Home!

I got back to San Francisco this past Saturday, and have been really caught up in doing things to feel at home again - like stocking up on my favorite foods (and baking!), riding my mountain bike across the city, and especially just being around Camilo - who managed to grow an inch taller than me in the past three months. I love being here, but it’s still kind of weird.

I find myself both compelled and challenged by the idea of trying to end this project (the sense of The Ride itself, and this narrationof it); I feel I should summarize my 11 weeks of adventure into digestible bits but know the most important/meaningful parts of this trip are (typically) complicated and inter-related, and defy tidy summaries. That’s one reason I really enjoyed keeping this blog: it was a way to capture what was happening as the process went along, with the feeling of that time and place, instead of looking back and trying to re-create it.

But here I am, on the other side of nearly 4,400 miles, back in my little pink shack and on the familiar streets of my city. The ride is over (though other roads beckon, already!!) - and I think I need to wrap up my narrative too.

Things People Ask Me

Was I ever afraid?

I was never afraid of people I encountered on the trip; there were some I didn’t necessarily like, but no one was threatening or creepy. Sometimes people drove stupidly but no one seemed to be trying to run me off the road. For a few days in South Dakota I was afraid of getting caught on the prairie in a thunderstorm (it’s the lightning that’s dangerous), but after a while I realized I could take cover under a bale of hay, if it came to that, and it stopped being frightening and became more of a game - especially since I was so lucky at evading the storms.

Didn't I get lonely?

I really didn’t get lonely, which was interesting and slightly surprising. I figured I would be, a little bit, especially after I left the Cycle America group. But even at home I need a good dose of solitude, and I was pretty comfortable on my own - though I ended up talking to myself kind of a lot, and catch myself doing it even here.

Meeting strangers was one of things I looked forward to as I planned the trip, being one of the highlights of traveling (along with the utter joy of moving along a country road and being in all that landscape). I found it much easier than I’d expected to connect with people, including simply striking up conversations with someone sitting next to me at a bar - which isn’t something I tend to do here at home. (Sitting at the bar is an easier way to get to talk to people than being at a table - plus it seems like your food comes faster, which doesn’t make sense but worked out).

Overall it was a great combination of being on my own and having company. Like pretty much every aspect of the trip, it just worked out.What I hadn’t expected, and really loved, was getting to read the comments people wrote on my blog and emails some folks sent me directly. That was so supportive - I found myself almost overwhelmed with appreciation and affection, which is the opposite of lonely.

Plus, once I hit Minnesota in late July, I also had a fair amount of actual company over different stretches: Jon rode with me into St Paul, and came over to camp with me in Wisconsin and again for six nights in New York; I met a couple in Michigan riding the same route I was, and we ended up staying in the same campgrounds for about 10 days, riding separately during the day and meeting up in the evening; I got to spend a couple of evenings with my sister and then a weekend at her house in Ann Arbor; and in the last couple of weeks of the trip I stayed with friends and relations in Albany, Ithaca, Northampton and Hull. That added a whole sense of community and celebration at the end, which I hadn’t planned but was really wonderful.

What surprised me the most?

*Climate change is in full swing, and the weather was wrong everywhere: starting with too much rain in Wyoming, South Dakota and Minnesota (with subsequent flooding - and South Dakota’s plague of frogs); too little rain and too much heat all summer in New York (until I got there, naturally); and of course way too cold here in SF.

*There is a lot of countryside in this vast country - a lot. My 4,400 miles of riding were almost entirely on two-lane country roads, except for intentional forays into places like Rapid City, Minneapolis, Albany and Boston - and even then I was only on busy streets when I got to the center of town. West of the Missouri River some of those roads had a lot of traffic, since there aren’t many roads to choose from, but they still traversed forests and enormous fields of crops and/or wildflowers (my favorite, naturally).

*RV campgrounds turned out to be great places to camp, which I hadn’t expected at all. Usually when I go camping I want the most secluded and under-developed sites possible, but on this trip I really appreciated the showers, laundry rooms and wi-fi that most RV camps provided. Plus they were generally close to stores (and bars!) in small towns, so it was easier to get the things I needed.

*The interstate highway I-90 from Buffalo to Gillette, WY was one of the best roads I got to ride on! There was less traffic than on some of the two-lane roads crossing Montana, the shoulder was enormous and in great condition, and for once the rumble strip was well out of my way and felt like a protective barrier in my favor. (Based on that experience I got on I-90 again in South Dakota, but that kind of sucked and I got off after about 15 miles.)

*East of the continental divide, this country is paved in corn. Most of it looked like proprietary GMO stuff, too - based on the little signs stuck at the ends of the rows. It was really hard to get away from corn syrup in the little what-passes-for-food in the convenience stores I often had to forage in, or even the grocery stores in small towns along the way. Not to mention all the ethanol being produced (those fields had signs too). I knew this, on some level, but to see it for myself was still surprising. In a bad way - knowing that corn is heavily subsidized, to the detriment of supporting smaller farms and more sustainable/organic crops and localized/community distribution.

*There are bike lanes and off-road bike paths all over the country - in the smallest communities and in big cities. I was blown away by the bike paths in and around Minneapolis & St. Paul, but there were great paths in Spokane, Washington; Kellogg, Idaho; Schenectady, NY; and leading into Boston, too. Of course there were also bike lanes that abruptly ended in gravel, and hundreds of miles of roads with no shoulders - but I got used to sharing the road with logging trucks, RVs, and reckless mini-vans. The surprise was how many places have great bike facilities - and how lame San Francisco is compared to Minnesota. Ha!

What were the hardest parts?

*Finding fruits, vegetables, and other real food along the country roads. Many of the named dots on my maps that looked like a town were really just an intersection with a gas station “convenience store” - which is convenient if you want candy, high-fructose-corn-syrup-and-salt products, cigarettes or crappy beer, but not so handy for dinner. I learned to stock up on a couple days’ worth of food whenever I encountered it. (And also learned that chocolate milk is readily available and pretty satisfying as an afternoon snack - but I’m still detoxing from all that corn syrup…)

*Finding places to pee out in the middle of nowhere. It’s easy enough to go in the bushes or behind a tree, but large areas of Wyoming and South Dakota were mostly prairie & grass; and then in Ontario, New York and Massachusetts there were a lot of small housing developments along the roads - I didn’t think it was cool to pee in people’s front yards…

*Avoiding thunder-storms, and worrying about them. After about a week I decided that I wasn’t going to bother checking the weather anymore, I’d just keep my eye on what was actually happening - because expecting a storm was making me more anxious than just dealing with them when they hit. (Though in fact I was so lucky I never did get hit by one when I was out on my bike… still amazed by that.)

*Dealing with my morale when riding for a long time against the wind. I don’t so much mind riding hills but riding against the wind really sucks. Plus it makes no sense that it’s so hard - it’s just AIR for crying out loud! I found that swearing really loudly was mildly amusing but only temporarily satisfying… and listening to music on my iPod was much more effective (with just one ear-bud in, because I promised my sister-in-law Paula that I’d be careful). I could only sing along to every other line (or I’d get too out of breath) but it was still better than swearing.

*Packing up a wet tent on too many mornings. Well, a wet rain fly. It’s against my religion to put away a wet tent: it grows mildew, and loses its waterproof magic, and is a lot heavier to carry, too. But it rained so much, and/or the grass was so dewy, that it couldn’t be avoided. I’m not sure if my tent survived this trip… but it had a long life of adventure before this summer, so it’s not really a tragic end. Just irritating (and I felt guilty about it - usually in conjunction with feeling like I was in a hurry, because it was getting late and I Should Be On the Road Already).

What was it like in the middle of the country (different from SF)?

This might sound like a cliché, but I noticed as soon as I got out of San Francisco: this nation is obsessed with guns. There are gun shops, ammo shops, shooting ranges - and people with pistols on their belts - all over the place, from Washington all the way to Massachusetts. It made me laugh sometimes, but also gives me the creeps. (Though I sort of wished I could have participated in that machine-gun shoot in South Dakota…)

This is also kind of a cliché, but people in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota really were extremely friendly and helpful. I think a lot of them were on vacation too, which maybe made them jollier, but even discounting the folks I met in campgrounds I found people were very easy to talk to and most of them wanted to offer me something: cold water, a beer, some dessert… (I enjoyed accepting these offers, of course!).

I was a little surprised to find this stopped being the case almost as soon as I hit Minnesota, where people mostly ignored me (and each other). Upstate New York was the most unfriendly (duh - but I wasn’t expecting it) - and in general was blighted and grim, which I think added to the overall feeling. No one was hostile to me there (except in Utica, which was generally a really crappy place to be), it was just… grim.

Has my life changed from being on this trip?

I thought it might, without knowing how - and I probably still don’t understand all the ways I may have changed… but here are the things I already feel are different:

*I’m 50 years old! I’m feeling pretty strong these days, and my strongest feeling is: I don’t have to take crap from anybody! (Not that I do, really, or even have to confront much of it - but this might affect how I do my work. I’m interested in seeing how…)

*Apparently I can do just about anything I set my mind to! That’s pretty fun. I wonder if I can figure out how to have a lot more of these kinds of adventures? I think so…

*I realized I’m not nearly as shy as I thought I was. I can pretty much talk to anybody about something. But at the same time, I really do like peace & quiet and solitude, and I'd rather talk to one person at a time. So I’m still not going to cocktail parties (not that I get invited to many) but I know it’s because I don’t like them, rather than being completely socially incompetent.

*Janis Totty found me! She was my best friend in 9^th grade and someone I think of as my first love, whose family moved away in 1977 and who was lost to me practically ever since… So of course I changed course to go to Northampton to see her. Over 30 years later we still have so much in common, so many parallel tracks in our lives, that we fell right back into being friends again. What a gift…

*I found Jon Duncan! Or we found each other, in a laundromat in Missoula, Montana. (It wasn’t quite that random: our mutual friend Pam got us in touch so I’d have a place to stay when I rode through Minneapolis/St Paul; he just happened to be in Missoula the same time I was, and it was laundry day, etc.) Feels kind of nutty to put this on my bike blog, but it’s true: my life is different now that he’s in it, even if I’m not sure how that’s gonna manifest itself (given that St Paul’s about 2,000 miles away from San Francisco)… But that’s part of the adventure, whether it’s a bike trip or a relationship: you throw yourself into the project and do the best you can as it goes along. This is also the biggest surprise of the summer - just about the last thing I expected to happen. Yay!

How does it feel to be back?

Complicated! I love sleeping in my bed but miss sleeping outside; I am having a blast riding my trusty old mountain bike around the city, but it's also really loud & busy. (And there isn't any corn...) Mostly I feel inefficient and jolly, which is pretty different from my typical multi-tasking focused approach to life/work tasks. I'm enjoying that - a slightly vacationy feeling as I get back to work. I'm also enjoying all my hip & groovy food (organic everything! salad every day, and toast, and peaches and strawberries! Strong coffee & good beer! Etc.). I have a great life - my ride wasn't about escaping that, and it's good to come home to. Although I really am planning some small and medium adventures before winter hits, and a few big ones for next summer... and there's always Minnesota...

Mostly I'm happy to be around Camilo, and to see people I care about - really looking forward to more of that.

So, anybody wanna go for a ride...?

Meandering

The town of Northampton, MA lies along something called The Oxbow, where a section of the Connecticut River flowed in a loopy course that eventually became so convoluted it cut itself off from the rest of the river. Janis Totty explained this to me and said, "Old rivers meander... they tend to go around obstacles instead of cutting through them."

I think this says a lot about the 50-year-old brain. Well, and the rest of me. I don't mean this in a bad way - I've been having a lot of fun & adventure making my way across the continent in a slightly ziggy-zaggy pattern, going over a lot of challenging terrain but usually in the most do-able locations. I learned a lot, laughed out loud and cursed out loud too, and found myself open to all kinds of possibilities that I couldn't have imagined as I was packing up to leave San Francisco.

Over the past few days I've been thinking about how to organize summaries or descriptions of some of my experiences from this nutty adventure. Like most organizing projects, I started out trying to keep it simple, but I keep adding to the categories. Now that I sit down to put them on here, I have an impulse to change the order completely. I'm going with that - it's part of the meandering process, and I've decided to embrace it.

So I'm starting off with Statistics (instead of putting these at the end):

Started riding: Sunday, June 20, out of Everett, WA (a bit north of Seattle)
Ended up: Friday, Sept. 3, in Hull, MA (on the Boston Harbor)

Mileage: 4,383

Days riding (as opposed to rest/layover days): 60

States/provinces I crossed: 11
Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan - UP and downstate, Ontario Canada, New York, Massachusetts

Especially fantastic days of riding:
*Coming down from Stevens Pass and riding along the roiling Wenatchee River
*Out of Spokane, WA to Kellogg, ID
*Almost all of Montana, but especially Kellogg, ID to Thompson Falls, the morning ride out of Thompson Falls towards Missoula, and out of Missoula to Lincoln
*Ashton, ID to Jackson, WY
*Dubois to Riverton, WY
*Newcastle, WY to Custer, SD
*Crystal Falls to Escanaba, MI; Escanaba to Manistique; the afternoon from Manistique to St. Ignace
*Port Dover to Fort Erie, Ontario
*Albany, NY to Northampton, MA
*Waltham to Hull, MA (and not just because it was the last day!)

Really crappy days of riding (generally because of head-winds):
*Afternoon riding to Grand Coulee Dam, WA
*Afternoon riding to Spokane, WA
*Afternoon riding into West Yellowstone, MT
*Afternoon riding from Miller to DeSmet, SD (the plagues of South Dakota...)
*Afternoon riding from Mackinaw City to East Jordan, MI

Mildly crappy days of riding:
*Gillette to Newcastle, WY
*Afternoon riding to Edgewater, WI
*Holley to Newark, NY
*Getting the hell out of Utica, NY (the afternoon was great, though)

Mountain passes crossed & their elevation:
*Stevens Pass, WA: 4,061
*Thompson Pass, MT: 4,852
*Flesher Pass, MT: 6,131

*Targhee Pass (MT/ID): 7,072
*Teton Pass, WY: 8,431
*Togwotee Pass, WY: 9,658
*Powder River Pass, WY: 9,666

Flat tires: 4 - but only 2 while riding on the road! (One was in camp, and the other while in a bike shop!)

Things I had to fix or replace:
*New tires in Rapid City, SD, and new rear tire in Herkimer, NY
*Adjusted derailleur in Pierre, SD
*Duct tape repairs to toe clips until could get new ones, Coleman, MI
*New chain & cassette in Ann Arbor, MI (preventative rather than urgent)
*New bell in Escanaba, MI

Things I did *not* have to replace: the brake pads! (I don't like to brake)

Things I carried and never used:
*Baling wire
*Rope
*Brake pads

Number of different shower configurations I had to master: 60 (they are all remarkably different!)

Made it to the Atlantic! - plus pictures

Even with my front tire in the Atlantic Ocean (not to mention my feet), I still can't believe I rode my bike all the way from the boat launch in Everett (near Seattle) to the Boston Harbor...!


















On Friday I officially ended the ride at the front porch of my friend Jenni Lopez, who lives in Hull. We had to wait until this morning to take the photos, though, because I arrived just before the remnants of Hurricane Earl, and it started pouring rain in the afternoon. (Which was really fitting, since it's the story of my journey since mid-July: just missing the worst of every storm!)


My odometer reads 4,383 miles, which includes the joy rides on the Needles Highway in South Dakota and then from Ft. Erie to Niagara Falls; since most of the days I rode were joyful I decided to count those extra ones, too.

The last two days of riding were really fun - to Waltham, on the outskirts of Boston, and then into the city. I decided to stop in Waltham on Thursday because I wasn't really ready to be done, and wanted to save a nice, short ride for the last day. I'd found a nicer hotel than I usually stay in, for a treat. When the guy at the front desk saw my bike he asked where I'd ridden from, and when I said "Seattle! I'm ending tomorrow in Boston!" he got quite excited about my trip, and upgraded my room to an enormous suite with a view of the river. It was probably the nicest place I've ever stayed, and was a really perfect way to savor being almost done...


From Waltham I got to ride bike paths along the Charles River all the way into the heart of the city. The path started out as hard-packed dirt, with wooden bridges crossing over marshy areas and sometimes criss-crossing the river itself. These changed to paved paths leading into town, and then wider paths through parks following the river.



Then quite suddenly I realized I had reached the Boston Common, and had to take to urban streets to get to the harbor. That was actually really fun, riding in the streets of a city I'm completely unfamiliar with. I guess I've gotten used to riding in any condition, and I was so happy and excited I didn't mind all the traffic. Plus I had the Boston Bicycle Map, which is really great, and managed to wind my way down to the waterfront.

I took a ferry across the harbor to Hull, which is on a little peninsula dividing the sea from the harbor, and rode along the spit of land to Jenni's house near the beach that faces the ocean side; that's where we celebrated this morning.


After the photo shoot on the beach we went into the city, where I got to have lunch with Jonah in Cambridge, and then went to a park to hear great salsa music at a Puerto Rican cultural festival. It was kind of a shock to be in such a big city after so many weeks on rural county roads and in small towns, but I really loved being tossed into the mix of speaking Spanish, being led through busy streets, and the diversity of this city (in terms of ethnicity, languages, architecture, and nature/built environment - all the things I love about cities) and its historic buildings and institutions.

On Sunday I'm taking my bike to a shop to have it packed up and shipped back to SF, which is so strange! (I'm already excited about the prospect of putting it back together when I get home, and riding over the Golden Gate Bridge.) Then I get to cram all my stuff into a duffel bag and on Monday head to St. Paul for a few days before I fly home next weekend... I can't imagine not riding a bike for a week, so plan to jump on a borrowed one and ride a lot more of the amazing bike paths all over the Twin Cities. (Plus go to the movies! And maybe even read a book or two.)

I have a few ideas of things I want to summarize as this blog comes to a close - so if anyone has questions or topics to address, let me know!

Here are pictures of Massachusetts: http://picasaweb.google.com/106458209676650999720/Mass#

On the brink

Tomorrow I ride into Boston - and after 4,350 miles I still can't believe it. I could have made it there today (Thursday) but I wanted to savor this last bit just a bit more. Not to mention yesterday was the hardest day of riding I've had since northern Michigan, and I wanted to have a couple of short fun rides to remember the whole thing by. And not to mention, it's so much more exciting to arrive with a hurricane!

It's been exciting all week to ride across the Berkshires, despite the crazy heat-wave that really took it out of me yesterday (I won't go into the details, but my butt was suffering...). I love how different the landscape is, and how different the built structures are here from everywhere else I've been. And more great signs, of course.

Beyond the joy and bewilderment I feel at being very nearly done with this joyful and bewildering journey & series of adventures I've had, I am struck with amazement at connecting with people I care about. On Monday in Albany I got to have lunch with Ken Smith, who was my across-the-street neighbor as a kid but even more importantly a partner-in-crime on road trips to the UP when we were in high school (which launched my love of camping, and fed my love of adventure in general). Today in Waltham I got to have lunch with Josh Lawton, brother of my former housemate Sarah, who I hadn't seen since Camilo was a toddler. On Saturday I get to hang out with Jonah Varon, Myra & Charlie's son, who goes to school in Cambridge... and I'm staying this weekend with Jenni Lopez, my former colleague from working at META those many years ago. This continent is pretty wide (and covered with corn, pretty much everywhere east of Idaho), but it seems sort of small at the same time...

And lest you think that's as sappy as I get: I got to spend an evening & a morning with Janis Totty, who found me through this blog more than 30 years after her family moved away from Michigan. She and her partner Janet live in Northampton, which is why I changed my route to Mass. instead of Maine - I had to see her. We talked for hours, of course, but we also drove through fields and by the river, and stood outside to look at the sky - and saw an enormous shooting star fly across the constellations. It was that kind of night. The thing is, this wasn't just nostalgia - though there's enormous power in remembering how much you loved somebody long ago. We have so many things in common, still. To a certain extent it just seemed obvious, that we'd be friends I mean. That we still are.

And this whole thing isn't even over. I need to ship my bike home this weekend, so that part of the adventure will have to end - but I'm not quite done with this journey-ing stuff, because there's still those five days in St Paul before I go home again...