow wandered out from the back and told me that we needed to talk about my bike. I grinned, knowing what a goddamn heap it is, and followed him back to his stand.

In a smooth, northern baritone, the mechanic explained to me that he could tell, even before taking the wheel off, that some vibrations spelled bad news for my hub. He said that rebuilding the hub, i.e. taking it apart, cleaning it out, reapplying grease, and reassembling, was probably futile, but he may be able to do it. He also said he could check to see if he had any new wheels that could be substituted in for the current one.

I steeled a second and then asked the mechanic what kind of price-range we were talking for a new wheel. He shocked me by replying, “oh, thirty or forty bucks.”

The Trek on the operating table.

I basically tackled him with an affirmative response and he, probably wondering which paper mill I grew up in, went into a closet to find a suitable wheel. He came out with some slick looking, double-walled piece of work with thick, fresh, spokes and told me it was a little more expensive than he’d estimated: $45. I told him to go for it and he went to work. I watched him, sitting on a wooden stool next to the stand.

As I watched his steady hands disassemble the bike with practiced ease, we got to talking. Turns out that this guy had made a cross-country trip himself: West Memphis to San Francisco. He said that he’d designed his own route over the course of a few months, taken a leave of absence from his gig, and had made the trip in a month, meeting his girlfriend at the end.

His route had cut farther north than we’d planned to; he made it all the way up to Portland, then cut down the coast on route 1.

Mike found his way to the stand, and the mechanic (who wore a khaki uniform which had him named “The King”) continued talking about some of the wild antics he’d seen sleeping on the beach in California and kicking around Portland.

In Portland, he’d said, a cycling community had gathered at the top of the biggest hill in the city to descend on kiddie-bikes. Some participants were wearing full-facial masks and, twenty seconds after the safety rules were explained and the race started, someone crashed head-on into a parked car.

By now, The King had my hub decomposed into its constituent pieces and showed us my horribly-pitted cone. A new wheel was definitely in order; he slapped it on and we kept chatting about our tour, places we should see in Memphis, and his plans to move to DC with his girlfriend.

After he’d finished with the wheel, he went on with a general tune-up unprompted. He adjusted my rear-derailleur, tweaked my cantilever break pads (a real pain in the ass; he did a bang-up job in seconds), and oiled my front-derailleur cable.

The bike was spic and span, so he led us up to the register. I was expecting a bill of at least 90, 100 dollars, but when we got to the counter, he told the redhead to charge me a meager $10 bucks for labor.

Dennis and me.

I got a picture with The King, whose name turns out to be Dennis, and he slipped Mike and I business cards.

If you’re ever in Memphis, check out Peddler bike shop; they took great care of me. Many thanks to Dennis and the redheaded girl.

Once outside of Peddler’s, Mike and I decided that we were hungry for lunch. After stopping by a hardware store for a few extra bolts, we headed to a place Dennis had recommended in Cooper-Young, the Young Avenue Deli. We hightailed it up south Cooper and, a few minutes later, sat up at the Deli’s bar for shrimp sandwiches and a few boutique brews. A neon sign towered over the dark, high-ceilinged ballroom, telling us to EAT.

The Young Avenue Deli.

Oh hi lunch.

The beer filled us with a pleasant buzz that made the hazy heat and bright glare of the outside world disorienting and slightly comical. We decided to find a coffee shop so that Mike could make use of rabbit² to do some detailed route planning.

More of the Deli.

Google referred us to a place a few blocks up, Otherlands. We pedaled there and were pleased with what we found; a very roomy shop playing good music, spread over multiple rooms. We found a central table within the biggest of the rooms and got to work. Once Mike was set up with rabbit, I could either fuss with my cellphone or read the first few pages of On the Road. I chose the pulp, which was readable but a little abstract for my tastes. Later, Ray Parker Jr.’s Ghostbusters theme came on.

Outside of Otherlands.

Oddly enough, I think this was the first time I’ve hung out at a real coffeeshop; back in northern Virginia, there’s really no reason to go anywhere but Starbucks, so I never had strayed. The difference is about what you’d expect: the atmosphere is marginally more interesting and the pastries are twice as expensive.

One of the rooms in Otherlands.

I made sure to tag the bathroom chalkboard with a supply/demand curve to compensate for all the mostly-thoughtless, artsy bullshit that was up there already³. Mike was done, so we bought a few baked goods, snacked, then left for Beale St.

Mike got carrot cake here.

I had a few thoughts between the coffee-house and Beale.

One of the dirty Beale side-streets we were warned against.

From age 6, it’d been glass-clear what my daily, weekly, and monthly schedules should resemble. I easily fell into the 13 years spent in K-12, then the additional four years in college. I adopted the weekly itineraries that come with both.

Fifty years ago, this automation existed only up until age 16; sure, high school was expected, but not everyone wanted to (or needed to) go to a college. Now, college is a given. In five years, most interviewers will scoff if you haven’t attended grad school.

For the first time in my life, riding through the mostly-dilapidated Memphis streets, it wasn’t clear what I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to be a month from now. Hell, if I wanted to stay in Memphis a week longer, I could do it (though Mike would be none too happy).

It made me wonder if this increasingly set path laid out for younger generations is a recipe for boring, uninventive people. Isn’t the key to leading an awesome life figuring out how to best spend your time? How can we expect to be good at macroscopic time management if we don’t start practicing it until we’re 25, following some template life for the first third of our time?

There’s a whole beautiful world out there and we’re spending our youth taking Cultural Studies classes from a 34-year-old Yale graduate and paying exorbitant prices for vapid textbooks with our parents’ money.

Realizing that my time is my own to spend hit me like a crowbar and what a rush it was.

We got to Beale St., locked the bikes, and toddled around.

Beginning of Beale.

Beale Street is a huge tourist trap. To be fair, we didn’t see it at night when the bars are all pulsing and the air is full of slide-guitar, but we couldn’t find any bluesy dives. I’m sure they house great music at BB King’s, but it wasn’t the Mississippi-delta grit we were looking for.

We headed north of Beale to the Flying Saucer, a large beer bar reputed to have a huge selection. They did, and we enjoyed sitting at an old, wooden table and perusing the four-page menu of beers more studiously than accountants in early April.

Mike and I placed an order with the saccharine-but-serious barmaid, the one that works every high-volume tap in the country, and sat sipping brews and talking.

Inside of the Saucer.

Since we were buzzed and on our day off, this is the first time Mike and I got to have a lengthy non-trip-related conversation. We talked about Christianity, which led into a debate about whether or not there is such a thing as Truth. I was in Truth’s corner; Mike, being a mathematician, demands perfect rigor and therefore disqualified any sort of absolute from being useful. Eventually Mike denounced all of statistics by poo-pooing the Central Limit Theorem, me palming face and shaking head the whole way. Clearly, we were pretty sauced⁴ by then.

We closed our tabs and then decided, for some ungodly reason, to head 15 miles south into the part of Memphis we’d been repeatedly warned not to enter after noon in order to see Elvis’ house and then eat fried chicken from a place called Uncle Lou’s. We hit the saddles at 5PM.

It was a long 15 miles, and the neighborhoods got bad quick. It was uncomfortable for a while, but that’s compatible with the theme of the trip so we went with it.

Around Elvis’ house, the surroundings got a little less hostile, but we couldn’t manage to find the King’s place. The house seemed to be engulfed in an Elvis-themed department store. We circled the grounds and then gave up, heading east for Uncle Lou’s.⁵

We hit Uncle Lou’s, again in a rough part of town, and chowed down on fried chicken, thick biscuits, and candied carrots. While we ate, Cops played on a television placed front and center, the volume cranked appreciably. I thought it was an odd choice for a restaurant, but it had some strange consonance with the rest of the place.

Mike ordering at Uncle Lou's. I think, if offered, Mike would probably have accepted a position there.

As we left Uncle Lou’s, we noticed that the sun had set. The shortest route available back to Brittany’s couch was 16 miles, 10 of which were through Memphis. A wild misadventure followed, which I won’t detail here⁶.

A tame beginning to the way home.

We ended the terrifying ride home with a stop by a gas station near Brittany’s place. We bought a Gatorade and an ice-cream sandwich each and inhaled them outside the store to rectify the evening.

When we finally got back to Brittany’s, all that was left to do was pack and conk. I hit the lights, satisfied with our coverage of the city.

Most of Memphis is crumbling and worn. No less, I enjoyed the day and the places we saw.

the parts of the wheel which the bearings rest against.
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“rabbit” is the hostname of my netbook
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I preach even on vacations.
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not a pun. not a pun.
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Elvis, you may or may not have simply ripped off music from blacks and popularized it, but, either way, you’re the guy that sang it and for that my hat’s off to you. Sorry we couldn’t make your house.
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mostly just consisted of us going the wrong way on big roads, cycling through very creepy industrial areas, and navigating scary neighborhoods.
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Day 17: Old man Morris and the girl at Cordova

We enjoyed a comfortable sleep on the night of our rest day, but I ended up waking up a few times in the dark; my body must’ve been fully charged and ready for road use.

Some time later, alarms chimed¹ and we rose at around 6:30AM. After the awful heat we endured en route to Bolivar, we’d wised up and agreed to start earlier and take advantage of cool dawns. We cleaned ourselves up to (but not over) collegiate standards and started packing.

Once I hit the bathroom, I was pleased to find my left eye’s sclera a pearly white. I felt spryer than a greased tiger, so that put me at a clean bill of health. Plot arc resolved.

Mary Jean called us to the kitchen as we were preparing to leave and she proceeded to serve us a breakfast of steak and eggs that’d have Louie Anderson on a Wheaties box in two weeks flat. I made sure to pop a vitamin with the orange juice.

We led our bikes to the front of the house, shook hands with John and pecked Mary Jean, then rolled down the driveway for Memphis.

Pretty easy ride into Memphis.

Only a few miles out, Mike had a pretty solid gain on me. This hadn’t been the case generally in the past week of biking, but the day before we arrived at the Jordan’s, I had been lagging behind Mike. This hinted problems with my bike.

When Mike had fixed my spoke outside of Brad’s house, days earlier, he’d shown me a resistance he’d discovered in my rear hub. In other words, my rear wheel wasn’t rotating as easily as it should have been. The effect was slight, but we were unsure if the resistance would be exacerbated by the added weight of my body and the gear; now we seemed to have some evidence suggesting just that. We agreed to hit a bike shop at some point in Memphis and kept trucking.

Just before hitting the city limits. One of my favorite additions to the Mike's Ass collection.

Around noon, we made our typical stop at a McDonald’s and sat in an especially air-conditioned corner watching ten-year-olds tear the roof off the play-place, their unimpressed mothers dug in to a collective droop. Our meal was value menu a la carte, as usual. I’ve started getting salads. Does that worry you?

We hung out a few hours to stave off the midday heat and then we cut out from the House of Arches. Only thirty more miles to Memphis.

I put on The Doors and pounded out the remaining distance to the city limits. Finally: our first big city.

Before finding our host-for-the-evening’s house, we had one mission: to find Morris’ Grocery and obtain barbecue sandwiches.

The night prior, Chris, one of the guests at the Jordans’ cookout, had given us a strong referral to Morris’ hut (“dude makes his own sauce and it’s unbelievable — all I know is: he uses Dr. Pepper.”). We’ve gotten few recommendations from the locals so far, but we take them all seriously, so we acted on Chris’ tip.

Once we took a few turns in Memphis, we came to a funky three-way intersection with a gravel driveway leading up a short hill. Atop the hill sat a boxy, worn structure made out of concrete blocks. On the structure was posted a sign that said “Morris Grocery BBQ.”

We parked bikes and walked in to a bizarre scene.

The inside of the place was much, much bigger than it had appeared on the outside and, sparing a few wall-mounted coolers and a register-counter directly in front of us, the place was completely empty. The inside was cool and poorly lit.

Old man Morris sat behind the counter, a hot ten paces away from us, talking to a customer. We bounded up to the counter’s vicinity and began talking with the only other customer in the store, a very dark-skinned black man wearing a ball cap, drinking a paper-shrouded 32oz. can of High Life and missing a contiguous block of white keys from his otherwise pearly grill.

He immediately asked us where we were headed and, when we told him San Francisco, he asked many more questions pertaining to the trip. He eventually concluded, “you dudes are superman!” We told him all it takes is time and a little discomfort.

He told us more about himself: he’s from Mississippi originally, but spent many years in New York City. He lived in Queens, which is where my old man grew up, so we chatted on NYC a little more.

At this point, old man Morris finally took stock of us and asked, “yes?” while looking incredulously unsurprised and underwhelmed. I don’t think the dude would have batted an eye if a family of bears had walked in, upright and single-file, whistling Hey Jude.

I replied, “we were told that you’re a black man who sells cigarettes, alcohol, and delicious barbecue.² We’re interested in the latter, and possibly the second.” Morris appeared to acknowledge this and began to make us sandwiches, eventually asking us “mild or hot?” to which we both replied “hot.”

Morris made the sandwiches while we took a cue from our new friend and made the ten paces to a cooler near the door, where we picked out three cartoonishly large cans of High Life, the extra for our host.

We finished the trek back to the counter just as Morris returned with the sandwiches. He’d overheard our conversation with the customer and asked a few questions of his own in dead-pan.

Morris finally said, “well, I’ll charge you boys for the drinks, but the sandwiches are on me.” We agreed, delighted. We paid up, bagged the sandwiches and swill, then shook hands with Morris and the dude. They wished us luck as we walked out the door.

The Morris Concoction. Is that much slaw too racy for this blog?

Old man Morris is a sweet guy under his weathered guise, and I highly recommend a visit to his strange grocery if you’re ever in Memphis. Minutes later, we wolfed the sandwiches in an empty parking lot.

Mike, mid-inhale.

We hit the road for Cordova, a dense suburb on the outskirts of Memphis, which is where our host, Brittany, had an apartment. We’d received instructions from Brittany to waltz right into her empty abode, using methods which will remain undisclosed. I found this odd, considering that

we only knew Brittany from the internet, and had only been conversing over the span of a few days,
Brittany is a 19-year-old girl,

Brave girl. Despite disbelief, in we went.

We found a basic, clean apartment, too small for two but efficiently comfortable for one. A Marilyn Monroe poster hung above a fireplace, messages written in red lipstick adorned mirrors, and a few religious texts sat neatly open and content on leather furniture. Two ball-pythons sat coiled in a tank resting on the bar dividing the kitchenette and living room.

One of these is not like the others!

We began unloading our stuff when Brittany came strolling up the terrace. She wore thick-frame glasses and had light brown dreadlocks lassoed into a pony-tail. She was clad in loose-fitting mechanics clothes — she works on cars for a living.

We said hello and she walked into her place nonchalantly, as though we were the fifth herd of bicycling vagrants that day to dismount on her doorstep.

Mike and I alternated taking showers, talking to Brittany while the other cleaned. I found out that Brittany, at 19, was paying her own bills, working two jobs, and going to school full-time; she seemed more independent at 19 than me at 21.

Once the three of us were clean, we went out to a restaurant called the Ghenghis Grill, where they ”Khan-gratulate all graduates.”³ We ordered three Tsing-taos and, since I was the only one carded, Brittany got to drink. I told Mike later that about the only humanitarian work I’ve ever done consists of buying the underaged alcohol.

After the meal, we drove Brittany’s Dad’s standard-transmission Civic⁴ around Cordova while Brittany warned us about the draconian Memphis cops and the ridiculous sales taxes in Tennessee (9.x%).

At an intersection, Brittany powered through a yellow light, standard fare for Mike and I, but apparently not for Memphis: an unexpected flash strobed outside the car and Brittany said, “shit. There goes 50 bucks.” No cop to petition, no adrenaline bump; automated traffic cameras take all the fun out of moving violations.

We eventually got back to Brittany’s apartment⁵ and Brittany’s friend Heather came over. Freshly promoted, Heather was looking to celebrate by getting extremely sauced and she wanted to do so by hitting a club. While Mike and I were sympathetic to her aim, it was also close to eleven PM and the tacit agreement between us and our bodies⁶ was being invoked.

Brittany, modeling the hilariously large can of High Life, and Heather to her right.

So, Brittany and Heather went out to what they described as a half-gay club called Spectrum while Mike and I became fast friends with Brittany’s couches.

Mike slowly melted into a sleeping position as the night progressed.

there’s a euphemism
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which was exactly the description given to us by Chris
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hundreds more of these goddamned puns were littered throughout the restaurant
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over 350,000 miles on the thing and counting. The car would squeal on turns because of “worn bushings,” according to Brittany.
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without interpolating a jail cell
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they’ll pedal all day if we get to bed an hour after sundown
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Day 16: Rest day at the Jordans'

We did no traveling today, so I’m lacking both a map and an elevation profile.

Mike and I mostly spent the day on the sofa or at the kitchen table hunched over maps. I banged away on the netbook, trying to catch up on the dailies. My legs were humming, as though they’d been plugged into a power-outlet, which seemed to be a good thing.

Later in the day, some friends of the Jordans came over and a cookout was held. Steak was eaten, french fries were scarfed, and Mary Jean even allowed me both a piece of peach cobbler and a piece of strawberry pie for desert.

We talked for a while about our trip and then about the state of public education.

After snapping a few pictures for the blog, Mike and I retired to sleep off the pie and prepare for the road ahead.

The Jordans were incredibly sweet to us; our deepest thanks go out to them.

Left to right, top: Myself, Johnny, John, Mary Jean. Bottom: Kevin, Becky, Bailey.

Same, with Mike.

Day 15: Sanctuary at the Jordans'

No pictures for today. I only took 3 and they’re not especially worthwhile.

Over the course of the trip, Mike and I have developed the near-acrobatic ability to sleep side-by-side on a small area without rolling into (or onto) one another. We had this specialized training to thank when we awoke on June 1st, each somehow contained to his own side on the double bed in room 103 of the Parsons Inn.

At some point in my filmy, vague memory, I remember Mike getting up to go outside. I rolled around groggily, slightly discouraged at the loss of my glasses and my reluctance to use contacts, and tasting the sour, morning grit in my mouth.

I held a mental telethon and when donations hit ten-thousand, I threw my legs over the edge of the bed and shuffled five feet over to the bathroom. Improvement in the eyes! Now a grapefruit pink instead of a cherry red. Unfortunately, my body still felt weak.

We did the pack thing and had a hell of a time dislodging our bikes from the room. When we hit the street, I felt like Bela Lugosi at a pep-rally.

We biked down the street to a Sonic, sat down at an outside table, and watched women race around on rollerblades. They didn’t appear as tired as we were, but they weren’t far behind. I ordered a breakfast sandwich, which appeared wilted but tasted delicious.

Mike and I talked a little about the day to come. We had only 55 miles or so before we hit the Jordan homestead in Henderson. Mary Jean and John Jordan aren’t related to Mike, but they’re good friends of Sue, Mike’s grandmother, who’d given us great chili and a place to sleep on our first night.

The relatively low mileage for the day came as a relief to me because I was feeling rough¹.

We finished up with breakfast and digested for a few minutes, afterwards pedaling down to a pharmacy to pick up a glasses repair kit. I came back out of the surprisingly well-kept pharmacy, repair kit in hand, and sat on the hot pavement fixing my glasses.

The glasses were fixed, my vision restored, and we began the trip to Henderson.

The day’s ride was uneventful. We’ve seen Tennessee now for over 400 miles and the terrain hadn’t changed much since Columbia. No flats, no broken spokes. There was much grunting from me throughout the day — I was totally worn out and, in all likelihood, sick.

We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall barbecue shack for lunch where we ate sandwiches, topped in slaw, that were as big as our heads. I enjoyed my staple desert, Snoballs.

An older couple approached us during lunch and asked the usual string of questions. The woman mentioned that she had connections to the paper and would pen a few sentences about us, which I found odd considering the scant amount of information she had on us, but still sweet.

On the last leg of the ride, a horsefly bit me on the backside, which was an invigorating kick, and shortly thereafter I was chased down the street by a brown mutt who was apparently unfazed by motor vehicles and almost certainly owned by one of the Good Ol’ Boys².

Luckily, we arrived shortly afterwards at the gravel driveway of the Jordan ranch. Mary Jean, a peppy, youthful lady, met us at the door and gave us a warm welcome. She invited us in, sat us down in the living-room, and had cold drinks in our hands before we could even peel off our pungent gear.

We met John Jordan, a lean man with sharp, friendly eyes. John has a deep, steady country voice that indicates experience and worldliness without pretension or effort.

John spent many years in the Navy as a jet-engine mechanic. He and Mary Jean told us a few stories about living in Japan and Okinawa, which included experiencing a Japanese funeral and John, alongside the whole family, getting propositioned by a hooker³ in the narrow streets of Chinatown. John kept us roaring with his sage, blunt wit.

John really impressed me. He struck me as a proficient man, comfortable in his element. He came across as simple and relaxed. He clearly enjoyed himself as often as possible, occasionally grilling Mary Jean playfully and responding with snappy one-liners wherever appropriate.

We met Johnny Jordan, son of Mary Jean and John, and then Mary Jean sat us down to a taco dinner. Mike and I devoured an unrecorded number of tacos, only halting when the ground beef ran dry. Thankfully that happened just as I was getting full; what may have ensued if the portion was larger is unclear. The meal was capped with a refreshing slice of strawberry pie each, the taste of which haunted me later that night.

At one point, Mike and I were walking from the porch to the inside of the house, by way of the garage. I stood admiring a Ford Ranger which lay dormant next to a bigger truck. I liked the Ranger because of its basic, understated design and matte paint-job. It seemed less showy and more friendly relative to other trucks. Eventually Johnny appeared and told us it was his truck and that he’d bought it for $1400. He and John had fixed it up, which consisted mainly of replacing valves⁴.

At that point, I experienced something new: I became overcome with the urge to buy an old car and fix it up.

Part of the attraction to riding a bicycle a long distance is that I actually understand (for the most part) the mechanism that drives the bike. Should the bike break down, odds are I can fix it or find a shop with tools that’ll allow me to fix it. But beyond that practical perk, I find satisfaction in leveraging a piece of technology I understand.

Having a similar understanding of cars would be gratifying, and it’s something I may pursue after the trip.

Mike and I spent most of the evening chatting with the Jordans, enjoying the incredible benefits of furniture, and reading. I was thrilled to be around such engaging company and immensely relieved at the prospect of a rest day in such hospitable circumstances.

At one point, Mary Jean phoned a newspaper man who was interested in talking to us about the trip. She’d initially thought he’d show up for an interview the next day, but in the middle of her conversation, she asked us if we could interview tonight. We took a quick look at our shabby clothing and worn appearances, shrugged, grinned, and agreed.

It took the reporter over an hour and a supplementary phone call to finally arrive at the Jordan place. Luckily, our wait was interspersed with an entertaining situational commentary from John. When we finally walked onto the back patio to meet the disheveled newsman, he fumbled around hopelessly with a pad of paper and made nervous, half-complete jokes.

He shakily took a few pictures, asked us a few basic questions, and managed to lose his place in his notebook multiple times, finally eliciting the collective help of the Jordans to find his place once again. I enjoyed watching him scribble shorthand on the thin yellow sheets.

At one point he began to tell a long-winded joke and couldn’t remember where it was headed mid-way through. He paused and said he was only telling it to prolong his return to the car, where his angry wife laid in wait. This was probably funnier than whatever joke he was setting up to finish.

At near midnight, under the incandescents on the Jordan porch, this was a strange and wonderful scene. After the ordeal, we went inside and conked in short order.

I know this part of the story contains a lot of griping, but stick with it; it gets better.
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the very same Good Ol’ Boys who will eventually run us down in a booze-fueled, 4x4-powered rage.
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I swear I’m not intentionally pushing this trend
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whatever that means
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Day 14: Ghostly road to Parsons

I woke up in Room 27 of the James K. Polk motel feeling the jittery ache of fever. It was May 31st in Columbia, Tennessee. I consulted with the mirror and saw that my eye was still red, though it had improved from the previous day.

Claims from the internet notwithstanding, no thieving prostitutes had visited us in the night. If they had, they’d left me undisturbed and cleaned up after themselves.

We brushed our teeth, chamois-cream’d, and put on our day clothes. After a quick pack, we were out on the street and I was fighting the urge to clamp my eyes shut. I returned the key to the front desk and we rolled down to get breakfast at Shipley’s Donut Factory.

Counter of the Donut Factory.

We entered the empty Factory and ordered from an Asian kid wearing earbuds and tending the shop. Who knows if the kid could hear a thing we said, but he delivered the food we ordered. Mike and I sat in the back, munching donuts and wondering how the hell to prepare ourselves for biking in the sauna outside.

We finished up our food and left almost immediately. Giving your stomach a few minutes to digest a half-pound of white flour and sugar before biking a few hours is a very good idea, but it wasn’t one that occurred to us.

We stepped out into the sweltering heat. The roar of traffic and the bright glare made my head whirl. I felt like the used dance-floor of a Hollywood nightclub on Sunday morning.

We pedaled on and all I could do was try to keep breakfast down. I know it sounds like a lot of complaining (and it is), but this is the phase of the day when I’m absolutely miserable. I have this recurring inner monologue that includes a healthy string of obscenities, declarations of my profuse hatred for bicycling, promises to sell the bike as soon as I hit Haight-Ashbury, and a quick pep-talk to get ready for upchucking. There are many good reasons to do this trip. I just can’t call any of them to mind during the early afternoon.

A few miles down the road, Mike hit a flat for the second consecutive day. We stopped by the side of a bridge and got his back tire off. Mike went to work and I milled around looking for shade, sweat pouring out of me.

Mike investigates the flat.

When you’re biking in serious heat, you do a fair bit of sweating, but nothing compared to volume you exude once you stop moving. If you stay in heat without movement, you no longer have the wind cooling your sweat: like a stationary water-skier sinking into a lake, the heat collects around you. The only response possible is to sit, gushing sweat, or get back on the saddle.

The Trek at the end of May. I had to do something while Mike fixed his tire.

After Mike fixed the flat, we got back on the road and went a while before hitting a gas station in a very small town. At this point in the trip, whenever any chance for a water-refill presents itself, we pounce. We went in and bought two 24oz. gatorades from the young girl working the counter.

We sat drinking the gatorades and watched locals come in and out. One guy with a big ol’ country gut came in, took one look at us, and let out a “WHEEEE-WHEEW!”

We finished up the sodium water, filled up our bottles, and kept riding.

Occasionally when I look up, I see something like this.

An hour later, we hit a small town called Hohenwald that contained a McDonald’s. We ran at the golden arches like two pissed bulls at a flamboyant Spaniard and spent the next few hours lounging in climate control and cherry-picking from the value menu. Mike read Capote and I fought with my netbook, trying to square Linux and Flickr’s flash-based upload page.

We left the comfort of the cool haven. I dragged my feet like a grade-schooler coming in from recess. We rode on, pumping our legs against the hills.

In a few miles, there was a large descent. We ran into a fellow bicycle tourist named Julie. Julie said she’d just recently gotten out of Missouri and had been ten miles outside of Joplin when it was torn to pieces by the tornado. We told her we’d be spending a rest day in Memphis, so she told is in response that we should hit Beale St. and find the most grungy dive we could for some brew and music. Check.

One super-happy Julie. My lens was foggy from the humidity.

We approached the Tennessee river, rode up to the crest of the bridge and snapped some pictures. We were hungry by then, so we googled eateries to the west and found a variety of places, all seafood based. Mike had wanted to try some genuine Tennessee catfish, so we rode on to check out the Fish House Diner. We completed the bridge and found ourselves in western Tennessee.

We branched off of 412W to find the Diner and noticed that there was an abundance of closed shops and restaurants. We hadn’t seen any movement for a while, but we kept pedaling in the hopes of encountering live civilization and hot food.

But that didn’t happen. Every restaurant we hit was dead: dim and empty. The streets were deserted. An abandoned grocery store sat lifeless and crumbling across the street from the diner we’d intended to stop at.

The whole locale had a foreboding, desolate weight that kinda freaked me out. All the marks of humanity we’d encountered so far were stations of active, flowing commerce. This place was like a decaying mausoleum, soundlessly waiting for us to either leave or stay and decompose.

Abandoned grocery store, strange and empty.

We stopped to figure out where we could get some food. Mike said that we may end up eating toaster pastries for the night; I said something to the tune of “hell no.”

We started to bicker and then realized we were hungry¹, so we wolfed a Snickers each and then found a town called Parsons on the map.

Parsons appeared to have all the modern accoutrements we were after, so we decided to make the ten mile hike. We’d originally intended on staying at a campgrounds in Decaterville (the ghost-town), which left our sleeping arrangements for the night to-be-determined from here on out.

While we wheeled out of the small town, Mike commented that this is the kind of place in which horror movies are filmed. I agreed, then caught sight of a church billboard that read PRAY FOR HOLLY. GOD HEARS YOUR PRAYERS. This message shook me further; I didn’t know who Holly was or what had happened, but it didn’t sound good. We later found out that Holly was a town girl who’d gone missing.

Empty neighborhood.

I snapped some pictures and we started for Parsons.

The ride to Parsons was a series of hills, which was a trying way to end the evening. The sides of the hills were littered with empty businesses and menacing, windowless hovels with wrecked furniture outside. I made a mental note that, while we could camp behind these places likely without incident, I’d rather not.

A few grueling minutes later, we got into Parsons and saw people and movement. I felt relieved. We navigated our way to a place called Granny’s Kitchen and chained our bikes to a signpost. There were three police cruisers out front, which spoke well for the cuisine.

We never met Granny.

We walked into the restaurant and saw that the dining area was mostly empty; a few tables were stirring warmly. We collapsed into some chairs and then were approached by a brusque waitress who looked not a day over 15.

Mike settled down with a plate of deep-fried catfish and hush-puppies and I enjoyed a plate of breaded chicken. We watched the table full of cops, wondering if we should approach them to ask if we could camp on their station’s grounds. Mike wondered if they’d let us spend the night in a cell, then I thought back to one of O. Henry’s stories about a vagrant unsuccessfully trying to get incarcerated for the winter.

The food took around 45 minutes to arrive: we wondered if they’d lost the instructions to the deep-fryer until we realized that the cops topped us on the totem pole. By the time we’d finished the food, it was dark and I was feeling the icy trough of a fever. We decided that given the circumstances, we’d better rest up in a motel.

I called the Parsons Inn and talked the lady on the other end down $10 (!) for our cheapest stay yet at exactly $35. We left the restaurant to an empty parking lot and made tracks for the Inn. My glasses had come unscrewed in the restaurant, freeing one of the lenses, so I followed Mike as best I could through the streets of Parsons.

Mike did his disappearing act and one signature later I had a key from the Indian girl working the Inn counter. The place was noticeably shoddier than our previous motel, the James K. Polk. We packed into the 8x12 box that had “103” taped on it.

I showered up and went to bed after downing two bottle-fulls of water and enough Ibuprofin to treat half the Airborne division.

hunger or fatigue being the catalyst behind most of our arguments
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Day 13: Redeye to Columbia

When I woke up at Brad’s on Memorial Day morning, my inner eyelid felt like sandpaper. My eye was swollen and immediately started tearing up after opening it. I wandered shakily out to the bathroom and confirmed in the mirror that my left eye was furiously red. Uh oh.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a big deal; I’d take it easy for a few days without wearing contacts. Unfortunately, the game is different on a cross-country bike trip, and, worse yet, we were scheduled for our biggest day of the trip: 80-some miles from McMinnville to Columbia.

I crawled back into bed for minutes-worth more rest while Mike was outside fixing a spoke I’d snapped on the way over to Brad’s. A few iterations of alarm later, I stumbled outside to find him remounting my tire. I thanked him while the morning light attacked my eyes.

Uncharacteristically, we lounged around for a while. Brad was entertaining us while we noshed on some of the breakfast food he’d laid out. We sat on his couch watching the news, making wisecracks as necessary. As far as I’m concerned, news shows are good for little else.

Eventually, the thick mental fog of morning lifted and it became clear that we had the longest ride of the trip ahead of us, so we got packed up, said goodbye to Brad, and set our dials to Pedal.

Saying goodbye to our awesome host for the heat was tough.

The ride out of Brad’s was unexpectedly hilly. Because of the humidity, the heat stuck to us; it feels like wearing a suit one size too small.

Lonely hay fields on the way to Columbia.

Midday, we stopped at a BP station. There was a European family, my guess eastern, lingering outside the station in a patch of shade, an unlikely feature for the stifling Tennessean environment. I said hi and they responded in thick accent.

Another contribution to the Mike's Ass collection.

Since the station had hot food for sale and the road so far from McMinnville had been populated mostly with darkened shop-fronts, closed for the holiday, we decided to eat at the BP. Various and strange signs littered the walls, I guess as decoration.

Weird, but I found it funny.

Meals that Mike and I share now can barely be called meals. Mike calls what we do “feeding,” on account of the lack of conversation. Instead of talking, we stuff our faces.

Mike got another flat, evening us up spokes-to-flats.

The dynamics between the two of us have changed greatly since the beginning of the trip, as I guess the case would be with any pair adapting to the kind of lifestyle we have. We rarely talk for the sake of conversation; most of our discussions are of a purely logistical nature. We’re less friends now than we are associates.

When you spend weeks on end with someone, you begin an exercise in social introspection. You begin to filter your thoughts through a stringent series of tests before they leave your mouth and, increasingly, most thoughts don’t make the cut to sound. Of any candidate questions, you ask “can I figure this out myself?” Of any candidate observation, you ask “is this something he might appreciate, or am I talking too much?”

This parsimony is necessary because anything you say will break the illusion of aloneness that the other guy has built up. The only way you can live with another person continuously at your side for weeks is if you spend most of the time pretending he’s not there, and the last thing you want to do is incite some trivial argument over what side you ordered yesterday for lunch. Semantics, and anything else not of immediate importance for the trip, is out of the question for argument simply for the sake of emotional economy.

It’s a good game to play; it’s made me more aware of what I say and to whom.

So we sat eating our breaded and fried food mostly without conversation, as we have many meals for the past few days.

We left the BP. Almost immediately terrain flattened out, fresh pavement lowered rolling resistance, and a Justin Faust mix was pounding through my $5 headphones; in other words, we hit warp-speed. We kept this going for the remaining 50 miles to Columbia.

Pounding it out.

When we hit Columbia, we looked like someone had trained a fire-hose on us for a good portion of the afternoon. The route was just over 90 miles, longer than we anticipated, and we were dog-tired. Regardless, we were happy to have made our destination.

We started looking for a place to eat and rest. The cellphones tipped us to a place on 7th, so we biked another two miles and turned into downtown Columbia only to find the restaurant, and every other shop in the immediate vicinity, unlit and closed. We didn’t see any other people around; it was eerie.

We rolled aimlessly further down the street and eventually found a place called The Sandwich Shop, an all-night diner that was open. A sign on the glass informed us that no one under 21 was allowed in the establishment, regardless of its wholesome appearance, because smoking was allowed within.

We locked the bikes to a tree nearby and marched our frayed threads in, catching the usual incredulous stares from the local fixtures. We sat down at a table and Abraham’s grandmother ambled over to take our orders. The one-page, laminated menu made it clear that this was a legitimate 24-hour diner; our first of the trip. I ordered a coca-cola, a double hamburger, and chili fries.

A perfect end to the day.

When our food came out, Mike said that it looked so good he felt we should say grace. The wordless grumbles of pleasure we let out in between bites came close enough. Midway through the meal, our waitress, Margaret, came back over and slipped a cold can of Coke by my side. She said it was on the house, then patted my arm. That’s when I fell in love.

Good, cheap food. Look it up if you're in the area.

Afterwards, we got milkshakes and sat around enjoying our discovery and testing the capacity of our stomachs. This place was exactly the sort of restaurant I’d wanted to find: cheap, gritty, slightly seedy, and delicious; these things consistent without regard for time of day.

A NO TRESPASSING sign hung over the bathroom and there were video-poker machines towards the back.

Throughout the day, we’d been communicating with our CouchSurfing host for the evening, a local girl. She’d given us her address a few hours before, but told us that she’d be out for a while and would give us a call when it was time to come over. It was around 9:00PM and, while we were enjoying the strange ambiance of the diner, we were also about to collapse.

At that point, I didn’t want to go through the getting-to-know-you boilerplate that is necessary with CouchSurfers. Usually it’s a pleasure, but when it appears as though someone has taken a Super Soaker full of vinegar to your left eye and you’ve just biked 90 miles, the polite conversation needed to convince someone that you’re not an axe-murderer traveling via bicycle is a little daunting and maybe impossible.

We called the girl to see what the deal was, but she didn’t pick up. We decided to call a spade a flaky CouchSurfer and find a motel. We googled for the cheapest option in town and the James K. Polk motel readily appeared.

The motel flaunted an average one star out of a possible five. One review was titled I WAS PROPOSITIONED BY A PROSTITUTE IN FRONT OF MY KID; another detailed a midnight robbery that had taken place in the client’s room. Of course, we were sold.

I called to check prices. I could only bargain the woman running the place down $3, bringing the total for our room to $42.50. Forty bucks isn’t fun to lose, but with an eye-infection at stake, we decided to take the reservation.

We pedaled through the dark town, past promises of cash-advances, title loans, and liquor, to a neon sign casting colored light down on the black pavement. Hello, James K. Polk.

Mike hid in the shadows of a parking lot across the street while I went in to get the room — a trick we’d learned after incurring a fee for having two guests stay in a single at a previous motel. The lobby of the motel was incongruously well-decorated relative to not only the surrounding area, but to what I expected from the Google reviews. Lush, healthy plants sat staring from the corners of the room, which was filled with antique furniture and clad in gilt wallpaper.

I said good evening to the woman behind the glass, whom I can only describe as tired, and minutes later I signaled Mike across the street and to our room.

The room was shockingly nice given our expectations. Two queen (!) beds promised a good night’s sleep and the whir of the air conditioner was the first sound inviting us into the dark cool of our loaned room.

Room 27.

After bolting the door and laying out my knife on the dresser, I peeled back the white sheets and slept like the dead.

Day 12: Brad's House of Rehab

The morning of Sunday, May 29, the two of us awoke to sunlight streaming through the open door of our hut behind the Cumberland County fire station. I got up pretty immediately, grabbed my hygiene gear, and headed inside for a walk through the station to the bathroom.

On the way to the bathroom, I passed a few of the firemen watching TV in a dimly lit room — a great plan for around 6:30 in the morning. They told me that I was welcome to take a shower and that there were clean towels in the bathroom. Having woken up feeling slimy and grit-covered, I wasted no time in accepting.

After the hygiene dance, changing into bike clothes, and repacking the bikes, Mike and I requested a picture with the firemen.

These guys know how to have a damn good time. I'm apparently trying to catch more Zs.

Did I mention they let us sleep in their shed?

After expressing our gratitude and chatting a little more, we skedaddled for the McDonald’s.

McDonald’s is always an interesting scene in the morning, and it varies from town to town. Sometimes, there’ll be tables full of people munching and talking quietly, out of reverence for the early morning. This particular morning, there was a lone, well-dressed guy sitting in the McDonald’s looking friendly but forlorn. We said hello, then made a beeline for the food.

After McDonald’s, we started the long, empty road to McMinnville. The route lacked the usual abundance of gas stations, so we had to be careful with water consumption and take advantage of any opportunity that came along. The terrain was a little hilly, but nothing too bad.

We only had 42 miles to go before hitting the Walmart in McMinnville, which was where our CouchSurfing host for the night lived.

There's nothing between McMinnville and Crossville.

We stopped in the early afternoon for lunch at the only restaurant we’d seen all day, a place called Gribble’s Landing. I wish I’d gotten a picture of the inside, because it would immediately explain what I may struggle to describe with a few paragraphs.

Gribble’s Landing was an alter of home cookin’. Maybe 20 families were seated at the establishment, which was a single giant room with large, cheap tables and flimsy, plastic chairs. Blond, tan southern girls ran around taking orders and refilling sweet teas. The distribution of age in the place was bimodal: a customer was either 6 or 60.

Mike and I walked in looking like we were from another planet. We were totally lost in the chaos of this place, and we milled around for a few minutes before getting approached by some kind soul who saw that we were obviously out of our element. She told us to find a table ourselves, despite a sign telling us to wait to be seated.

We seated ourselves and I flagged one of the girls down for two menus. Minutes later, she arrived back at the table with a Dr. Pepper for me and a sweet tea for Mike. Extremely hungry, we then attacked the buffet, where food was dispensed at the whim of an older, unenthusiastic woman. I got roast beef, fried chicken, green beans, potatos, and a dinner roll.

We returned to our table and disappeared the food without pause. The girl would periodically land next to our table, asking questions or alotting refills, taking off immediately afterwards to some other corner of the room.

After we’d finished our refills, a woman who seemed confident and gaudy enough to be the proprietor came over and asked if we’d like some pie for desert. The two of us responded quickly in the affirmative and so she started rattling off a list of pies available, the number of which must have been near 20. Mike apparently took interest in one of the flavors and asked her to described it (I think it was French Coconut). She replied that it was sort of like a “chess” pie. I asked her what a chess pie was and she turned to me looking as though I’d just stabbed Elvis. The woman must have stared at me a solid 5 seconds without saying a word, and she didn’t respond to my question. I ordered chocolate and Mike went with the still-mysterious french coconut.

After inhaling the pies in the amount of time it would take a normal person to put on a shirt, Mike went off to the bathroom and I sat, letting the boulder in my stomach erode. I couldn’t help but feel slightly out of place. Though, in some sense, that’s what the trip is about.

Mike came back and we did more sitting until the pie-woman came over again and told us, in the saccharine language of a steel magnolia, that it was time for us to pay up and get the hell out. We gathered our stuff and found the register, where the tan girl squared us.

The ride from the Landing into McMinnville was uneventful, but hot. I hadn’t put sunscreen on my face, so when we arrived at the Walmart, I felt like I’d shaved with a welding torch.

We saw the light... then ran the hell inside.

We kicked around the Walmart for a while, picking up sewing supplies so that we could attach the Cumberland Co. Fire Dept. patches that the firemen had given us to our panniers. Like true vagrant cyclists, we roosted in the Walmart McDonald’s for hours, Mike sewing and I pounding out an update. Eventually, it got to be around 6PM, so I called our host for the evening, Brad.

Brad told us to come on over to his place any time, so we paid up at the Walmart, loaded our bikes, and headed for Brad’s. I managed to discover a broken spoke on the way over¹, but we decided not to fuss with it because we were so excited to get to Brad’s.

Meeting people from the internet is always interesting, and it’s a rare treat when someone lives up to their internet persona. Brad was one such case. We’d been swapping a few messages with Brad for the past four days. Each message from Brad was a well-written, friendly encouragement to come on by his house for some food and relaxation.

I didn’t know what to expect from the guy, but not one minute after walking into his house, he had us laughing. Brad was a totally natural fit for the two of us and we settled into conversation without a seam.

Brad had an awesome house; unfortunately, I didn't take as many pictures as I should have.

We sat talking with Brad about music, the trip, himself, McMinnville, and a variety of other things. We enjoyed the atmosphere of his house; everything was extremely clean, but very cosy and full of eclectic decoration. He had a knight covered in Mardi Gras beads caty corner to a wall on which his TV/computer feed was projected. Good music was playing.

We changed, cracked some beers, and settled in. Brad showed us a music community he’d set up on facebook, The WELL, and comically explained the stringent requirements necessary to gain (and maintain) membership. Brad had some concerns about his network security, so Mike and I checked out his router configuration. For a self-described “non-tech” guy, Brad had the lingo and concepts down pat.

Eventually, a banquet broke out. Brad served up some awesome barbecue, in addition to various other dishes and some killer ‘slaw.

Oh god the barbecue.

Brad’s longtime friend Mark showed up later on and was curious about the trip. We talked to him for a while. He seemed to be broadly knowledgeable. A few other people showed up (“Sketch,” Jimmy, Jessica, and Dale, a big dude in overalls who, in Brad’s words, is “country as cornbread”).

We all hung out a while, drinking brews and watching the projector throw colored light up on Brad’s living-room wall. I stuffed myself silly with barbecue and Mike talked a good amount to Mark. Brad showed us a few of Widespread Panic²’s live covers on DVD, which included songs from The Grateful Dead and Buffalo Springfield.

After watching a few episodes of a certain television program about debaucherous antics in the South³, everyone cleared out. Mike and I turned in for a solid night’s rest.

CouchSurfing has worked out really well for us so far and has added numerous dimensions to the trip. Meeting new people keeps Mike and I sane, and when the hosts are as cool as Brad, it’s really enjoyable.

the count is at four
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A jam band, a la Phish but a little more classy
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I won’t name the show, per Brad’s drunken request
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Day 11: Up the plateau to Crossville

We awoke Saturday, the 28th of May, in Don Fritz’s first floor apartment in Knoxville, Tennessee. We were dressed and halfway packed when Don got up and began talking to his extremely shy cat, Billy. Don was trying to chide Billy into the kitchen for a meal despite Billy’s acute distrust of us strangers.

Billy the cat, swerving toward Don to avoid us.

Once we were packed, we retrieved our locked bikes from the school playground across the street. Don, hospitable host that he is, had presented us with two Tennessee-orange water-bottles the night previous and now came out with a postcard for each of us. We thanked him, then said adieu to Don and his bashful cat Billy, hightailing it for the nearest McDonald’s for a calorie-filled breakfast.

Once we were done with breakfast, we stood outside the McDonald’s a while next to a group of rough-looking dudes. One of the dudes approached us and asked the typical lineup: where ya from, where ya goin’, etc. We answered all those, then he proceeded to tell us that he could fix the horrible hail damage on the hood of the car in front of us. The secret, he said, was dry ice. His brother had taught him that in high school and he’d apparently made some decent money off the little-known idea for a while.

My favorite God-billboard yet, seen coming out of Knoxville.

After giving us that nugget of auto-repair gold, he then went on to tell an Osama joke, which had a punchline involving Osama’s body floating at the bottom of the ocean surrounded by seals¹. He then told us he’d done a few comedy shows and, somehow, I didn’t doubt him. Anyway, after all this song and dance I figured that he’d be asking us for money, but he just wished us a nice day and sauntered off. He was just shootin’ it. Or maybe he realized that we looked more beat-up than he did.

After that, we set out for Crossville, which is 76 miles away from Knoxville. “Yeah whatever,” was our attitude towards the mileage. We were in for a little surprise.

The mostly-empty road to Crossville.

I decided to go without music for the day, mostly just to avoid developing the habit of always having music on while riding, which would be easy to slip into for me. Music is great when you’ve gotta pound out some serious mileage (especially some of the music I’ve got), but it stifles contemplation a little.

Nothing very notable happened between Knoxville and Kingston, the town we lunched in. The terrain was fairly hilly, but we were no longer following a valley and so scenery was limited. I mostly thought about my family and the months to come.

We arrived in Kingston just in time for lunch (the town clock even dong’d 12) and, of course, the first thing we did was whip out our phones to figure out what our options for dining were. We initially decided on Handee Burger, allegedly a good place to get a sandwich and hang out, but after finding it dim and locked, we moved on to Buddy’s Barbecue.

Mike, standing outside Buddy’s, said that he couldn’t decided whether the place smelled like he was in a mesquite smoker or whether it smelled like he was in someone’s mouth while they were smoking a cigarette. I half expected to open the door to a sauna-like setup where toweled old men were hanging out next to piles of pork. The place definitely had a pungent odor. Of course we had to eat lunch here.

We walked in, noticing that most of the booths housed burly-looking men dressed like they were on lunch break from a LL Bean catalogue photo-shoot. Probably a good sign. We strolled up to the counter and ordered bbq plus whatever else and took a booth. The food was damn good.

While Mike went to the bathroom, I overheard a father and son talking in the next booth over. The father had a low, country voice and the son had the high, imposing voice common to rural kids.

Father: What do you want to do when you get home?

Son: I’ll tell you what I wanna do: I wanna watch TV!

Father: Aw, come on now. It’s a beautiful day. You should go outside and play.

For some reason, I admired how patient and reserved the dad seemed, even within the apparent privacy of the booth.

After we finished up with the bbq, we enjoyed two gooey confections called Hot Fudge Cakes. There wasn’t much talking, but a lot of spoonwork. We sat for a while, letting the fresh cement in our stomachs set.

We got back on the road only to be met by a wall of green ahead of us. This was the jump to the Tennessee plateau, and it was there to knock our hubris (and our hygiene) down a peg or seven.

We descended into another valley, knowing full well that the pedals we weren’t pushing were a kind of signature on a very large debt. We rode down the valley, hit a right on 70W, and began repayment.

Since it’d been a sweet 8 days or so away from the horrible Blue Ridge Parkway, our legs were spoiled. We grunted up near-thousand foot climb, soaked in heat.

Mike on break from the Plateau climb.

After a few hundred hours, we hit the apex and descended to a gas station in Crab Orchard. I walked in and did my standard Hostess inspection. A girl, now living in Knoxville but originally from California, walked up and asked where we were going. We talked a little then parted ways. I bought a package of Snoballs and munched them outside like sweaty lion on pink gazelle.

On break from the climb. Want to collapse.

After I’d disposed of all evidence, we hopped back on the bikes and trucked it to Crossville; the road was flat and life was good. Mike said he was doing okay, but I was punch-drunk exhausted.

As we made our way into the center of Crossville, I could hear electronic bells chiming in the distance, the pitch modulating eerily a la Doppler. Worried that we had unknowingly stumbled into a reenactment of The Running Man, I asked Mike, “the hell is that?”

He replied, “church-bells.”

The town was strangely empty, but once we turned on Main, we realized why: the entire street was sealed off for a giant classic car show. We got off our bikes in a daze and strolled around for not more than a minute before we were approached by locals. They welcomed us in, pointed us to food, and told us to have a good time.

So *this* is what everyone means when they say "Main Street."

We locked our bikes up outside of a music shop (and just behind a 1950-something ‘vette) and walked the length of Main, gaping at cars. My interest in cars is limited strictly to utility, but I’ll admit that I was pulled in by the incredibly simple, beautiful engineering that some of these antique machines displayed.

Walking back, we hit a discount baked-goods stand. Mike bought an oversized brownie and I bought 3 cookies. After paying the lady working the booth, I asked her if there was any beer for sale at this shindig. She dumped a bucket of stink-eye over my head and said no. Dry county? I hope not.

After getting our fill of Main, we wondered back to the bikes and had an Indian-style sitdown. We decided priority number one was to figure out where we would be sleeping and, though we had some brash plans to sleep on one of the Main st. lawns, we thought that maybe less risky conk-spots might be worth investigating.

We called the Cumberland county fire department and, after talking to two fireman, we got an okay to camp on their grounds for the night. Relieved and excited for a tame night, we made tracks to Dairy Queen to replenish our gadgets and stomachs.

We did the walk-in routine and found a table towards the back of the oddly-labyrinthine DQ. I set up the surge-protector, we plugged in, then I got to work on yesterday’s entry. Mike wrote a little in his journal, then authored a postcard, probably for some forlorn woman.

We stayed there maybe three hours, and after two huge burgers and a chat with the intrigued, slightly mystified, and very friendly staff, we split for the firehouse.

On our way to the fire station. Don't know what to expect.

When we arrived at the firehouse, we were greeted by two guys who ostensibly worked there. I prepared for some ‘splainin’, figuring that we’d be presented with a “the hell you guys doin’ here.” Instead, the gents knew who we were and welcomed us in. We talked and laughed in front of the station, then the guys invited us to the back where we could pitch the tent.

Back of the fire station. Shed on the left is our hut.

But instead of ever unpacking our tent, the firemen did us one better: they offered us use of their brand new shed. Not only that, but they gave us full use of their indoor bathrooms and shower. We were overwhelmed at the hospitality of these charming dudes. They seemed like they were capable of having a damn good time, and we greatly enjoyed talking to them.

We set up in the shed, taking turns to change out of our bike clothes. I sat working on the last day’s entry a little more while Mike read Capote, the shed door open to keep us cool. I hit the indoor bathroom, exploring much of the fire station to get there, then slept like a drugged bear in winter.

'Night.

it sounds much more crass in condensed form than it really was
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Day 10: Don's Knoxville

We awoke to our alarms akimbo in the still-dark, dingy motel room in Bean Station¹. After five minutes or so, we were wolfing cold pizza that we had ordered the night prior. We made short work of four slices, then got to packing quickly. We found circumstantial evidence the day before that the Good ‘Ol Boys are running some kind of shady prostitution ring out of the Bean Station Budget Inn, so we wasted no time in packing up and hitting the road for Knoxville.

After Mike returned the key to the woman stationed at the front desk, we were off. The morning was extremely overcast, humid, and slightly breezy. My kind of weather.

Dreary (wonderful) morning near Bean Station.

The day started on flat terrain, which our legs appreciated. I put on some music² to amplify the feeling I got from the desolate, fragrant, and wet environment. The plant-life surrounding us was lush from a recent watering and matte from lack of morning sun. We pedaled on, and I really enjoyed the mood. Think Tennessee impersonating the state of Washington.

Eventually the sky sprung a leak and in five minutes we were getting showered on (good impersonation, huh?). It didn’t matter much; we put on water-proof tops and kept trucking. If anything, the rainfall added to the atmosphere.

After stopping at a gas station, we huddled under an awning for a while and the dumping stopped. We ditched the rain clothes and kept pedaling.

We rode through a valley, funneled by green hills. The recent rain had anointed the tops of the hills with mist. The fog gave an even more surreal tint to the Washington look. We were sitting pretty in a bike lane.

We banged out 41 miles, then we reached the outskirts of Knoxville. Our first task of the day was to visit a Walmart and stock up on all of the cheap goodies to which we had become accustomed. We made the few turns necessary and wound up in the sort of massive parking lot that signals a hallowed ground of serious shopping.

Before shopping, we went to a McDonald’s and got stuffed on McDoubles, sundaes, pies, fries, etc. I think we’re finally getting a little tired of the value menu, but time will tell.

We locked bikes in the Walmart parking lot and got to shopping after Mike left his mark on the bathroom. We finished browsing, then tallied and paid at the register. We forgot to pick up apple sauce. Bummer.

After Walmart, we scouted out a bike shop using the phones and set out towards that. This took us closer into Knoxville, where the hills came alive and beat the hell out of our knees. After descending a monster hill, we hit a left on Broadway and found the bike place, Greenlee.

When we walked into the bike shop, the mechanics on duty stared at us with a mixture of wonder and lethargy. I yelled something about spokes and they got to measuring my wheels. The mechanic who was working with me had a handlebar mustache and I’m sure he was very excited to work around the heavy panniers hanging off the side of my bike. In fact, I know he was very excited based on the swears muttered as he pushed and pulled to get to the wheel’s quick-release.

Nonetheless, he did a great job measuring the spokes and only charged me four bucks for four of them. Mike was talking to another, slightly more sunny mechanic and got a few bolts replaced on his front rack. We left the bike shop happy, especially considering we had entered the shop with zero spokes for me, which could have left us stranded miles away from civilization.

We kept trucking down broad, entered downtown Knoxville, and found a coffee shop to unwind at. A very swanky coffee shop.

We did our standard hey-I’m-just-a-cyclist-walking-into-your-shop-surreptitiously-with-a-5-pound-bag-of-chargers³ stroll past the register and found some comfy couches. I ordered an iced coffee and Mike got his signature sweet-tea/lemon-bar combo which seemed to do him no evil.

The coffee shop, as I said, really was swanky. The bar itself was beneath a little structure within the shop that you could actually access via a set of stairs. A lattice of small, soft lights on the bottom of this structure kept the bar well lit.

We hung here for a few hours. Instead of writing an update like a good bicycle tourist, I recharged my batteries by browsing the typical fare I would were I at home, i.e. hackernews. After an hour and a half, I was knee deep in an article that provided yet another fix to all time management problems ever, and Mike was tired of waiting around. Mike said he was going to go bike around and try to find some postcards; we decided that he’d come back here and we’d call up our host for the night, Don Fritz.

Knoxville is a surprisingly-cool little town.

Mike went and came, then we tried calling Don. No answer! We decided that we’d better cruise on over to his place to see what was up with our sleeping arrangements for the evening. We hopped on our bikes and pedaled southeast, into the heart of the UTenn campus.

On the way over, we met a very relaxed, middle-aged black guy⁴ tooling around on a bike. He asked about our gear and said he was going to a brew pub just down the street. On the way, about three people recognized him, one of whom called our new friend by yelling “hey, handsome.” We said we’d make it to the bar if we could, but unfortunately never did.

One cool dude.

After a few more minutes of pedaling, we made it to Don’s house. We’d caught Don unexpectedly (like the inexperienced surfers we were), but no less, he welcomed us in. We asked him if he’d like to join us out to eat and he accepted. I could see that he’d prepared for our arrival: there were pillows, blankets, and a roll-away bed set up in the middle of Don’s living room.

Livingroom wall from Don's.

Don put on a Janis Joplin tye-dyed t-shirt (more on her in a little) and got out his mountain bike, which had a trailer attached for grocery runs. We set off for Biscuit st., where a cluster of restaurants was circled around an upscale pedestrian area. We chose one almost at random and shared a delicious meal, Mike getting a Ruben and Don and I getting hamburgers. Over dinner, Don told us about himself and his interests, which consist almost entirely of Janis Joplin and researching his extended family, which, of course, includes Janis.

We finished up with the meal and returned to where we parked our bikes, slightly unsure of what to do next. Eventually, Don proposed we go to see the Sun Sphere, which is a monument that was built for the year that Knoxville hosted the World’s Fair. As we walked towards the Sphere, Don told us a lot more about his extended family, which allegedly includes Michael Jackson, Mohammed Ali, Katie Couric, the Arquettes, and the Duff girls. How all this is possible, I am not sure, but Don seems to have done a lot of research.

We got to the Sun Sphere and took an elevator up. It was eerily deserted, but we got a great view of Knoxville and Don told us a little bit about very many prominent buildings. Don snapped some pictures, then we began the walk back to the bikes.

One of the hazy views we got from the Sphere.

Mike and Don in the Sun Sphere.

Again we arrived at the bikes and again we were at a loss as to what to do next. The time was only around eight, relatively early for a Friday night, but then again Mike and I were pretty beat from our ride in. Don suggested we got to see one of the oldest cemeteries in the city which was only a few blocks away; Mike and I happily agreed.

Don shows us an old cemetery where some respectable dudes are buried.

After the cemetery, we went back to Don’s place and talked more about his family and Janis. Don claims he has a spiritual connection with Janis because he discovered her name in his research without any context for who she was and felt compelled to learn more about her. In this accidental way, he became one of Janis Joplin’s biggest fans.

Don and Mike yak.

Don’s living room is an impressive array of all of the family-related memorabilia he’s collected, with a slant towards Janis. Hundreds of knickknacks fill the room, each with a significance, a connection, or a story somehow linking the object back to Don’s family.

What drives a man to research his family so obsessively I’m not sure. But I do admire Don’s zeal and he’s a damn interesting guy to spend a few hours with.

After watching a few songs from a Joplin DVD, I told Don I was ready to turn in, so he got out some blankets and bid us good night. I fell asleep almost instantaneously: whoever knocks couches for sleep-comfort isn’t trying the right furniture.

Found this stuck to a table in Don's living-room.

A big day for the trip: we’d surfed our first couch.

read: NOTHING THERE
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DJ Shadow’s seminal downtempo record, Endtroducing…, to my knowledge the first album produced entirely from samples. Here’s a good clip
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we have perfected this
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a rare class of guy that I always appreciate running into: he’s always an older black male and he has a venerable sheen of experience while retaining hipness and a relaxed demeanor.
↩

Day 9: Mechanical failures, threatening weather, and golden arches

Last night, Mike was so enthralled with gardening that he forgot to bring his sleeping-bag into the tent; this resulted in him waking up around 3AM and rolling around in a daze until someone mixed consciousness with warm mud and threw it in my face around 6:20AM.

We groaned our collective groan for a few minutes, likely scaring away all wildlife within a 10ft radius, and then disassembled our churchyard home. This happened relatively quickly; in all likelihood, because we were both starving. We finished packing our bikes, which were resting on the side of a wooden jungle-gym, then quietly made our way out of the churchyard, closing the iron fence-gate behind us.

We trucked over to a McDonald’s for breakfast: our first visit to the infamous hamburger-stand gone public-enemy for the day. I consumed a hot 1010 calories for around $4.50, tax included. Mike probably consumed a commensurate amount. We received some strange looks from a flock of regulars who had congregated for McBreakfast, but then again if I had seen myself strutting into a McDonald’s at seven in the morning, AM-ruffled and in spandex, I may have called it bad science-fiction.

After scarfing our substantial, flaky breakfast sandwiches, we continued west down State until it became route 11W.

Green Tennessee hills.

Biking for long distances isn’t as painful as you might imagine it to be. Most of the sharp pains stop after the first week, and if they don’t, your bike probably isn’t adjusted correctly. The pains that have remained for me are mostly dull. Achy wrists, sore ass, maybe a rogue leg muscle that’s tender. Nothing sharp, just a continuous, dull hum of annoyance. Like white-noise, it’s a class of sensation that’s relatively easy to tune out, leaving you with the rhythmic cadence of pedal strokes.

From there, it’s like high school detention¹, but potentially better: this is dependent on the quality of scenery. Prolonged conversation with your companion isn’t feasible, so your only option is to examine your thoughts, prune them, or generate new ones. Rummage through memories, evaluate past choices. This can be fun, satisfying, or bizarre; so far I’ve encountered a few memories I’d long forgotten about, unsure of how their recollection was triggered.

Avenues of sensory escape are mostly closed. You can’t turn on TV. There aren’t any social network notifications firing red, scattering your attention. Can’t turn to a book. You can look around, but that only lasts for a few seconds every three miles or so; the eyes fill the mental cache quickly. The only bet you have for easy entertainment is music, and that’s exactly what I turned to today.

After riding for twenty miles, we stopped outside of a gas station in Kingsport. I gaped at the selection within the convenience store (becoming a habit?) while Mike snacked outside.

After ten minutes, we took off. After fifteen minutes, we were by the side of a very active, very angry-sounding route 11, figuring out how the hell (i) I had snapped two spokes, and (ii) how we were going to fix them, considering we were having considerable trouble getting my freewheel off.

*CRUNCH!* ... *CRUNCH!* ... shit.

Mike eventually pounded on Dad’s adjustable crescent and the freewheel gave way, allowing us to swap the wounded spokes. We replaced the spokes, I wrenched the wheel approximately true, then reassembled the whole mess. All told, we’d cut about forty minutes out of the day.

The ride today was stunningly beautiful. The hills of Tennessee have their own character, and I enjoyed taking in the lush green.

A Tennessee sky.

We kept cruising down 11W. On the edge of Kingsport, we both thought it a solid plan to hit the McDonald’s, since civilization looked to be thinning out and therefore our chances of success in a calorie-hunt were fast waning.

On our second trip to the golden arches, I consumed an amount of food worth 1590 calories. Level up, or what? This meal consisted of

(2) McDouble w/o cheese --- $2
(1) Small fries --- $1
(1) Fudge Sundae --- $1
(1) Baked cherry pie --- $0.50

Now, antagonists of McDonald’s, tell me how you can campaign against a restaurant that’ll provide relatively nutritious food yielding 2600 calories for a loose $9 in change. Are people campaigning against this restaurant really so short-sighted that they don’t see the use of this calorie-to-price ratio for the truly poor? For example, take us idiot post-college bikers.

After I accepted my fat bribe from Ronald for writing this post, we hit the road again.

About an hour later, Mike drifted into some noise-strips and he came away with a flat tire. I was all geared up for a catnap when the rain and thunder started. We huddled under a tree, eventually getting soaked. I donned my helmet once again when the hail started, which only lasted a short time.

Just before the heavy rain hit.

Once the weather cleared up, we stood outside of a Quality Inn getting dry and inhaling Snickers bars. We decided to attempt an 18 mile trek to Bean Station, which is the location of the motel we ultimately ended up at. The trip was a gamble: we were racing a storm on its way to Bean Station from the west.

Heading straight into the gamble.

We hauled ass down 11. At this point in the day, a rhythm had settled in our muscles. Any thought behind gear-shifting completely disappeared. We knew the terrain, and our bodies had internalized the frequency-to-grade pairings of our pedal strokes. Like I said, we hauled ass.

Ominous storm clouds collected south of us. The air felt charged and winds of varying temperature flared up and hit us like taunts from puerile nature. I was having a ball.

This was to our left. Ruh-roh.

We kept trucking in the bike lane (!) and the pavement beneath us felt like firm butter.

Just as light rain was falling, we turned off 11W, found our dingy but dry motel², and settled in for the day, having clocked 69 miles before 4PM.

One of the scenes visible from our room's window.

one of the best uses of time in public high school.
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we decided to hit a motel today because bouts of hail were forecasted to hit in the evening.
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Day 8: Young Americans in Tennessee

Mike and I went to bed around 11PM last night in Bob Atkins’ Wytheville home after talking with Bob about inductive chargers for electric cars, venture capital, and finally (the terminus for all conversations even vaguely related to money) the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007.

We yaked pleasantly for an hour or two in his livingroom, enjoying modern furniture and the view of Wytheville visible through the glass seperating the balcony from us. When the conversation came to a natural close, we shuffled off to the bathroom, now only perfunctorily performing hygienic activities; we’ve been spoiled by three (count ‘em three) nights indoors.

Bob's window at sunset.

Since Bob had a bed for each of us, I don’t even remember hitting the sheets last night. I don’t even think I changed positions.

The sunlight streaming into the guestroom woke us at five before seven. Bob called us out and we sat down to breakfast. I enjoyed a rare treat: hot, black coffee. Bob is a magician with a french press. We then wolfed a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and English muffins. Bob claimed he could only cook “simple shit,” but for my money, simple shit is all it takes.

We said goodbye to Bob, forgetting to get a picture with him. We finished packing up, briefly debated strapping the 12 of Coors Light to our bikes, then we left the beautiful Wytheville estate for the hot pavement of 11 South.

The driveway approaching Bob’s neighborhood was an incredibly steep ascent¹, so the descent happened quickly. On the final and steepest downhill, I didn’t brake hard enough and made the turn onto 11 way too quickly; a patch of gravel locked my back wheel into a slide and I thought I’d be eating lunch out of a tube. Luckily, the wheel slid into pavement and static friction did a little work. My balance came back and we were off (one “oh-shit!” later).

The first portion of the ride was relaxing. I thought on each part of my body to figure out where tension was and whether or not that exertion was necessary. I relaxed certain parts (shoulders, stomach) as the hilly, green country whipped by.

10 miles out or so, we passed a church. The billboard in front of the church read

WINTER’S OVER:

LET’S GO TO CHURCH

which is, to date, the most dumbfounding catch-phrase I’ve seen on a church billboard (and we’ve passed around 30 by now). Is there a branch of Christianity that only meets in warm weather? Or they just pushing a new divine mandate that prohibits the use of snow shovels and kosher salt? I dunno, but I’ll report back when I find a holy jingle that tops that one.

We rolled on to a very small town called Atkins and we stopped outside of an abandoned deli for a snack break. After two or three delicious selections from Food Bag 2 apiece, we kept moving. The wonderful thing about snack breaks is that when they’re over, my bike is lighter than before. Conversely, the awful thing about Walmart trips is that, after I’m done bathing in the intoxicating sea of discount snack items, my bike is much heavier than it was before. Yin and yang, or some such tripe.

Lonely Atkins station.

After Atkins, we hit some stretch between towns where a few houses and a church had been worked over by a tornado. Giant spliters of wood were jutting outwards, walls were missing, and roofs were precariously unsupported because the columns once there had been ripped away. A Sunoco still stood, though obviously roughed up.

We rode on into Chilhowie, which was a town with slightly greater ripples of civilization. We parked on the side of a gas station, listened to David Bowie play over the loadspeaker, and watched a beer merchandiser go back and forth with stacks of corn lager. After a while, I went into the station and browsed for the sake of browsing, just to see some variety and to simulate making choices. It’s fun to do hypothetical comparisons between brightly-colored Hostess pastries. At least when you’re on a cross-country bike trip. Eventually I sold myself on one of those gas-station cherry pies, walked out, and began munching it next to Mike. We watched the beer guy play the back-and-forth some more and took shots out of our water-bottles.

Around 12:30PM, we hit Abingdon, which was the largest town we’d seen all day. In fact, the place was too civilized for us: we tried three restaurants before finding one with a suitably low price-range. A note to the audience: grass on the roof and a sign claiming that an establishment was founded in 1770-something is a great heuristic for ruling out a joint on the basis of price.

RIght as Mike got a flat, we found a Mexican place that was suitably cheap. We locked the bikes and walked in. The eatery was dim and cool; the proprietors had spray-painted the walls to look like the internals of a Mayan temple and there were beer advertisements hanging from the ceiling. I guess this is what happens when you take Mexico and leave it in a hot car in southern Virginia for a few days.

Mike and I happily strafed into a booth and our waiter floated up to us immediately. Mike said that he had a strangely relaxed cadence in his speech. In a minute, we were situated with lemon’d water and perusing a surprisingly professional menu. In ten minutes, I was staring at two hot enchiladas and wondering if there was any way I wouldn’t trade the Alamo for two more. We shoveled, sat, paid, and left. The woman at the register prounounced “Michael” like a Spanish aristocrat.

Mike’s flat still had to be dealt with, so we found a patch of shady grass, pulled out some tire levers, and Mike got to work. I did what I always do when Mike is fixing a flat: take a cat-nap on my back with legs arched. Some indefinite time later, Mike finished and we saddled up for the final leg of the day’s ride to Bristol.

Mike's flat. Before my catnap.

The ride to Bristol was around 14 miles, and we made good time. Coming in to the city, we saw a Starbucks and Mike had to restrain me. We rolled down to the VA-TN border, crossed it gingerly for ceremony, then Mike realized his headset² had come loose. We googled a bike shop and luckily it was only three blocks west. Fifteen minutes later, Mike’s bike is fine and we’re enroute to a coffee shop, Java J.

Java J's.

We hung out at Java J for a good while. Mike read Capote and I wrote part of this entry. There was a cozy, semi-private space in the back with a couch and the staff was very friendly. After a few hours of writing, routing, and CouchSurfing requests, we left for dinner at the Burger Bar three blocks west.

They didn't kick us out, even with the bike clothes.

Let me say this about the Burger Bar: they had Young Americans playing³, the seatable space was no more than 60 square feet, and they had 16oz draft beer for $2. The burgers were fantastic despite a healthy wait.

It's as cool as it looks.

After dinner, we encountered four charming ladies outside who inquired about our trip. We responded and they chatted us up, which we enjoyed. They told us to have fun, be safe, and watch out for the weather awaiting us in the west. Sounds like Memphis is going to be interesting.

Damn cool ladies.

About that time the sun was setting, so we excused ourselves and hopped on our bikes. Our plan initially was to camp in Steel Creek park, but after following 11th street to its end, we found that entrance we’d sought was plastered with Private Property signs. In the south⁴, these signs are no joke, so we turned around and took stock of our options.

Mike on State.

Down the street was a Presbyterian church, but after a few minutes of banging on the door, yelling “SAAANCTUARY!!”, etc. no one answered. I spotted another church so we high-tailed it over there. Luckily, the proprietors were gardening in a courtyard, so we waved emphatically and explained our story. After a lot of laughing, Barbara, the pastor, invited us in and told us we could camp in the courtyard.

Barbara is a queen.

Camping without big spiders or threat of bears or cops!? This was an unexpected surprise and a welcome improvement. We changed out of our bike clothes in the church and got to work helping out with the garden. We then met Steve, Louise, and Ms. Chang, who were also helping with the garden. All were very nice.

Night-gardening in the churchyard.

Now we sit in a tent pitched in the courtyard of the historic Anderson St. United Methodist church in the heart of Bristol, Tennessee, surrounded by city-sounds but resting on grass. I couldn’t ask for a more relaxing combination.

we had to resort to the stand-up-on-your-bike-and-pump method that everyone uses excessively in grade school and then never afterward for fear of social ostrasization.
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linkage between bicycle fork and handles.
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second time today!
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or really anywhere, but of course everything is more dangerous in the south
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Day 7: Surprise! Mountain

Mike and I collected ourselves from Sam’s floor in Blacksburg with surprising alacrity; we were out the door in under an hour and a disheveled (and probably not entirely awake) Sam waving us out of his neighborhood by 8AM.

The initial ride was easy, and I quickly found my mind drifting from our immediate surroundings. At the send-off party, Danny Shiner remarked that one of the coolest aspects of the bike trip would be the ability to inspect my normal life and behavior from the outside. I’ve found this to be true, and when introspection is brought on by the monotony of flat terrain and a constant pedal stroke, I always welcome and enjoy it.

Early in the ride, Mike rescued a turtle from the perils of route 11; the dumb, reptilian bastard was halfway into the right lane when we pulled up and did a Hollywood-heist-style delivery that had Michaelangelo back into his natural habitat in record time.

We passed through a small town called Pulaski, which was quaint but strange. The town itself seemed deserted. Midtown, the only people in sight were a few old black women perched outside of a dilapidated brick tenement. They were waiting for, as far as I could tell, the sun to turn blue.

Pulaski was situated on a river, which meant there was a dip in elevation going into it. Of course, that indicated to us that there’d be climbing coming out, but we didn’t know how much.

Then, I began to think I was having mid-cycling fever dreams hearkening back to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I kept pedaling, then realized that we had climbed another mountain. Aw shucks.

We hit the peak bewildered and panting. We snapped some pictures, then started on the descent. On the way out, we waved at a slightly overweight but sage-looking dude with a flowing mane who was ostensibly there only to enjoy pre-storm weather at a high elevation.

Top of the Pulaski hill; thought we'd left the BRP behind.

Then, our first rain of the trip started. We donned rain gear and kept riding, but the rain began to feel more like hail, so we ducked into a truck stop called The Apple House after tethering our bikes to, I kid you not, a gas pump.

Being a kid from NoVA, I see a diner and I think $10 plus tip. In good ‘ol rural America, this ain’t the case at all; Mike got a huge plate of biscuits, sausage gravy, and eggs for $4.34, I got a hot turkey sandwhich fissured by a bucketfull of mashed potatoes and gravy for $5.99. We must’ve consumed more calories in that one meal than Marisa Tomei does in a year.

Post-gorge, we fussed around for a while with our cellphones, managing our various CouchSurfing prospects and scrutinizing weather reports. After a few minutes, we noticed that the rain had died down, so we squared at the register and retrieved our bikes from the makeshift stable. Some guy in a utility van was pumping gas two feet away and pretended not to notice us.

We then made the trek to Wytheville, VA, where Mike’s uncle Bob has a house. Bob had generously offered (or had been talked into offering) to put us up for the night. We let ourselves in and investigated the house. I was struck by the stark, minimalist decorating, pleased by the view, and even more pleased to find a Cato periodical casually resting on a coffee-table. A Libertarian, eh?

Bob's awesome livingroom.

Mike and I found our room and discovered that Bob had laid out towels and washcloths for us. The shower I took was one of the finest hygienic experiences of my life. While raiding the fridge, we helped ourselves to a Coors Light each.

Mike test-driving the couch.

Dazed from the beer, soap, and hot water, we loafed around until Bob came home. We greeted with Bob and he offered us dinner. We responded in babbling unison with answers that translate to an emphatic “yes,” so we made tracks for the local Ruby Tuesdays, chatting with Bob on the way.

We had to scale these to get to the main floor of Bob's house.

Bob is an engineer who has moved to management; he’s very fiesty, historically fluent, and, in his own words, he’ll “give you a three-dollar answer to a ten-cent question.” My kind of guy. We talked mostly politics at dinner.

The bathroom which Bob has loaned us. He knows not what he does.

Around seven we returned and now Mike and I are lounging on the couch, planning, writing, and digesting.

Day 6: Blacksburg Best Of

I don’t have time to do a full update for Day 6, so here’s a Best Of:

Short ride from Roanoke into Blacksburg up some damn steep mountain roads. Passed a patch of donkeys in a valley. I yelled "EEYORE!" more times than I'd like to admit.
Took my bike into a shop, Hokie Spokes, which I highly recommend. I just wanted to use the guy's table vice to get my freewheel off, but he ended up truing my wheel (after banging on it with both a rubber mallet and a hammer) and replacing a spoke nipple and tube. A few times I questioned his handy-work and all times I got back responses like, "yeah, we can do it that way if you want to half-ass it," and, "look, man, I don't have to do this for you." His name is Dave and we ended up getting along well. I liked his honest demeanor and he did damn good work for a reasonable price.
Met up with our good friend Sam, who had slept four hours in the past three days. He took us to a gyro bar where we were served greasy, delicious lamb by a girl wearing shorts that said "HOO-AH" on the bum. She looked like she could break your arm and then apologize for it afterwards.
Returned to Sam's place, raided his fridge. We retooled and repacked, dropping around forty pounds in frivolous weight. Some items abandoned were
- Soy sauce in an 8oz glass bottle
- boombox
- cast-iron pans
- logic and languages text
- onion
- skippy peanut butter jar (creamy)
I adjusted my rear derailleur and saddle. The trip is now about three times easier.
Ordered pizza and watched TV with Sam and friends, which was very relaxing.
Conked on Sam's floor. Slept like a toddler at church.

Day 5: I love Roanoke

We woke up in our weird camping spot near an entrance to the Appalachian trail and groggily began morning activities. Disassembly and changing clothes were a little tricky, since the terrain we picked to camp on was uniformly peppered with strange, shin-high plants which may or may not have been poison ivy. I did a lot of high stepping.

After the usual fifty minutes of changing, hygiene, and tear-down, we wheeled our bikes to the side of the parkway and began to make omelettes. We were still a little salty, likely from the underwhelming amount of rest the night’s sleep had provided us.

Eating the eggs, I asked myself how we were possibly going to do the rest of the Parkway. With the two of us as exhausted as we were and the relatively scant amount of mileage we’d covered in the past few days, how could we expect to tackle 6000ft peaks in North Carolina and have any hope of maintaining a 60mi/day average? I told myself to buck up and inhaled an omelette.

We set out for a very short climb to the peak, then we ran into Tom.

Tom is a cyclist-prince and could be anywhere from 35 to 70 years old.

When we first saw Tom, we weren’t actually seeing Tom. We were seeing panniers¹. A guy with serious panniers is almost necessarily a bicycle tourist, so we went nuts and started yelling generic greetings to him; Tom’s the first tourist we’ve seen on the trip. He wheeled over to talk to us.

Tom had spent a week on the Blue Ridge Parkway; he’d braved freezing rain at 6000ft and pulled ninety mile days. One of his last dinners had been two bags of oatmeal and a pop-tart. We were duly put in our place as newbies. But Tom wasn’t gloating; he was just sharing his story.

Tom expressed some serious surprise when he learned that we were starting off the cross-country ride with a not-so-leisurely go down the Parkway. He said that the Parkway was the hardest terrain he’d encountered in the country, next to the Ozark Mountains, and three years earlier, he’d done a cross-country ride himself. We expressed some serious surprise (and relief) when he dropped this on us.

We shared a package of fig newtons while enjoying some tutelage under Tom concerning a few good places to eat in Roanoke. Tom whipped out a few maps, we studied, then he gave us some parting advice and split.

After Tom left, we were still enjoying his earnest, excited glow. Energy and happiness seemed to radiate from the guy, possibly because he had just torn through icey, North-Carolinian hell and was still doing what he loved: riding his bicycle. Tom alludes to the idea that the lows in life give the highs substance and body; how can you appreciate a sunny day if you’ve never seen the rain?

After speaking with Tom, we finally came to the realization that attempting to complete the Blue Ridge Parkway in our current condition and for the purposes of a trip to SF was not reasonable. A reroute was in order. We decided to hit Roanoke, find a motel, and sort our trip out.

We were immediately relieved. We flew down the parkway, hit a few climbs, and eventually exited onto 460W into Roanoke. About eight miles in, we encountered an Applebee’s. Mike said, “I never imagined I’d be so happy to see an Applebee’s.” We snagged a table and gorged on chicken, shrimp, and pasta.

Delivery back into civilization was one of the best feelings of my life. When you’re out alone, against nature, without businesses around, i.e. without other people who are willing to serve your needs in exchange for currency, it’s exhausting, repetitive, and terrifying.

We were routinely worried that we wouldn’t have enough water or food to go on. If we collapsed, how would we get help? Cell phones? Nope — spotty signal. Park services? Infrequent and inaccessible — we’re on bikes. A serious round with nature makes you love humanity and the marketplace.

Sitting in the Applebee’s, stuffing my face, I called around to a few of the local motels. The first place I called, “A. Knights motel” (the lowest rated place on Google Maps and therefore our first call) offered a room for $40; the only catch was it was a little out of the way. So, I called a few motels on 460W.

The first was some ritzy Holiday Inn. When told that we were on a strict budget of $40 for a one-bed room, the woman I spoke to said with a Southern sheen, “Oh my, heavens no. Our lowest room is $109 a night. I just don’t know of any place in Roanoke you could get a room that inexpensive.” Yeah? Well I do. Next try went a little better. The place was called Rodeside (?) Inn, and I guess they compensate for their lack of spelling procedure with a willingness to haggle with idiots like us. The lady I spoke to presented me with a price of $49.99 per night and I argued her down a whopping five dollars using the shady A. Knights offer as ammo.

We left Applebee’s for the Rodeside Inn.

We basked in our motel room like starved gluttons entering a Sizzler. Running water? Showers!? A Wendy’s down the street? Wifi? Modern civilization is a beautiful thing and anyone who claims otherwise can go live in a national forest for a week. I purchased two double-hamburgers and 5 pieces of chicken for three dollars and I inhaled them.

After rolling around on the bed like degenerate epileptics for a while (a bed!?) we got to planning. We rerouted through Blacksburg and directly into Tennessee, cutting out the rest of the BRP and North Carolina entirely. Let me show you what this resulted in:

Our current location in VA to Memphis, TN.

Now, that looks pretty nasty, right? Let’s just compare it to the ele profile from yesterday.

Day 4's ride.

Look at the numbers on the vertical axis. Yeah. Reroute accepted.

After the big reroute, we went to a Mexican place in downtown Roanoke called Alejandro’s. Getting there on unloaded bikes was a bizarre experience. The burritos were delicious and downtown Roanoke is an incredibly aesthetic place; there was a gothic church off in the distance, punctuated by a few modern high-rises and some lower, art-deco buildings. I really enjoyed this atmosphere juxtaposed over the more typical Southern grit that surrounded our hotel.

Outside of Alejandro's.

We enjoyed the light breeze, warm weather, and easy flux of conversation around us on the porch at Alejandro’s for a while, then paid up and pedaled the two miles back to our wonderful, shabby motel room.

The Little Chef's, a diner behind our motel. In the front of it, a sign was posted that said "2 eggs bacon pancake homefries coffee 4.95."

I spent much of the rest of the night marveling slackjawed at the comforts of indoor plumbing, spring mattresses, and chairs². I enjoyed a dreamless sleep.

bags that hang off the side of the bike
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I’m serious.
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Day 4: Getting intimate with the BRP

We woke up in our strangely inclined tent on the morning of day 4 and we were ambitious. We’d taken half the last day off after the insane bout of climbing we’d done in hopes that it would prepare us adequately for round two with the Parkway. What naive children.

Waking up was excellent. We were inclined downward, our feet lower than our heads, and we’d left the window of the tent transluscent so we could see bits of sunlight stream through the foliage.

Eventually we got up and began to disassemble tent and do myriad other things that have become routine over the last few days, e.g.

sterilizing my hands and inserting contact lenses within the tent,
changing into biking clothes and applying chamois cream in, ahem, the right places,
taking care of business with the help of a tense squat, a half-roll of toilet paper, and a trowel,
disassembling our tent,
repacking our bikes,,
recovering the food bags from wherever we hid them from the bears,

etc. We’ve gotten the whole rigamoral down to a routine and, at this point, we can usually get out of dodge within an hour. This particular morning took a little longer because we were still a little green behind the ears.

We didn’t cook anything in the interest of time. We knew it was going to be a big day… we just didn’t know how big. We scarfed some trail-mix and got rolling.

The sort of thing we woke up to.

The first portion of the day, as you’ve probably discerned from the elevation profile, was basically all downhill with a few climbs interspersed. This was awesome; imagine going down a road at 30MPH on a chair surrounded by Bavarian scenery. Awesome.

We did this for a few hours and, by noon, we’d gained 40 miles and lost about 2200 feet of elevation. We were jazzed at the gain, but slightly nervous about whatever it was we’d have to do in return.

By this point, we were getting lower on food than we’re comfortable with. Luckily, we saw that near the end of our descent, there’d be a restaraunt right on the Parkway. We got to the advertised location and, to our horror, the place was more boarded up than half a block of Detroit. A campground was nearby, so we decided to go get some information from the attendant working the check-in desk.

We doddled around for a while, looking at a map of Virginia, while she talked to some elderly couple who were complaining about rich folk driving million dollar campers pulled by Hummers. I smirked at old people griping like that (does anyone who respects themselves gripe to strangers?) and went back to the map.

After a long, long while, the couple left and we cornered the lady working the desk. She very promptly told us that, yes, the building with half a facade of plywood was in fact a closed restaurant, but, there was a restaurant/convenience store just a few miles out of town. The two of us hungry morons rapidly become bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and giggled like twelve-year-olds over the prospect of more trail-mix and maybe a hamburger. The lady gave us directions and we split.

The directions took us out to a place called Big Island. We didn’t find the island, but we did find the H&H Restaurant, which will serve you a half-pound hamburger for $3.19. Mike and I parked our bikes, gathered all the electronics gear, and went in. There was a group of blossoming Good ‘Ol boys and girls about our age sitting at a table in the center of the place, wearing T-shirts outfitted with four-wheeling pictures and rebel pride slogans. They seemed nice enough.

We gave our order to our black waitress, who had the conversational presence of a piece of dried leather. That being said, she got us our bbq-pork sandwiches just fine, and we chowed down while surreptitiously setting up our electronics to charge.

After chowing, I did a few site updates and threw some of the newer photos on Flickr. Then we looked at the profile and the shit was officially scared out of us. We had a climb from 800ft to nearly 4000ft ahead of us.

Yesterday’s escapades had only entailed about a 2000ft gain, and that had scared us into calling it an early day with only 30 miles under our belt. What the hell was this thing going to do to us? Would I be able to walk again? Would my heart explode on the side of this godawful mountain? Like any sensible person of my generation, I began to tweet frantically.

Eventually, we settled up at the restaurant, picked up a few items from the convenience store, and got back to the Parkway. The tension between the two of us was obvious. We weren’t talking much. I think we were both pretty scared; I can certainly say I was.

Then it started. Somehow it’s never as bad as you think. I think back to Orwell’s words:

It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Yes, it’s awful. Your legs hurt, you perpetually don’t think you can go any further, sweat runs down your face, yellow-jackets circle around your head for a nip of the Tang on your breath. But you keep your head beamed on that goddamn 5x10 block of pavement in front of you and you watch it move. And it does. And forward you go.

It’s a physical representation of something I hadn’t consciously understood until now that’s a motif in life: if you want to accomplish huge things, you don’t do so by keeping your eye fixed on the end. You do one minute task at a time until you can stand back and see progress at a macroscopic level.

I got to do so when Mike said that he would puke if we didn’t take a break. So we did. Mike said his heart was beating irregularly; I didn’t say a damn thing because I couldn’t talk, and we had a nice sit on the side of a grassy hill.

Mike rolling out from the break.

After a little while, athletic-looking men and women began to pass us going up the hill. They were on unloaded road bikes. We cheered them on from our restive vantage point on the side of the road and they shouted encouraging things back.

Mike rallied and decided that he wanted to chase these fellow cyclists; I told Mike he was crazy and that we’d never catch them, but we got back on the saddles anyway.

On break, feeling rough.

The day for me is mostly a blur of the frantic-panting, eyes-half-closed, forward-leaning, 60lb-wobble pumping of the legs that climbing the BRP entails. Do it sometime: it’s awesome.

Finally, we hit an intersection with the Appalachian trail, which included a parking lot, a picnic area, an incredible overlook, and some camp-able grassy flats.

One of the spots on the Appalacian trail. Probably my favorite picture of the entire trip so far.

We ogled the views awhile and then got to setting up tent. In the middle of setting up tent, a friendly cyclist came by and informed us that we may get kicked out of the area by park officials, since this parking lot wasn’t a part of the Jefferson national forest, but he recommended a spot two miles down (or, more accurately, up) the road. We thanked him and dismantled our half-built tent.

One of the ogled views.

After just barely making it to the fire-road the friendly cyclist had directed us to, we walked down the unkempt road and saw a place flat enough to set up the tent.

The place gave me the creeps. Very strange plant-life and quiet as could be at near 4000 feet high.

Our creepy camp site.

We got tent set up and cooked beef stew. We were both in fairly foul moods after the difficult climb and said little that wasn’t laced with contempt or condescension. Luckily, nothing got nasty; thanks again to my father for having us kids travel enough to know the transient demons brought on by an empty stomach and a long day.

We ate our soup, changed into sleep clothes, and set up tent. Pretty immediately, the tent went dark and we closed our eyes for sleep. Until we heard the human-sounding footsteps somewhere outside of our tent.

I grabbed my knife and shut up. The only two things I could hear were those footsteps and my heart beating about as fast as it had been earlier on the hill. I whispered to Mike about it. We waited a few minutes and it went away; the time was around ten and all was dark.

I fall asleep; fast-forward to 1AM. I wake up and feel something isn’t right. I’m probably just a little dehydrated. I take a hit of water and roll over.

The footsteps again.

I immediately grab my knife and listen. More footsteps. Christ.

I wait. Eventually, they die down, and I sleep for the next two hours with the knife in my hands.

I’m not superstitious, but I have heard stories about strange things happening while camping, and certainly my Irish relatives have a few things to say about ethereal happenings. I will say this: near where we camped, there looked to be a structure that had collapsed long ago that was made out of cinderblocks. I dunno what went on in that thing, but it had a strange feeling to it.

I was glad when we got out in the morning.

The Blue Ridge Parkway exemplifies a characteristic I’ve seen in other awesome presences of nature: it’s extremely beautiful and completely unrelenting. By morning, we were still exhausted.

We pulled 58 miles on Day 4, and I can still feel it.

Day 3: This s$!&'s about to get real

Pictures will be on Flickr. No time to embed them.

For a brief summary of today, let me refer you to the elevation profile. The values on the vertical axis range from 700 feet to 3500 feet.

The day got off to an ominous start. We left camp early, having taken a while to cook breakfast and clean up. We dumped our trash behind the elementary school which was earlier eminating strange bells and loudspeaker voices which I could only characterize as something you might hear in a concentration camp.

We stopped at the nearest grocery, which was so ritzy I would’ve been less surprised to find it on Madison Ave. instead of in podunk VA.

When we figured the place was out of price-range, we decided to keep trucking. I stepped on my pedals and snap, my chain broke.

Uh oh.

We pulled out our one reserve chain and Mike began to install it. We decided we’d better do our shopping here after all (for the sake of parallelizing our tasks), so I went in and bought six duck eggs for, I kid you not, $4.50.

Mike got the chain installed a-okay, so we were rolling once again. We went five miles or so.

Then we hit the hill. The hill that wouldn’t end. Probably the steepest grade I’ve ever encountered for more than a few seconds. On the elevation profile, it’s the part of the line where the tangent is almost vertical.

Climbing the hill took some Karate-Kid-mental-gymnastics. I had never encountered anything like grinding my cranks up this sort of grade before, and I can only thank the preparation that my Dad gave us when he took us snowboarding as kids. We’d sit and cry on a hill with wet asses and he’d ease us down with enough care not to break us but enough expectation to help us grow.

Biking up a hill for a prolonged period of time eventually results in two options. If you’re on a good hill, you’re in your lowest gear. This means that you can either keep pedaling, or collapse on the side of the hill. With two of us, the latter isn’t viable. To keep pedaling, you have to (and I’m going to sound like some snake-oil salesman zenmaster here) disconnect your mind and your body. You have to keep your head down and look only at the ten-foot stretch of pavement in front of you, else you look up and all you see is hill and you want to stop immediately.

Something is theraputic about this kind of climbing. Most of these hills force me into my lowest gear; I have no other options. I stop fidgeting with gears, positions. I have to put my head down and grind it out.

Eventually, a sort of rhythm comes and the climb isn’t so bad.

This is the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s 420 miles long, and we’re really hoping not to keel over on the side of it.

We stopped a few times throughout the day to eat and rest our legs. Once, we hit a visitor’s center manned by an old Park Ranger. I asked if the two of us could use an electrical outlet to juice up some of our gear and he agreed hesitantly. During the bout of charging, Mike and I chowed on two-day-old angel-food cake and one-day-old Hawaiian surprise.

After only thirty miles, we decided it was time to call it quits for the day. Camping is not allowed on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but we managed to find our own little hideaway on a reasonably mild incline behind a picnic area. We set up camp here, and I’m writing this from within a warm tent on the side of a hill maybe ten degrees in grade at 3211 feet.

It’s amazing that the same landmass we fought with throughout the day is the same that provides us with a soft place to lay our tired bodies. Nature doesn’t care one way or another; one minute she’s thrashing you, the next offering you nutritious sustenance.

Day 2: Deathmarch to Charlottesville

Despite a wonderful send-off from Sue, Laura, and Chris, today was a considerably harder bike than yesterday.

After cleaning our food-bag, practicing hygiene (a soon-to-be rarity), and eating a healthy breakfast cooked by Sue, we packed and shipped out. Whenever I get the pictures from Sue, I’ll upload them to the flickr.

Shortly after leaving Sue’s, Mike led the two of us down one of his signature short-cuts, which had us biking down a gravel road for a few miles.

If you ever find yourself on a bicycle, I would highly recommend avoiding gravel. When you hit, let’s say, a hill on a gravel road, it’s not a good idea to break, since you lose traction, but it’s also not a good idea to not break because you pick up speed. When you pick up speed, the gravel shifts your weight rapidly, and you end up wobbling more than a sorority girl on Mardi Gras. Mike opted for the wobbling and almost ate it, which would have been considerably less fun than Mardi Gras.

We escaped the gravel and got back onto a civilized roadway, 15. 15 was fine for a while, but then we began to hit a few no-joke hills: a precursor of things to come.

Then we hit hills. Then we hit more hills.

Let me get straight to the point: my day was an iteration of the following process:

Approach the crest of a very steep, very lengthy downward slope. “Wow, I’m about to go really fast. This is awesome.”
Bike towards the slope. Begin to go down it. Gravity works. Shift up. Shift up. “Wow, I’m going really fast.” Life is great, the wind is blowing through my hair in slow motion, and California Dreamin’ is playing.
The downward slope bottoms out. I see the ridiculous grade I’m about to climb. I begin to wonder if pavement roller-coasters were one of the public-works projects included in the New Deal.
Cringe. Shift up. Shift up. Shift up. Talk to myself in my head encouragingly. ”I’m going to keel over and die on this hill.”
GOTO 1

The whole time, there was this sort of dialogue going on between my body and mind:

Mind: PEDAL. PEDAL, DAMMIT! The hell happened to the computer gig, O’Berine!?

Body: YAA-OUCH! Okay. Okay. We’ll play your little game. Oops, did I trip that pain signal in your thigh? Aww, that must be awful. Here: let me blur your vision a little.

This went back and forth and back and forth until I began to suspect that Sartre had invaded my subconscious and was writing another shitty play.

After 46 miles of terror (Mike loved it), we got to Charlottesville and parked our bikes on the pedestrian mall. That’s a really cool stretch of Charlottesville, and I encourage anyone down there to check it out. Charlottesville has an engaging urban vibe to it. Even just biking through the streets was a refreshing change from the rest of RoVA¹ (though the hills were still around and daunting as ever).

Eventually, we met up with Mike’s uncle Dan and his daughter Hannah. We got dumplings with them and detailed our misadventures so far. They were very receptive and extremely pleasant to talk to.

Eventually, we parted ways with Dan and Hannah (Dannah?) and found a coffee shop to crash in. CVille has some swanky coffee shops.

After lounging in arm chairs for a good forty-five minutes, we decided to split. As we were packing up, an older black cop came up to us and inquired very casually about our trip (“to California? You gotta be shitting me!”), shook our hands three times, and then left. Bewildered but pleased with a positive encounter with the police, Mike and I left.

We then got onto 250W for, you guessed it, more hills. The remainder of the ride is a blur for me because it was all GOTO 1 and I was all kinds of screwed up. After 15 miles or so, we found a small stretch of woods that backed up to some kind of public school. Mike waltzed into the school, encountered no opposition, and filled our waterbottles. We then set up camp in the woods, and no one has bothered us yet, misquitos aside.

Mike’s odometer read 61 miles as we were setting up tent.

It’s Hawaiian Thursday here at Ad Hoc Adventure Time, so Mike is cooking up Spam, pineapple, and rice. If I don’t collapse before then, I might get to taste some.

Rest of Virginia. Thanks, Jeff
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Day 1: Culpeper Chili Coma

Tuesday was a frantic scramble to get our stuff in order for this morning’s big leave. After scooping Mike from his Mclean cheteau, the two of us skittered around Reston tying up loose ends; this included: getting Tang¹ and other bare necessities from Giant, searching for a 1” crescent wrench (futile), and taking inventory of our gear in typical J&M style (read: primitively disorganized).

Of course, the centerpiece of our final preparation was running around in a Jurassic Park-style bog in Springfield after drinking a substantial volume of beer.

After returning, sopping wet and smelling faintly like a liberal-arts dorm, Mike and I stripped down to our skivvies and began to pack while drying off, still fairly buzzed and keeping the company of Scoob and Mike’s friend, Sam, both members of the bog-expedition.

Around 3AM, we were packed and ready to turn in for four hours of sorely needed shuteye.

The horrible packing.

Seconds later, my cell-phone alarm is doing its impression of a Baghdad firefight and claiming the time to be 7AM. Daylight corroborated, so I got up and meandered upstairs. Momma-dukes was in the kitchen whipping up a breakfast to please a prince and, when I said “hi,” I could’ve sworn that my voice had slipped away in the night to go party with Charlie Sheen.

I met Mike outside my room, after he’d accidentally busted in for a peek at my bum as I was changing into my bike shorts, and what he uttered epitomized the last 12 hours perfectly: “why must we do things this way?” I replied something in Ape and we both shuffled upstairs for The Breakfast To End All Breakfasts.

Scoob.

While Mike and I were playing peekaboo downstairs, Scoob² had showed up and was munching happily at the kitchen table. We took a seat next to him and devoured the morning-time treats that Ma had laid out for us. Mike’s mom and Will Bartlett showed up shortly thereafter and we all finished breakfast.

Wonderful breakfast.

Sendoff part 1 commenced and we left Reston with Will B. in tow.

After appalling Mike and Will with a convoluted ride to Dad’s compound, we gained an adjustable crescent wrench and I said my goodbyes to Dad, Deb, and Willie. I’ve gotta admit that after seeing my family off, I was a little choked up.

Sendoff from Dad's.

The trip was now in full swing. We barreled across Herndon and hit 7100 southbound, Russ Chimes³ blaring out of the weather-proof boombox strapped to my front rack and our stomachs coated in buttery gold. Lacking the weight of gear necessary for a cross-country trip, Will B. led the way.

We passed through Chantilly and then Centreville without event. Manassas came and went, as did Bristow. We stopped briefly at a Wendy’s (this being about two hours after we left Mom’s, ~11AM) and chowed down some hot, cheap grease.

As we were riding down 28 at a good clip, I said something to the effect of, “alright! heading down 28 three-abreast!” and Will replied wryly in non sequitur: “One thing I don’t think you’ll ever hear a rapper say is, ‘rollin’ down the street/three-abreast’. It’d have to be ‘three-deep,’ man.”

Will B leading the pack on 28.

When we hit the outskirts of Nokesville, we took a break next to the entrance of a farm and Will had to turn around. He had work at three, it was about 11:30AM, and he was 30 miles away from Vienna. We said our goodbyes and he split backwards.

I ate two hamburgers and a bag of trail mix here.

Mike and I continued on down 28, enjoying the bucolic, empty green fields and cozy farm houses. It’s impressive how quickly you get into Real Virginia heading south from NoVA.

Mike, meet SoVA.

We eventually stopped in a small town called Remington because… well, it was the first small town we’d hit and so were pretty much obliged to check it out. Plus, Mike was hungry and I’m confident he was beginning to fantasize about French omelettes.

We parked our bikes in a lot behind the most bustling place in the town, a generic deli, and Mike went in to refill our waterbottles. Mike returned and we guided our behemoth cycles over to an empty lot across the street, where we would cook omelettes and drink haphazardly mixed Tang. When we intially opened foodbag1, we found that, as predicted by Dan Carvajal⁴ at our sendoff party, some of the foam-protected eggs had cracked and there was a gooey, sticky grit-soup spread throughout the bag.

Good spirits.

After cleaning up, we made our way out of Remington and down into Culpeper. We were at approximately 55 miles at this point, the time about 2:30PM, and I was getting winded. On entering Culpeper, I spotted a Starbucks and fanatically swerved into the parking lot. The two of us cozied up to two of the artsy chairs proverbial of Starbucks and I retrieved two Frappachinos⁵, courtesy of the gift card Dad had given me earlier in the morning. We sat for about an hour, enjoying the furniture and making plans for material we needed to pick up in town. I felt for the staff; here were two sweaty, unkempt twenty-somethings clad in goofy biker clothes and crashing on their furniture. I feel even more so for the ottoman we used. Regardless of whatever suspicions I have, the ladies working there were very nice to us.

We expected heavy rain, but it ended up being a beautiful day.

Mike finally pried me off of the post-modern ‘bucks furniture and we got to moving again, this time towards a bike shop in downtown Culpeper. By this point, my legs were pretty fed up with this ridiculous circular-motion business and were performing the bare minimum.

After driving through downtown Culpeper looking like maniacs and blasting Sleigh Bells, we arrived at the local bike shop and picked up the remaining bike parts needed.

Finally, we set out for Sue’s house. Sue is Mike’s grandmother and kind enough to put us up for the night. The last ten miles out to the farm were relatively brutal, as the elevation profile will show. I came in panting like a wounded dog; the odometer read 71 miles.

On the way to Sue's through Culpeper.

Sue greeted us warmly from the porch of the house and told us that we could expect chili and cornbread later on. Needless to say we were delighted. Also needless to say, we were stinky, so after admiring her Alpaca pen for a while, we moved the bikes indoors and changed clothes.

After changing, we met Laura & Chris. Laura is Sue’s daughter and Chris is Laura’s husband. They have two adorable girls about kindergarten age. One of them hid behind Laura bashfully as we were introduced.

The promised chili was delivered shortly thereafter. Mike and I sat on the couch, talking to all the members in the house, happily spooning down chili and cornbread, and passively watching Looney Tunes reruns. Before dinner, Chris handed Mike and I a Beck’s each. Nothing makes one appreciate a single, cool beer like sun.

Now here I am, in the three-bedded room Mike and I have been generously loaned, enjoying a mattress and feeling the pulse of fresh sunburn.

I was going to use this first Daily to wax philosophic; I was going to pontificate about the trip’s major role in the formation of my character and the luxury of reduced abstraction. But right now, my skin is slathered in sun and my stomach is entertaining Culpeperean chili, so I’ll trade the dime-store philosophy for a hot shower.

for readers just tuning in, we’re adults. Really.
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aka Kevin Christensen
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heavy electronic music
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probably in a drunken rage.
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my first coffee with sugar in years!
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Day -2: The Weatherman Always gets the Last Laugh.

Since James was too hungover after our going away party the previous night, TStephens, Dennis, Nottingham and I decided to spend a splendid day biking in spite of an ominous weather report.

We met up in Clarendon and headed out to the National Arboretum in Northeast which I’ve somehow avoided going to for the past 22 years of living in the area. On the way there, I managed to make what I thought was a safe maneuver across 6 lanes of traffic to turn onto Constitution Avenue which seemed to make everyone a bit less comfortable with me navigating. This sentiment was not misplaced since I managed to get us to the Arboretum fence instead of the entrance. Minor details.

After a pleasant time looking at trees and having Nottingham tell us what the Chinese Tourists were saying about the Anacostia River, we left the Arboretum for massive Burritos at Union Station.

Once our stomachs had been properly inflated, we realized than Nottingham’s tires had not been properly inflated. After some fine folks at the bike rental nearby place watched us struggle, they offered their air compressor to us. At some point during this ordeal, TStephens noted that in spite of the weatherman’s forecast of thunderstorms, we should have worn sunscreen.

We then embarked on a seven mile ride that I promised was roughly three miles. Along this ride, Dennis and Nottingham realized that I was full of shit and split off whilst TStephens and I soldiered on to Velocity Bike CoOp. I repacked my headset with some new bearings to correct the creak I had been hearing, so TStephens and I departed on our now silent bikes.

Unfortunately, the sky wasn’t so silent, and we got very wet.

Day -12: DC Antics.

Fueled by the realization that the semester is almost over, James, Vanessa and I managed to book it from Fairfax to DuPont circle just in time to miss the departure of the DC critical mass ride. However, with some expert navigation and luck, we managed to meet up with the mass near K street. From there, some older couple on a tandem took control of the mass and led us on some tedious route. Eventually, Vanessa and I managed to wrangle control and take the mass to “Future Park.” That managed to kill the ride and get everyone else lost since no one ever goes to Southwest.

In classic James fashion, we had been biking for the entire evening without eating anything. Fortunately, Amsterdam Falafel was only halfway across the city, so we went there for me to fail to convince a drunk guy that although there was no meat in the Falafel, it was still delicious.

Then there was beer.

Beer allowed us to determine that my bike can carry the weight of two adults without issue as well as allow us to sleep in someone’s place in Foggy Bottom.

After 3 and a half hours of dreamless sleep, We were making breakfast and off to the Velocity Bike CoOp to meet up with TStephens and make our bikes even more awesome.

Day -26: Ride with Will B.

Met up with Will Bartlett in at the Caboose in Vienna for a nice, hilly ride through McLean and Arlington. Lots of steep grades and two bananas. We initially planned on going at a leisurely pace, but we didn’t.

Things to note:

James was “too tired” to go biking since he was up until 4 a.m.\ the previous night.
Some guy honked and flipped me the bird as he passed Will and I on a 25 mph road when we were going about 22 mph.