The Reason for Going Again

I have been back in Columbus, Ohio, now for two weeks. A few days ago a friend I hadn't seen in a while asked me, "Did [the trip] change you?"

Obvious physical changes (machete-carved legs, caricatural farmer's tans, increased lung capacity) aside, the response was still a vehement "yes."

At the approximate midway point of the trek, I pulled into Bastrop State Park, 65 miles east of Austin, Texas, to camp. I encountered a party of Texans there who flagged me down as I wended toward my site. One, a middle-aged cycling enthusiast, was delighted to discover I was the spitting image of him when he was a country-crossing youngster.

Came the recurrent question: "Why'd you decide to do it?" And my programmed response: "I wasn't doing much else, and I wanted to try something unusual before starting a career."

His reply to that has stuck with me more than anything else that happened during 48 days on the road: "Yeah, but now you can never be normal."

He said it with a slight chuckle, as though only half serious. Yet -- how excited he had become when I'd rolled up, tired and hunched, bags slung over my bike. How he couldn't wait to relive his year traversing the continent through the eyes of a fresh adventurer. He craved my stories, and he craved to tell his. What he wouldn't do to be on the road again!

And what I wouldn't do, now home for only two weeks.

I will spare you readers a tiresome analysis of self-discovery. What else is there in moving to a new place every day but constant discovery? It is the sublime joy of travel, but for the traveler whose journey must end, the prospective absence of that discovery is his bane. The memory of a trip is not enough to sustain a journeyer for any long time through a sedentary existence.

That, I think, is what Ron Fillingim of Dauphin Island, Alabama, was telling me when he said I'd "feel a letdown" when I got to St. Augustine, my destination, and why he was absolutely right.

For 48 days I'd engaged each of my senses in ever-present newness, I'd engaged my body for a definitive purpose, I'd stuffed more living in than I had in most of my previous 22 years. When I reached the Atlantic shoreline to dip my front wheel, signifying completion, I was proud that I'd reached my goal. But that feeling was trumped by the overriding letdown of which I was warned, and which has intensified since. I plopped down onto the sand, looked to sea and thought, "What now?"

If there is one problem with discovering new things all the time, it's learning that you will never be able to see everything. But that's not to keep you from trying, and it's not even close to enough to keep you from wanting to.

There is plenty I have yet to see. And that, friends, is reason enough to go again.

Ponce de Leon and a Fountain of Memories

Given memory’s random selectivity, it is rarely if ever possible to predict which of one’s experiences will stand out over time, or to qualify characteristics that memorable experiences share.

However, I believe I can name at least one inherently memorable trait: bipolar – that is, rapidly transitioning from good to bad, bad to good, or sometimes, normal to just weird.

I refer you, for instance, to a stormy evening resolved to be spent in the open on an Indian reservation, one of this journey’s more despondent moments. Then a good man bailed me out.

The most recent example: headed due east on highway 90, I was relying foolishly on a grotesquely disfigured front tire. It had developed a large hole. The spare piece of rubber I had placed underneath it to protect the inner tube had failed me, and both it and the inner tube had bubbled out, tumor-like. I was riding over a speed bump with each wheel revolution.

Perhaps it is going solo that allows a traveler to disregard inevitabilities to preserve a trip’s integrity. I, for one, require another’s rationality to prevent my idealism from obstructing my progress. When alone, I do things such as present myself with unachievable challenges to maintain focus, such as making it all the way across the country on the same two worn tires, or without washing my gloves. Idealistically, I think, wouldn’t it be cool if I could… ?

But consequences are inevitable. The bacteria in your unwashed gloves will give you a rash. Rubber cannot drink Gatorade and recover after a day of road exposure. Nor can you put Neosporin on a rubber patch and hasten rubber’s healing response, for it does not have one.

Alone, I do not hold such truths to be evident. I need someone to say, “You, friend, are an idiot.” So I tricked myself into believing my gimpy front tire could limp another 400 miles until the end. That, to me, was trip integrity.

I could only laugh when I stopped five miles from the nearest town and my tube exploded. How stupid. How depressing.

I stuck my thumb out and, as was the case with each of the few times I’d hitchhiked before, was offered a ride within two minutes. I abhor pickup trucks and their often brazen owners when I ride, but when I hitch, I am utterly thankful for their ubiquity.

The driver dropped me at a town called Ponce de Leon, who, you recall, sought futilely the Fountain of Youth after discovering what was later named Florida. This specific location has claimed him for its namesake because, as its web site notes, “Some folks think the Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon, may have searched for the Fountain of Youth here.” Some folks think they are Jesus, too.

Nevertheless, there are three springs either in or skirting the town. Good enough for me.

My luck was indeed turning for the better. As he let me out, the driver directed me to “Flutes and Vegetables,” a store that in its name employs perhaps the most sophisticated wordplay I’d encountered since Texas. “The guy who owns that place is a real bikehead,” he said. “Fact, they call him Bicycle Bill. He might be able to get you a new tire and tube.” The next bike shop was not for another 100 miles on my route, so why wouldn’t I go?

I sauntered inside, where a Jerry Garcia looking fellow rested behind a glass display case, stroking his beard, holding a bamboo shoot. I told him my dilemma. “I’m Patrick,” I offered. “Are you Bicycle Bill?”

“Used to be,” he said. “Now I’m Bamboo Bill.” I would learn that he had a somewhat fetishistic love for bamboo. He made flutes out of it. It grew in clusters all around his creek-side property, which he intended to turn into a veritable bamboo forest, and he undertook expeditions to find bamboo varieties deep in hidden Louisianan groves, among other places.

He didn’t elucidate the reasons for his plant lust, but he used the shoot in his hand as a walking stick, stabilizing his gait in lieu of a deteriorating hip that forced him to quit cycling (and, consequently, calling himself Bicycle Bill) five years ago. He’s a bear of a man and, because he refuses to move slowly, his stride now seems a constant pole vault run.

In any case, Bamboo Bill was more than inclined to help me. “We gotta find you a new tire!” he exclaimed. “How we gonna do that?”

He picked up the phone and called his friend Not Nearly Normal Nick. Like people interested in the same hobby, it seems people with alliterative nicknames befriend each other. Nick was in a bike shop in Panama City Beach when he picked up his phone. He asked my tire size. I told him. He bought a tire and a tube to match. He drove them to Ponce de Leon and gave them to me. I paid him and thanked him profusely for going out of his way. And like that, the day went from bad to good to even better when Bamboo Bill told me I could stay the night on his verdant property.

During the rest of that evening, I would ride shotgun as Bill drove and drank, his 15-year-old son in the back seat complaining about the music; I would do my best to divert his interminably excited dog, which guarded my tent all night; I would talk drug policy with Bill, who did time for selling acid in the ‘60s; I would listen to his brother’s latest record, which Bill championed as providing lyrics of great profundity (all I would hear was childishly crafted poetry, thin compositions and hackneyed invocations to The Man); we would drive by his ex-wife’s house, which was a block away from his, and he would show concern about the 21-year-old guy who was over visiting his 16-year-old daughter.

He would tell me that he, too, used to hitchhike, though farther and more frequently than I. Thousands of miles in single trips he’d hitchhike, from hot spring to hot spring, from state to state. He never troubled in getting a ride, because he had an infallible formula: carry a cooler and hold up a sign that reads “Ice Cold Beer.” Got a ride every time.

As for me, I prefer to look unthreatening by wearing spandex and walking alongside a bike. That works too, and it doesn’t put me at risk. Unless, of course, whomever I ride with already has the beer.

Then I fasten my seatbelt.

The Riding Ceases, the Writing Persists

A quick note before more postings: The trip is over; I doused my front tire with Atlantic saltwater; I photographed it; I had a woman photograph me; I lay on the beach and shed a tear or two; I found out rather quickly that time will not stop now that I'm finished.

Keep checking for more postings. This blog may end soon or it may take a different form. But until I exhaust thoughts and stories from this trip, it will continue as is. I've left out many things.

"Poplarville, Mississippi," as Onomatopoeic, Hospitable

Things were smooth. Off a one-day respite in New Orleans, a tune-up and two new tire tubes, I swore my air and energy levels would remain high. But after 2,000-plus miles on the road, both have begun to prove vulnerable.

Highway 10 out of Bogalusa, Louisiana: Pop. Sssss. Replace tube. Ride tentatively for 25 miles, keeping an eye on the back tire to make sure it retains air.

Poplarville, Mississippi: Pass a pickup truck. Pop. Ssss. Replace tube. Check tire. Find gaping hole in both the tire and the tube, the rubbery fibers of the tire fraying outward. Put back on bicycle anyway. Hope.

Begin to ride, trying to make another 20 miles before sundown. Ten feet later: Pop. Ssss. No more new tubes. Patch tire rim. Patch tube. Switch front and back tires. Put wheels back on bike. Mount. Hope.

Half a mile later: Quick leak. Air gone from back tire. Dismount. Sigh heavily. Resolve to stay.

When you and your options are exhausted, this is the routine, if you can call it that: Enter the closest populated establishment and ask those inside for help. Bad days end well when you find it. They get worse when you don't. This day ended well and then some.

The nearest place was a petite fast-food shop that peddles sweet tea to Pearl River Community College students. They go before they dine in the campus cafeteria, where they sit again, and consume again. "That's what we do," one named Orry said. "And not much else."

Indeed. However, tonight was special; the eve of Halloween, the student union was having a carnival. Perhaps I could camp behind the building, they suggested, and so we talked to the head man Stan and he agreed. I dined in the cafeteria. I showered in a dorm room. And I was treated like genuine celebrity. Never have I been so swarmed by people, never have I felt so undeservedly admired.

After all, I'm one of a host of people who ride bicycles from coast to coast. And Poplarville is a stop on a series of maps that many of them use -- I've seen several on this trip alone. I suppose none of them had been (un)lucky enough to find desperation and resulting welcome in "The Hospitality State."

And my, how the interest and the questions came. How old are you? You rode from where? You ain't lying? Show me your bike. What'd your parents say? So lemme get this straight, you just decided one day to ride your bike across the country? How you eat? How old are you again?You're crazy man. Like Forrest Gump on a bike.

You get the point.

Later, Brett from the newspaper is going to interview me; there will thenceforth be evidence that I came to Poplarville, Mississippi, and provided unusual entertainment for the bored "13th-graders" of PRCC. When I'm gone -- after they kindly drive me to New Orleans' French Quarter to experience a presumably wacky Halloween -- I will leave them to their dry county, their 11:30 p.m. curfew, their draconian dormitory policies and their town strip where only a Kangaroo gas station is open during evening hours.

Assuming my tires retain air.

I know not where they will next find entertainment, but I will say this: of whomever is offered their hospitality next, I am already jealous. This is the life.

Some People of Note

Adam

A Vermont native I met in an Austin hostel, Adam would have done Jack Kerouac proud, only Adam didn’t hitchhike across the country fueled by amphetamines and ice cream. He found sustenance in dumpsters, and when he got to San Francisco, he stayed a while, sleeping on the sidewalk.

He had since gotten some money for a reason I can’t remember. He had been using it to travel and eat more conventionally by the time he reached Austin. He flew, he took buses, he dined at bona fide restaurants.

But it seemed as though he preferred not to. Even with money enough to buy his own slice, he acted on the temptation to eat others’ table scraps at a 6th Street pizza joint when they had left. Even with a place to stay, he gladly would’ve settled on a concrete plot.

I was taken rather aback when he first divulged his dumpster-dining days, and I asked him why he chose to sift through garbage for grub, given his lacking necessity to do so. Very clearly, I remember his retort: “You mean you’ve never eaten from a dumpster?” No, Adam, I haven’t.

Jo

When I was in New Mexico, a few miles west of Texas, I met Jo Garrett, a 45-year-old disabled physical therapist from Fort Worth, at a state park where I’d pitched my tent. Together, we were not alone, but apart, we were alone for very different reasons: I, because I thought it would be interesting; she, because most of her friends and family were dead.

What’s worse is how they had died. Her husband in a car crash 20 years ago. Two friends by gunshot wound, one of those a suspected suicide (“I think he had AIDS,” Jo said). Another of AIDS itself. Another of tuberculosis. And other tragedies I can’t remember because I waited too long to record them. Why had such horrific deaths befallen those close to her? Did she carry with her a curse that would lead to my untimely death if I associated with her for too long? She had told me about someone she knew who died on a bicycle from a blow to the head by a truck’s rearview mirror.

Later, on the highway on our way to El Paso, Jo said, “I hate people.” Seems clear why. They were always dying on her.

Garry

I met Garry at the bottom of Emory Pass, an 8,200-foot climb in New Mexico. He was walking his bicycle up a steep grade. He looked back, saw me, and hastily remounted.

“Where you headed?” I asked once I caught up.

“Probably the same place you are, considering we have the same maps,” he observantly replied. “I bet I’m going farther than you, though. I’m going all the way to Florida.”

Smug bastard.

That was Garry’s thing. If he’s not going faster than you, he’s going farther. I reveled in knowing that my destination was the same.

“Actually, I’m going there too,” I said. What I didn’t know was how soon Garry intended to reach it. Already 15 days in by this point, I thought I was making pretty good time, but Garry had only been out eight days since San Diego. The difference was, he was getting up at 4 a.m. and riding about 110 miles every day. He was the tortoise to my hare, and it irked me. But I couldn’t ask why he was doing it. Can any of us really say?

That day, I reached my destination quickly. I traversed the pass and rode nearly 90 miles, arriving at camp with plenty of daylight. About two hours later, dusk settling, I looked out toward the road to see Garry in a reflective vest, still pedaling in his canvas Converse sneakers, inching wormlike ever toward the east coast. My guess is, he’s already there.

Celena

I met Celena of Alberta, Canada, in a laundromat in Wimberley, Texas, a fortuitous meeting given her usual avoidance of town and my usual hobo washings. She took that fatalistically (as is her wont), reason enough to invite me to dinner at her Guatemalan friend Ricardo’s rural home, where I soon found myself among a circle of people who were howling at the moon. That was Celena’s idea, and why wouldn’t the rest acquiesce? They were high.

Celena is beautiful in an organic kind of way. She is 27, a massage therapist and owner of a store full of things that are natural, herbal, holistic, et cetera. Her husband is 44. His name is Mark, but his “natural name” is something else – something that when translated from its tribal language into English means “protector.” Just as Celena assumed I would know what she meant when later she used the word “Chakra,” Mark assumed I’d know what he meant when he said “natural name.” He has hair to below his shoulders and a thick beard, and one winter he lived self-sufficiently on a mountaintop in the Pacific Northwest, his quarters surrounded on all sides by feet and feet of snow. Together he and Celena are building a Texan home. They have a wolf for a pet. His name is “Lenaweh” (sp?), which is Navajo for “arrow.”

“Have you found your essence yet?” Celena asked me on the drive back to camp. Again, I didn’t know what she meant, so I asked her. Also, my current essence was a bit tipsy on pumpkin ale. She offered an incomprehensible explanation. I told her I had not, but that I would try very hard for the remainder of the trip. “Once I find it,” I said, “I will let you know.”

I have no idea what my essence is. I have only about 12 days to find out. If you think you might know my essence or have any leads, please post your ideas as comments here.

David

I mentioned David and Athena on another posting as the Oregonian spouses who kindly picked me up amid a headwind and cannibalistic grasshoppers in Arizona to drive me a ways. I did not mention that David had once been in a wheelchair but had regained his legs (he said) by becoming a strict “raw foodist.”

The concept is really quite simple. He doesn’t eat any foods that aren’t raw. He spent a year living in the desert (first a tent, then a deep hole, once his tent was stolen) eating mesquite beans, cactus fruit, baby tumbleweeds (“the veal of raw foodism”), and the like. Every now and then, he would leave the desert and go into a nearby town where he was known as either the local crazy guy or, to some of the Hispanic population, the curandero, which is essentially a medicine man. In a way he could be seen as Adam’s antithesis – Adam prefers to feast on civilization’s refuse, David on the unused fruits of nature. I haven’t tried either. I doubt I will.

Requiem for a Trans-Texan Journey

I would ride 500 miles, and I would ride 500 more, just to be the man who didn't have to ride through Texas anymore.

On Wednesday, a newfound will to churn infected my legs despite headwind and threateningly overcast skies. I had escaped Texas, and it was good.

Tell someone familiar with its size that you are crossing Texas on a bicycle, and she will scoff, "It seems to take forever just driving the thing." She is right. It takes the average driver about two days.

Still, you begin optimistically. What other choice do you have, with 1,000 miles of one state ahead of you? With disciplined thought, you think, it won’t be so bad. Look at Texas as though it is not one state, but several. There are said to be five terrains of Texas. Whether you see all of them, whatever variations you observe will make Texas seem not like one monotonous chunk, but several areas that will be refreshingly new as you transgress.

And they will be, kind of. But you will always know you are in Texas.

Begin in the northwestern part, and follow the desert until it’s not so deserted, down to Del Rio and east from there. The scenery, as another cyclist tells you, changes dramatically, and seeing other people becomes more common. You are briefly excited. The tumbleweeds cease to tumble and the Davis mountains arise, and you are refreshed by all that seems new.





But you are still in Texas.

Follow the road east through the Hill Country, a terrain fraught with lush maple trees, rolling landscape and varied wildlife. What sorts of surprises might you find over the next hill? you will wonder.




Cruelly, disappointingly, the answer is always more Texas.

Farther east to Austin, which is considered by many conservative Texans to be the state’s Sodom and Gomorrah, a bastion of sin and abhorrent liberalism, you will feel excited about experiencing that which is un-Texan, and in a way, you will be sated.

But it’s still Texas.

Continue east through agricultural flatlands, through pine trees, alongside logging trucks, into swamplands and bayous, and there’s no way this could still be Texas, but it is, and you know it.

You know it because of the constancy of BBQ joints; of the Texas drawl or twang, depending on region; of tough jeans, flannel shirts, cowboy hats and boots; of big oil and big trucks and big cattle and big talk; of nighttime speed limits and desperately clever road signs. (One even played with typography: "LITTERIN IS UNLAWFUL," it read. Note also the absence of the "G" in the first word, to capture the Texas manner.)




Of shameless self-celebration and an over-inflated sense of pride. If pride were an energy source, the world could run on Texas’s outflow of it for millennia. You will meet some incredibly nice people, of all kinds, but you will know they are Texans.

"I’m Jean, and I’m from Houston, Texas," declared one woman I met, as though providing required information at a meet-and-greet. It was her usual style of introduction, I surmised. I did not offer my place of origin outright, as I found it to be excessive. Jean found it necessary.

Every establishment in Texas is the best of its kind. I had the privilege of eating the best Tex-Mex cuisine in Austin, and cheaply.

Outsiders can have a tough time fitting in. One night, I spent an evening with some Texans, trying to shed my Yankee moniker like a fishing net. At a café where I dined, the non-native Texan who owned it had posted a sign that read, "I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could." Was it the only way to ensure a steady local clientele?

If you are like me, you weren’t born in Texas, and you are here, but you’re getting the hell out.

The problem is, the more Texas you see, despite its constantly changing terrain, the more you realize it’s going to be a long time before you're free of it, and the more demoralizing it becomes.

Eventually, on highway 787, you pass by a small church whose gigantic digital sign asks you, "Where will you spend eternity?" Its purpose to exhort you to reform is not served, and that last word holds its place on the sign for an extra second or two, just to make sure you see it. Eternity. And as you ride by, the only answer you can think of is "Texas."

Then you cross the Sabine River, and you get out. To your left as you approach the two-lane bridge, you look back at Texas’s final reminder of its majesty, a thick stone Texas-shaped sign on which "Texas" is imprinted in bold letters.




You reach the other side, and there is a modest green sign that reads "Enter Beauregard Parish." No sign welcomes you to Louisiana.

You are left with the feeling of exit, but only a vague feeling of entry. You are still afflicted by Texas’s resonating vibe, and although you know you’ve left, you wonder, will it ever leave you?

A View from a Bike

Any cyclist can tell you that a motorist’s perception of the road is far different from a cyclist’s. This concept is usually most pronounced when a non-cyclist, asked to explain a certain terrain to a cyclist, describes a road notably different from that which the cyclist perceives when riding it. A road that provides a nice drive for a motorist could evoke effusive cursing from an even-mannered cyclist.

For instance, “flat,” to a motorist, could very well mean flat. But it could also mean rolling gently or ascending slightly. Of course, motorists need not interpret subtlety. Propelled by a slight foot depression, their vehicles barrel onward, allowing no time to regard passing surroundings. But in doing so, drivers not only risk missing roads’ topographical details.

One who pays close attention may discover many things: litter’s inability to degrade; the variegated colorations of urine discarded in plastic bottles; animal carcasses’ insistence on clinging to asphalt (and what road kill! snakes, birds of prey, javelina, coyotes, bobcats, a fish); one man’s refusal to keep his New Balance sneaker on his right foot, leaving it instead in the desert.

The mandate to observe is the joy of touring by bicycle. Apart from those exceptional riding days, when the wind has been at my back and I have pedaled with sustained focus and fervor, out of tune with all but the spinning of my wheels, I have traveled observantly.

I have seen life to excess: Texas maple trees, fresh for autumnal leaf change, appearing to shed their leaves as scads of butterflies flitter from their branches; bulls, protected by fence, jogging alongside me as I pass; even the automobiles seem to have their own vitality, speeding with fierce energy, forceful life.

But, as my touring pace has reminded me, they also bring death.

It’s easy to forget about death’s ever-possible imminence. I can think of few better reminders than the frequent roadside crucifixes that commemorate those killed while driving.




Adopt-a-Highway signs reiterate. The next two miles commemorate the untimely death of (insert name), they say. Killed in a drunken driving accident. Died by going too fast around a curve.

The constancy of such reminders has given me little to be afraid of besides traffic death. I expected so-called bad people would be the most worrisome on the road, based on the suggestions of others. “Carry a firearm,” some would say, or mace, or a good blade. No one’s to be trusted. To date, that has not been the case. If ever I have been afraid, it has been of being sideswiped by a semi, pulverized by a pickup, creamed by a car, or battered by a bus. It has taught me to adhere strictly to my line, a tightrope as far to the right as possible. And at times, it has been good people who have saved me from the road’s treachery.

Once I drive again, I doubt I will retain my cyclist’s perspective, and I will again lose touch with the lesson of mortality etched in the road. I may be more vulnerable as a cyclist, but at least I am more aware.