The Life's Too Short Tour

Starting May 20, 2009, I rode a bicycle from New York to Los Angeles, as a memorial to my late cousin, pedaling 3,600 miles in 105 days. I kept this journal along the way:
  • Post Tour Update #1



















    New York, NY.
    The Trek was 3,500 miles and lasted 105 days.
    With rest days factored in, I averaged about 40 miles per day.

    Flat tires, 1
    Broken chain, 1
    Broken spokes, 3

    Highest elevation: 11,200, Monarch Pass, Colorado
    Longest ride: 94 miles, western Kansas

    Most difficult rides:
    Hayters Gap, Virginia and Monarch Pass, Colorado. Both were physically tough climbs, Hayters Gap a four-mile, 4,000-foot Blue Ridge ascent at grades close to 15% at times; and Monarch Pass an epic 5,000-foot climb to 11,300-feet elevation at 8% grade for 25 miles.
    Of note are Colorado's busy, shoulderless, and winding mountain roads which presented the most difficult overall riding in the country.
    The Mojave desert presented challenges because of the heat. I had to stop riding and hop a shuttle on one 111-degree day near Death Valley.
    Appalachia with its many climbs was tough throughout. Virginia and Kentucky roads were difficult. They were many steep hills, few flat roads, and narrow road shoulders. Kentucky, like no other state, was also plagued by an abundance of chasing dogs. The Ozarks came with their own set of arduous climbs and summer humidity.

    The last two weeks I've been resting, but the images and impressions of the last days of the trek through California are still with me. I pedaled through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and to the ocean at Santa Monica. I pedaled past the Hollywood sign on the hill, past the stars on the sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard, past the famous hand prints at Grauman's Chinese Theater, and past manicured parks and lawns of Beverly Hills. At Santa Monica, when the Pacific Ocean came into view, I stood on the boardwalk staring out at it for a while. I took a bike trail south, through Venice Beach, and along the ocean at Marina del Ray, Playa del Ray, and then inland to a motel at El Segundo. I emptied the panniers and disposed of whatever I could in preparation to fly to New York. I flew home from Los Angeles airport the following day, landing at La Guardia Airport and taking a bus and cab home, the end of the trek.

    Since then I've been recuperating. I didn't realize how fatigued I was from the summer of pedaling until I was home. It was as if the miles caught up to me when I stopped. And now that the trip is complete, the task of summing it up fully in words seems impossible.

    It has taken some time to get used to normal routines again. Things such as setting up a tent at night, pedaling away from a motel or campsite each morning, filling water bottles, reading maps, had become habits of behavior. I walk the streets of New York feeling satisfied about the summer fulfilled, relieved that I made it across the 3,500 miles.

    It's relatively peaceful here after being on the road for three and a half months, especially walking in mornings or evenings on the quieter streets, like on Rutherford Place along Stuyvesant park, a park tucked away by large churches and a patch of tall oaks. Hidden from the crowds the small park offers relative sanctuary of calm in the city. When I walk there it's past a cathedral-like Episcopal church, a stately and simple Quaker meeting house, a modern Orthodox Catholic church in modern architecture, and a Jewish synagogue in a converted brownstone.

    Gray squirrels live among the trees in the park. People feed them nuts and peanuts. Also pigeons, mourning doves, English sparrows, starlings, cardinals, blue jays, crows, red-tailed hawks, red-headed woodpeckers. I once saw a wild turkey at Battery park, and sometimes I can watch a red-tailed hawk prey on squirrels in the Oval at Stuyvesant Town. Several times I've watched it perch on air conditioners on tenth and eleventh floor windows. Last year a coyote was captured in Central park, baffling game officials as to where and how the animal crossed unto the island.


    There is a buffer of vegetation skirting the streets that helps keep Stuyvesant park relatively peaceful. In the park thoughts are lighter and people are relaxed or engaged in levity. Occassionally an acoustic band with violin, banjo, bass and guitar sets up and plays. People toss frisbees and footballs, some lay in the sun or read a book, and dogs occassionally chase around. On the wooden benches, painted green, people read, converse, take lunch, smoke, or nap. Within a block of the park are streets of restaurants and diners. Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Italian, Japanese, and a couple of nondescript ones. A favorite is a diner called Joe Juniors Restaurant and Coffee Shop which serves the best fried egg and sausage breakfast in the neighborhood. Eggs over easy and pork sausage sliced down the middle and homefries laced with onions and green peppers, prepared to perfection by the Mexican cook. Because of the quality of the breakfast, with eggs carefully fried, sausage done perfectly, and even the toast which comes already buttered, I've said the cook is a high chef. I always shout out "gracias, muy bueno" to the chef as we leave. These are the old routines and familiar places.


    Any of the bicycling pains I endured along the way have by now subsided. There were the knee pains in hilly Virginia. The quadricep pains throughout the Appalachians. The hand pain and numbness which flared up on the high-mileage days through Kansas. A few bouts of heat-induced weakness in arid Utah and in the Mojave desert in Nevada. And an ongoing numbness and soreness in the feet. All have passed except for the weight of a deep down tiredness that continues to linger. I stayed healthy otherwise throughout the trip, other than the time I was briefly ill in wild Colorado. It happened at the base of Monarch Pass, where some bad water I drank made me ill for a couple of hours there on the roadside. It was an unfortunate and inhospitable place to be ill, at the foot of the highest and longest climb of the trek. Luckily, a half mile up the road I came upon a campground. It was down off the road among pines and cactus in a desert gulch, and it had a small store and a bathroom. There I took an hour to recover and get rehydrated for the climb up the 11,300-foot pass. After riding in such dry and desolate surroundings there in the Rockies, the cooler of cold drinks in the tiny store grabbed my attention. I wanted, needed, two large Gatorades, but thought better of it for my budget and instead grabbed one bottle and took it to the counter. Then the woman behind the counter, quite unexpectedly, offered me a second large bottle, free of charge, explaining that it had been discovered just moments before to be slightly wet from a tiny leak. "You might as well have it," she said. I graciously accepted it and relaxed on a porch to slowly drink the two large bottles -- on yellow and one green. When I felt better I pedaled up and over Monarch Pass.


    From what I saw in my travels it would seem America truly is in recession, or at best -- transition. I saw stores and commercial enterprises of all types closed and abandoned all across the land, from New Jersey to California. It was particularly evident in Kentucky and Kansas, where it seemed entire towns had packed up and left. On the cycling maps I used to navigate the trek, the motel and store listings were hopelessly outdated, in many cases with only disconnected telephone numbers and empty store fronts where businesses once operated. I was in several towns which were in their last throes of existence. In Kentucky there was Elkhorn City and Lookout. In Missouri it was Ash Grove and Golden City. In Utah and Kansas nearly every town was tinged by the blight. In Colorado there were towns such as Eads which retain a grocery, bar, motel and post office, and not much else. For California it was Yerba, where among a gauntlet of closed down storefronts falling into decrepitude, the streets are buckled and pot-holed, seemingly never to be repaired.


    Some small towns and cities were thriving, like Charlottesville, Virginia -- Springfield and Farmington, Missouri -- Hutchison, Kansas -- Pueblo, Colorado -- St. George, Utah -- Bardstown and Berea, Kentucky -- and Las Vegas. In the east, from New Jersey to Virginia, things seemed relatively better off. And in California the cities surrounding Los Angeles appeared as thriving. Still, even as recession is evident there is vitality in America, people are vacationing, working, building, traveling, and doing all the things that make it the vibrant nation it is.


    Churches figured prominently on the trip. Places of worship were everywhere and I had interactions in many. Among the churches and people I encountered along the trip were Southern Baptists, Orthodox and Roman catholics, United Methodists, Lutherans, Mormons, Quakers, Amish, Episcopalians, Mennonites, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, all scattered across the country. Some of the European cyclists I met expressed surprise by the ubiquity of religious expression in America. A plethora of churches, signs, billboards, and bumper stickers represents disparate faiths across the country. Religious symbols decorate the roadside scenes from coast to coast. Three crosses on a Virginia hillside, a statue of Mother Mary on a Kentucky lawn, a small Hindu shrine in the lobby of a Kansas motel, an exotic Buddhist temple in California. I stayed nights in Episcopal, United Methodist, Baptist and Lutheran churches, and once in a Christian hostel. Once I slept beside the altar in the sanctuary of a church for the plushly carpeted floor. On a few occassions when necessary along the trek I stopped to avail myself of church lawns (to rest), awnings (to stay dry or have shade), or water spigots (to refill water bottles). Sometimes a church would be open and I would use the restroom or relax in the shade of the sanctuary for a few moments. At one church in Kentucky there was a full kitchen stocked with food and drink for cyclists. There was no pastor or caretaker there, only a sign permitting cyclists to "make yourself at home." I cooked up a few cans of beans and spaghetti, then slept on the floor, along with two other cyclists who arrived later that evening. In Virginia I stayed on historic grounds at Yorktown in an old house of the Episcopal church. It was stocked with food and had a laundry and full bathroom. I cooked myself a large hamburger meal at a Lutheran church in Kansas where I stayed a night alone. At a Baptist church in eastern Kentucky I cooked up green beens and ravioli in the kitchen, washed laundry, showered, and slept on a mattress on the floor. The pastor showed me a short cut into Illinois. I attended Sunday services once, at a non-denominational Christian church in Happy Landing, Kentucky. It was a small church at an otherwise empty intersection in the rural hills. I happened to ride past the church as morning services were starting and decided to join.

    I met several evangelists and preachers on the trip, usually on the roadside, sometimes outside of a church. As such, along the trek I was prayer for, had hands layed upon me, and once on a back road in Kentucky a traveling evangelist spoke in tongues while blessing my trek. There were spiritual exchanges and interactions with memorable personalities such as Ray the Boardwalk Rasputin and Richard the pastor on the New Jersey shore, Lightbulb the McDonalds worker in Virginia, Jeff the walking preacher in Kentucky, Matt the mountain bike preacher in Colorado, and Elmer the bottle tree artist in California.


    Foremost, thanks to the long list of those who supported the tour in one way or another. You gave donations, advice, gear, and support which were vital. To Banjo Brothers there is much gratitude for donating panniers, handlebar bag, and saddle bag, for the trek.
    Everyone who generously contributed to the $1,250 collected for the American Brain Tumor Association can be proud of the substantial donation we raised. Your show of support and donations were monumental, the highlight of the tour. Many donated behind the scenes, significantly helping to fund expenses on the road, providing lodging, meals, flight tickets, bike repairs, gear, and cash. There were generous souls who put money in my hand, and generous souls who sent checks, substantial offerings, in a show of support appreciated beyond measure.
    until later...

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  • Day 105: The End



































    Santa Monica, California.
    I completed the Life's Too Short Tour today, on Saturday, September 5, reaching the Pacific Ocean after riding a bicycle for 105 days from New York City to Santa Monica, California.
    A memorial to my cousin Rich, who passed in April, starting on May 20 I rode my bicycle, the 1984 Trek 520 which bore the nickname Old Blue, about 3,500 miles through New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.
    I'll fly home to New York now, and when I arrive I'll make another post to this blog. Until then I'll be thinking about this journey and what it has meant, and about the people who supported me, and about all that is to be remembered. For now let me give thanks to all of you. It's been one heck of a ride!

    THANK YOU

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  • Day 104: The Final Ride I left Victorville, Ca. in the early morning and began the trek out of the desert and into the valley where Los Angeles awaits. Through the mountains at Cajon Pass the roads converged singularly into the interstate, where a sign forbade me and the 520 to enter, and so I hitched a ride with a truck through the pass. The driver, named Basilio, welcomed me out of the Mojave and dropped me off a few miles later, at Ontario, Ca., and then I biked west through several towns until taking a room in a motel at La Puente.

    Tomorrow I ride the final 35 miles of the Life's Too Short Tour, through downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and finally the pier at Santa Monica, where lands runs out, the Pacific Ocean.

    Sitting here in this motel tonight, with the 520 at my side, I am at a loss to identify what it is I feel. I am eager to be done. I will pedal tomorrow to the ocean, and sit at the edge for a while and stare west, the only direction I've known for months. There is still a lot to say about the summer of 2009, about the days we said goodbye to Rich. The sun will rise one more day on the Life's Too Short Tour, and then I will watch it sink beyond the horizon, and it will be done.
    until then...

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  • Days 101 to 103: In the Mojave Sun











    Victorville, Ca.
    I've been pedaling through the Mojave Desert for a week. The Mojave is a near-barren expanse sparsely dotted with desert flora, flanked on the horizons by mountains that are treeless and rocky, and baked in sunrays so intense as to make the air seem molten, heavy, thick. I start off early each morning before the sun is too intense, pedaling down the road by 7:30 a.m., and by 2 p.m. the heat feels dangerous, all encompassing, searing down from the sky and glowing off the ground, as if the entire desert floor itself is an ember. Since crossing the border into California I made distances of 40, 50, 60 and 45 miles successively, riding on Interstate 15 through Baker and Barstow, and on Route 66 through Helendale, Oro Grande, and into Victorville. The interstate rides were astonishingly fast and smooth, on a wide shoulder, over gradual climbs, and down long and swift descents. Route 66, the once-celebrated Mother Road of American lore and song, was in disrepair; rough, shoulderless and slow.

    In Baker, after an incredibly long downhill zoom, about 20 miles of top-gear sprinting, I scoped out the three motels in town, and took a room at Wills Fargo Motel, which was old and run down, but clean and had a decent swimming pool which I lounged in for a while. Baker can't be called a town, but a strip of fast food joints, gas stations and motels, at the intersection of Interstate 15 and Route 127, which leads into Death Valley. A sign at Baker bills the place as the "gateway to Death Valley." I took photos of the town's main attraction, although it didn't appear to be attracting anyone, which is hailed as the world's tallest thermometer. The roadside curiousity is 134 feet tall, symbolic of the highest temperature recorded in North America, 134 degrees at nearby Death Valley in 1913. The thermometer is not really a thermometer at all, but a concrete tower with digital displays on that of a bank. The afternoon I was there it read 104 degrees.

    I made it to Barstow the next day, still riding on a broken rear spoke, and hoping to have it fixed there. But the cycle shop in town was too busy to make the repair that day, and so I had to decide to ride ahead one more day on the wobbly rear wheel.

    Barstow is a strange little town. There is a mix of military folks from a nearby Army post, traveling motorists as evidenced by the plethora of motels, and a few vagrants brought in by the crossroads of railroads which converge there. The town celebrates Route 66, which is the main street through Barstow. In the morning I rode along Route 66 through the desert enroute to Victorville, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It was rough and broken up, and so I had to procede slowly along the old road. The road passed by a number of roadside ruins, ancient motels and gas stations long closed and forgotten in decrepitude. There is no decrepitude like that in the desert, where crumbling structures bake in the heat, seemingly in lament for the passage of time and bygone eras. There is roadside litter all along the road.

    I came upon a curious site in Oro Grande, a fenced in yard of eccentric art work, bottles hung on metals poles in a menagerie of abstraction that was at once odd, interesting, and beautiful. I entered the gate and looked around, feeling esconced in some kind of a handmade wonderland. A white-bearded man appeared from a small house beside the artwork and explained that he was the artist, and that the place was called the Bottle Tree Ranch. It was a passion that gripped him ten years ago, a creative obsession, in which he would weld together poles and pegs to hold glass bottles to glitter in the sun. I spent an hour perusing the gallery of strange objects and conversing with the man named Elmer. When I left Elmer, I found my way to Victorville where I visited the Route 66 museum, and afterward happened to ride past a bicycle shop. I stopped at the shop and had the broken spoke repaired, then continued along to a motel.

    Today I must figure out how to proceed into Los Angeles. There are several options and I may have to ride the highway again to make it through mountains east of the city. I am merely two days from the ocean. There is much more to describe, but I am focused on making it to Los Angeles and not taking time to contemplate. I hope to find a place in the next few days to stop and take the time to write. The end of the trek is in sight, and the end of summer is at hand. Just a few more miles and America will have been traversed.

    until later...

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  • Day 100: Into California





    I made it to California.
    Yesterday I rode 40 miles from Las Vegas to Primm, Nevada, on the California border. I took a hotel room at Primm, for a ridiculously low $13 at Whiskey Pete's Casino and Hotel, which is just yards from the California border. I can see the Golden State from my hotel room window. Leaving Las Vegas I started riding early in the morning and so heat was not an issue throughout the day. The ride on Interstate 15 was easy and flat through low desert dotted with Joshua trees and cactus. It was a desert valley skirted on either side by bare and jagged mountains. Traffic rushed beside me, but I was safe on the highway's wide shoulder. Haze from the smoke of the wildfires raging in California was visible throughout the valley. I was breathing the smoke in, no doubt, but then again I've been inhaling vehicles' exhaust for three months now. I'll be riding directly at the fires in the next few days. It's just another obstacle to overcome, one of many I faced this summer.

    Today I will ride to Baker, California, about 50 miles away. Unfortunately, as I was finishing up yesterday's ride another spoke broke. Once again it is a spoke on the drive side of the rear wheel, and so I can't make the repair myself because I don't have a special wrench for removing the rear gear cassette. I have no choice but to ride for the next two days on the broken spoke, until I can reach Barstow for the nearest bike shop. The rear wheel is wobbling out of true, but I must push ahead nonetheless. I'll try tightening up the spokes around the broken one to keep the wheel as true as possible. I rode on a broken spoke for 70 miles through Utah, and now I'll have to do it again.As a precaution, in case the rear wheel spoke problem compounds during today's ride, I'll bring a magic marker and a piece of cardboard on which I can make a sign to solicit a ride to Barstow.

    I can finish the trek in about five days. There are 250 miles to the Pacific Ocean, and I plan to ride about 50 miles each day. I won't be camping anymore, so in order to lighten the load on the rear wheel I may ditch the tent and sleeping bag here in Primm. From here on out it's a bare bones sprint to the ocean.

    until later...

    The Final Leg

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  • Day 99: Leaving Las Vegas




























    Las Vegas, Nevada.
    In the morning, after a night at the Holiday Inn provided by CFC Stephen, and after a big hotel breakfast of scrambled eggs, bisquits and gravy, fruit, juice and toast, I noticed another broken spoke on the 520's rear wheel. It was a spoke on the drive side of the rear wheel, where spokes are shorter and in which a special wrench is required to loosen the gear cassette to make the repair. I had no tool for such a job, and so it was clear that I would have to find a bicycle shop in town, and ride there on a wobbly rear wheel.

    I headed into the city and went into a hotel to inquire about reserving a room, since I would need to stay another night in Las Vegas now that the repair was needed. I headed to the El Cortez Hotel in Downtown, because it offered $10 rooms. Wary of leaving the 520 locked up on the street, I brought it into the hotel lobby with me, and approached the desk. The receptionist said it was too early to reserve a room, and warned "you'd better get that bike out of here before security sees it." "Really?" I asked. "It's my luggage."

    I ambled along Fremont Street and found an outdoor cafe that had free WiFi. I parked the 520 along the rail of the cafe's outdoor seating area, purchased a drink, and logged online to begin a search for bike shops in Las Vegas. I found one, called it, and the mechanic explained that he was too busy to make he spoke repair himself, but that he would loosen the cassette (with the special wrench) and give me a spoke to fit, although I'd have to do the actual repair work myself. I pondered the scenario. I'd be sitting on some bench, somewhere in Las Vegas, working to make the repair myself and hoping all went as it was supposed to. It seemed like a potential quagmire, and so I decided to continue the online search for another bike shop.
    Just then a security guard, in official hotel regalia and badge, approached the 520, eyeing it like it might be a terrorist's bomb, and asked aloud, "does this belong to anyone here?"
    "Yes, it's mine," I confessed.
    "Well, you've got to move it," she ordered. "It's against our policy."
    "What is?" I asked, not in defiance but only in surprise.
    "Sir, you'll have to move it, now."
    "Ok, ok."
    I was startled when a man next to me, a New Jersian whom I had briefly conversed with earlier, spoke up in my defense. "What's the big deal, this guy rode this thing all the way from New York, for a cause, geez," he spouted off in a greasy north Jersey accent. "What the hell is it hurting just sitting there?"
    "It's policy," she insisted. "Move it."
    I packed up my laptop, gulped down my drink, and retrieved the 520 from the rail and walked down Fremont Street with the bike at my side. "Good luck buddy, sorry about that, these casino people hate everything," the New Jersey guy said.

    I pedaled down Las Vegas Boulevard to a McDonalds for the WiFi, found another bike shop, quite far away, and was relieved to hear that they could indeed make the repair for me that day. I mounted up again, and pedaled the several miles out of town toward the shop called Bike King. When I finally made there an hour and half later I handed the 520 over to a mechanic named Ron, who replaced the spoke, and also changed the rear tire with my spare. The Continental Ultra Gator Skin tires, rated for 3,000 miles, have begun to wear and shred, especially the rear which bears the brunt of weight, and so it was prudent to say goodbye to the trusty tire.

    I mentioned to Ron the tension I had encountered this day on the bike, and he said is seemed "the city hates bikes, especially on The Strip, in Las Vegas you're better off riding on the sidewalk." When Ron had completed the repairs he said, "it's ready to hit the road, no charge, it's bikes that we like and it's not always about the money." His gesture was encouraging, especially after the discrimination Sin City had dealt.

    On recommendation of a man at a pizza shop where I ate lunch, I headed to a hotel and casino on the western outskirts of town called Silverton Hotel and Casino. The hotel has an outdoorsy theme, with hunting lodge decor and mounted big game animal heads in the lobby. I took a room, wandered through the casino for a few minutes, and ate at the buffet. At Silverton, a massive compound surrounded and isolated from town by moat-like highways, one almost feels captive, certainly confined. You can wander around in a trance induced by the whirring slot machines, suspended in a purgatory-of-sorts, with each crank of the slots a genuine long shot.

    Heading to Jean, Nevada tomorrow I'll be in the empty Mojave Desert. I'll depart early to avoid the high heat of the afternoon. Of the three motels in Jean, online reviews deem each of them as unsavory. But in such places I remind myself that even the worst motel is better than the tent. I hope not to spend another night in the tent, but I'm still cargoing it just in case. Weather reports called for about 103-degree temperatures for the ride to Jean. I'll bring plenty of water with me. I'll take care to maintain the mental focus I may need if the desert gets tough.

    There are wildfires directly west in California. A haze of smoke is visible here in Las Vegas. It will be a few days before I reach the burning areas, which I expect will be calmed by then. The itinerary is Jean, Baker, and then into Barstow. From there I must forge a route to the Pacific Ocean, perhaps to Santa Monica, or maybe a bit farther north. It is hard to discern how to feel about the impending end of the trip. It will be many things, all at once. This won't be the end of the long bike treks. Eventually, I will continue on.

    until later...

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  • Day 98: Las Vegas










    Mesquite, Nevada.
    I crossed the border of two states today, Arizona and Nevada, in smoldering 105 degree desert heat. The ride on Interstate 15 went well, but the heat did take a toll toward the end of the 45-mile ride. With five miles left to go I began to feel the first effects of heat exhaution, cold chills and diminished perspiration, and plodded into town on my last legs. Tomorrow is fore casted to be 111 degrees.

    Mesquite consists of a few casino compounds and motels, a few homes and support businesses, but not much else. This is the Mojave desert. Mesquite is an oasis where amid the searing heat there are cacti and palm trees. Indians lived in the oasis for thousands of years, then Mormons settled it, and now the casinos. The hotels offer extraordinarily low room rates, expecting you to blow a wad of cash in their gaming casinos. I coasted around the small town once, got a haircut, and prepared to make the distance to Las Vegas.

    Las Vegas, Nevada
    I've been in Las Vegas for two days now. I am deciding tonight whether to stay one more day, or to head west the 40 miles to the California border, where I would take a room in a motel in the desert outpost of Primm, Nevada.

    Getting here was tricky. The day I was to ride from Mesquite to Las Vegas the heat soared to 111 degrees, as fore casted. It was hot enough that the sun-heated brake levers nearly burned my hands. I could smell heated rubber of the tires as they were melting. I could feel the heat in my nose just like stepping into a dry sauna. It was 80 miles to Las Vegas, through nothing but smoldering desert. Unsafe to make the ride in the heatwave, I hopped a shuttle van to for an hour and half ride though the scorching Mojave.

    Arriving in Las Vegas was interesting. I pedaled onto Las Vegas Boulevard, along The Strip, and into Downtown. Immediately the facade of the place was apparent, just as if I had pedaled into Disney World. Everything is fake, and yet the fakeness is the reality embraced and expected, it's fantasy land. Gaudy casinos and hotels hold sway over the boulevard, with strip clubs, wedding chapels and fast food joints rounding out the scene.

    I took a room at Plaza Hotel and Casino on Fremont Street in Downtown. This is the old section of the city, with a strip of 40-year old casinos and hotels all lined up along Fremont Street, where a several-block long outdoor mall, enclosed overhead by a tunnel-like roof, is called the Fremont Experience. Video images are projected on the ceiling of the mall at night, and I could watch them from my 9th floor room. In this old part of the city I almost felt the spirit of the entertainers of the past. Liberace, Sinatra, Wayne Newton, Dean Martin.

    I strolled around Fremont Street and made my way up Las Vegas Boulevard as the sun sank beneath a muave horizon. Even in the night the heat was thick, oppressive. I took photos of the Art Deco motel signs and the casino lights on The Strip, finding interest in the facade. Accepting it for what it is. Tourists flow along Las Vegas Boulevard at night in droves. Inside the casinos, once you get past the glitter and signage, the casinos are all the same. In fact, once inside, it could be Atlantic City, or any horse track slot casino in any city in America. I walked around in them listlessly, astonished that the slot machines, the black jack tables, the roulette wheels, actually hold interest for so many. I dropped a couple of dollars into a slot machine and pushed the button, and within three seconds the game was over and the money was gone.

    Watching the casino card dealers do their work, flipping cards, counting chips, all very regimented and slick, it occurred to me how deep the facade of Las Vegas is. These uniformed and stone-faced card dealers rake in peoples' money with sweeps of their hands, like minions of a greedy machine. Gamblers are tricked, not by the odds, but by a characterization of gambling as exciting.

    But it isn't only gambling that lures in Vegas, but sex. The full spectrum of the sex industry is on display in Las Vegas, from pornography to burlesque shows, and strip clubs to illicit massage parlors, which Las Vegas unabashedly claims it as its soul. Walking down The Strip at night there are rows of Mexican men and women, 20 or 30 of them in a gauntlet, openly attempting to hand advertisement cards to each passerby. On the cards are pictures of nude women, advertisments for prostitution and strip clubs. The cards get dropped about the sidewalks so that it seems the place is paved in porn.

    For entertainment, Las Vegas is like the closet in the spare bedroom, where once-prized articles of clothing are hung and forgotten, never worn again, but not quite ready to be thrown away. Once-popular acts find a home here, long after their expiration dates have come and gone. Barry Manilow, Carrot Top, David Copperfield, Celine Dion.

    I arose early in the morning and left my room, taking the 520 along with me in the elevator and through the hotel casino to check out at the registration desk. A security gaurd stopped me in the casino and asked sternly "sir, is there a reason you have a bicycle in the casino?" I coasted in low gear about Las Vegas in the morning. The whole place seemed to have a hangover. But the casinos were buzzing, and even at 7:30 a.m. there were people swilling beer and playing slots.

    I remember Rich talking about visiting Las Vegas when he was a kid. Our grandparents took him and Robin, his sister, on a cross country trip, with Vegas being one of the stops. He talked of the lights, of Harrah's, of MGM Grande. I thought of him there on Las Vegas Boulevard as I walked along.

    All in all, I am glad that Las Vegas exists, even if there is nothing here of interest for me, only because I admire its libertarian heart.

    until later...

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  • Days 96 and 97: On the High Way
    St. George, Utah.
    The picture posted below is the motel room I'm in at the moment. Motels like this are my home. I can't remember the name of this place, Value Inn, Quality Inn, or something like that. It is another Indian-American-owned motel, which I knew the moment I entered the office for the scent of curry and incense. These days I don't even feel good about a motel unless I hear an Indian accent from the clerk. Today, since I have a relative short day of riding, 41 miles, I'll stay here until check out time at 11 a.m.

    Yesterday's ride on Interstate 15 was fantastic. I like the highway. It was the fastest ride I've accomplished yet. I made 56 miles in about three hours. I-15 is flat, largely downhill, and with a wide shoulder. It was comforting to be on a route that was not in some remote and windswept wilderness. Today I contiunue on I-15 to Mesquite, Nevada. I'll ride through Arizona enroute, through a tricky part of the freeway at Virgin River Gorge, where shoulders narrow for a few miles. Then on to Las Vegas, where Cornerman First Class Stephen is reserving a room for me at Holiday Inn. He continues to be there in my corner between rounds.

    Today the temperature is going up to 105 degrees fahrenheit. I have faced this kind of heat before, in Virginia, in Kentucky, and once through Kansas, and suprisingly it is not that much of a problem. On the bicycle the forward motion at 10 to 20 miles per hour provides a steady flow of air which cools.

    On the interstate yesterday I pedaled by two police officers along the way, and they did not react, so that proves the legality of cycling on the highway here in Utah. A few cars honked in salutation, probably fellow bicycle tourers, and I gave each a salute.

    I was sitting in a mountain cafe eating a burger, and songs that played over the sound system bought back memories. First it was It's Too Late, by Carol King in 1972, which brought me back to Cape May, New Jersey, as a young kid when that song was on the radio. "It's too late, though we really did try to make it, something inside has died..." The scent of the marshes and the sound of the seagulls, in the backseat of a car headed down the highway with my young parents, welled up in my mind. Next it was the song Dream Weaver, by Gary Wright in 1976, which had me in the mountains of Pennsylvania, on a school bus on a winter day. These old memories stirred something up in me, measuring life's brevity in a metric of change and loss, breaking me down there on the mountain.

    In emails, I frequently get messages from those I've met along the way. Steve and Barb from Minnesota, the cyclists I met in Virginia months ago whom I described as "warm and friendly as people get," continue to keep in touch. Damon from Telluride, who gave me a day in a luxury spa, wrote saying "I know this won't be enough adventure for you. You should get on a freighter and go to China and keep going. And if you do, tell me and maybe I'll join you!" I would keep going, straight to China and onward, if I had the budget for such a trek. I would just keep pedaling and pedaling right around the world, and maybe I will.

    until later...

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  • Day 95: High and Dry















































































    Cedar City, Utah.
    It was a 60-mile ride over a 10,000-foot pass, up over Brian Head summit of southwestern Utah. It was the last of the high-altitude climbs, this time in semi-arid desert, first through rocky crags of gnarled Ponderosa pines and then into a moon scape at the summit, only to scream down the other side of the range to the desert valley below.

    The first 40 miles of the ride were an uphill climb. The last 20 a downhill coast. I spent most of my day spinning in granny gear, going slow, foot-by-foot up the mountain. The higher I went the colder it got. I had to don my sweatshirt and put the hood up. At the top I saw Cedar Breaks National Monument, a massive canyon of yellow and orange cliffs. The descent to Cedar City was a long downhill coast then went on and on in curves; I did not pedal for the entire 20 miles.

    In Cedar City I did my usual protocol, finding a McDonalds and using WiFi to get online, then calling the motels in town for the cheapest price. I ended up in a decent place for a good price, sat in the hot (warm) tub, swam in the pool for a minute, then took dinner at an all-you-can-eat salad bar.

    Next I bike to St. George, about 50 miles away. This is where I begin riding on Interstate 15. If all goes well, this road will take me all the way to the ocean. At St. George I'll make another entry to make up for this abbreviated one.

    until later...

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  • Days 86 to 94: A Miracle and the Last Mountain

    Panguitch, Utah.
    I spent five days in Richfield. It's the longest period of time spent at any place on the trek. I detoured there for repairs on the 520, which accrued a broken spoke and flat tire on the high Utah plateaus. It wasn't much of a town, but it had a cheap motel and a competent bike shop, and these have become important things for me. In Richfield, there was the day the bicycle repairs were accomplished, the three days I spent doing my writing work, and the day in which I was witness to a miracle.

    "Where's my wallet?" I said under my breath. I had left Richfield that morning and biked 10 miles before I realized that my wallet was not in its usual place, the handlebar bag. I checked through everything. I looked, and looked and looked, no wallet. In a panic, I set off back toward Richfield to trace my route. I pedaled hard, all the while eyeing the road shoulder for the wayward wallet. I ran through the possibilities in my mind: It may have fallen out of the handlbar bag, or I maybe I dropped it outside the store in Richfield when I got coffee earlier, or perhaps I left in on the counter. Maybe, perhaps.

    It took about a mile of pedaling for the gravity of the situation to really hit me. With my wallet gone I was now without money, identification, and debit card, rendering me helpless. What would I do? Not only did this effectively end the tour, but it also meant I would have no place to stay tonight, and no food. I rode hard back to the store in Richfield, the unfolding disaster overwhelming me. I pictured how I would explain the abbreviated journey, ended in Utah because I foolishly misplaced my wallet. I thought of the 3,000 miles I'd come, and how ridiculous to be stymied not by distance or endurance, but by a stupid mistake. I imagined having to tell it. "Yes I almost rode across America, but then I lost my wallet in Utah and..."
    "Please God, let me find my wallet," became a mantra as I pedaled. I riffed on the prayer, saying it aloud over and over as I ripped off the miles toward Richfield. Halfway there and the reality slowly dawned on me: chances are the wallet won't be found.

    I stopped a few times on the sprint to Richfield to examine things on the roadside that looked like they might be the wallet, but none of them were. When I reached the store where I'd last used the wallet, I immediately asked the clerks if a wallet had been found. They shook their heads absently. I searched the parking lot, back and forth, but as the minutes passed it became clearer that the tragedy was irreversible. I must have dropped it here near the 520 after getting coffee, and someone must have found it on the ground, opened it and saw the money and now it has been stolen and is gone for good, I surmised. I was in big trouble. I was depressed. I was sad. I was bewildered. How tragic for the tour to end this way.

    I called mother Moya to report the bad news. She suggested I call the police in case someone found it and turned it in to them. I felt it was such a long shot as to be a waste of time, but I needed to do something, anything, just to stave off the final acceptance that not only was I destitute in the middle of nowhere, but this three-month experience had turned sour. I called the police station, and explained the situation to a dispatcher. The dispatcher said she would send a police officer to the store parking lot to get a statement from me. I waited forty five minutes for the cop to arrive, all the while turning the problem over in my mind like a Rubics Cube, exploring every angle, examining every ramification. It was a nightmare.
    Finally the cop arrived.
    "How are you doing?" the cop asked as he pulled up in his white and blue Richfield cruiser.
    "I'm biking across the country, and I just lost my wallet, everything I need is there," I reported.
    "Well," the cop said. "We found it."
    found it...found it...found it...
    A surge of adrenaline that coursed through my body and I sat down on the curb of the parking lot. I looked right up into the clouds and said "thank you, thank you, thank you!"

    The cop said the wallet was found by a truck driver and his wife somewhere along the road. Another officer was enroute to the couple's home to retrieve the found wallet. Apparently, as I rode that morning, the wallet had been jostled out of the handlebar bag by a large bag of trail mix I'd stashed there. That is at least the best explanation I can muster.

    "Just about the time you were calling the dispatcher, they were calling the other dispatcher to say they'd found a wallet," the cop said. "I figured, here's a guy from New York who lost his wallet, and here's a wallet found with a New York drivers license in it -- I figured, has to be."
    When another officer, this time a sheriff, pulled up and flashed the wallet in his hand with a big smile, I knew something extraordinary had just taken place. The leather in my hand, the money untouched, the license and debit card right there in their slots, seemed like a miracle.

    It was only afterward that I realized the serendipity that had been embodied there, the place where I lingered the longest, where I found a bike shop to fortunately repair the 520, where I found a place to complete my work, and where the beatific wallet miracle took place: "Rich"field.

    Utah continues to challenge. It's not the mountains or the empty distances that discourage, but the wind. On days when I had to ride west, I faced a headwind. On days when I had to ride north, I faced a headwind. And today, when I pedaled 55 miles south to Panguitch, I faced a headwind. Previously held notions that Kansas was windy are no longer, now it is Utah that reigns supreme as "windiest state." Big, heavy gusts come rolling across these high plateaus like molten lead. Pedaling against them is like leaning hard into a brickwall, like arm wrestling to a stalemate. The wind thuds against me and the 520 and stops us nearly still. The leg, Route 89 south, was flat with lots of downhill sections, but the wind made the effort as climbing a 55-mile mountain grade.

    A storm was suspended in the sky ahead of me as I pedaled. Much like I had first seen in Colorado as I tried to outrace an encroaching storm west of Pueblo. The gun-metal blue clouds were isolated over a mountain range, where blue streaks of rain hung like curtains over the valley ahead of me. To the left and right of the suspended storm were blue skies dotted with fat cummulus clouds. When rain drops began to spatter my sun glasses, and the wind roared up, I began to look for shelter somewhere along the remote route. I stopped before a house, ready to dash to the porch if the storm fully unleashed, and began to summon passing trucks. After soliciting with outstretched thumb several passersby, finally a large passenger van pulled to a stop. A wild-haired man of about 60 signaled for me to put the 520 on a trailer the van was pulling. He agreed to take me the final four miles into Panguitch, my destination for the day. I jumped inside the van, through a door like that of a school bus, and sat on a plywood platform inside the ramshackle and messy van. It was stuffed full of what appeared to be a full household. "I live in this," the man said. He dropped me off in Panguitch where, oddly, the sun was shining hot, the air was still, and there were no storm clouds in sight. I'm not sure how that happened. "I feel foolish now," I confessed to the wild-haired man. "Better safe than sorry," he said.

    Panguitch is motel central. I coasted through the 10-block town and counted about 12 motels. The town is the launching-off point for Utah parks such as Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, and as such is a town catered to tourists. There are gift shops and restaurants with cowboy and western themes. There is the Cowboy Smoke House, and the Red Canyon Indian Store. There are signs for Indian Jewelry, Canyon Tours, Western Wear, Tack and Saddle Shop, Cowboy Gifts, and Trading Post. I went to the library, got online to search out the phone numbers for the motels in town, and called several. I found the cheapest one, Bryce Way Motel, and made it my home for the night. I walked a few block to a store, and bought two hot dogs, a can of beans, a V8 juice, and a tea. Then I showered and washed my bike clothes in the sink before laying back to plod through the television channels.

    Tomorrow I will pedal over the last mountain. It is a 10,000-foot pass, a steady upward climb of about 25 or 30 miles. I am currently at about 6,000 feet elevation, making tomorrow's ride a 4,000-foot climb. Enroute to Cedar City, once I traverse that summit it is a downhill coast for about 20 miles. From Cedar City I aim for Las Vegas and increasingly horizontal terrain. I loathe the climb, but I relish the fact that tomorrow's mountain marks the final big climb of the trek. There will be no more major mountains from here on. So many mountains I've met, Appalachian, Ozark, Rocky. There was Hayters Gap, Buckhorn, Big A, Rockfish Gap, Vesuvias, Breaks, countless Ozark climbs, Monarch Pass, Lizard Head Pass, Cerro Summit, and on and on. Tomorrow's climb over the Markagunt Plateau, into the rarified air of Brian Head summit, is the end of the mountains. The long coast to Cedar City will be the beginning of a monumental descent to the Pacific Ocean. It will be the resolution of a climb that began months ago, when I crossed the Mississippi River and began the subtle grade to the Rockies and beyond.

    The itinerary for the next four days is as follows: Cedar City, St. George, Mesquite, Las Vegas. I think I can reach the Pacific in about two weeks. I'd like to take a rest day in Las Vegas, then push to the coast. I have not decided where I'll finish. It was my intent originally to end the trek at my sister's home in Santa Cruz, California, but that distance adds a week to the journey, and it is a week I fear I can't afford. I have also mulled Los Angeles as the finish line, namely the Santa Monica Pier. I'll enter California and aim for the ocean, and let chance and fate decide where this trek ends.

    It is hard to believe I have been pedaling a bicycle for more than three months. I've spent nearly the entire summer cycling, nearly every day. I've surpassed the 3,000-mile mark and am staring at the finish line.

    until later...

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  • Days 83 to 85: Repaired, the Detour Pays Off
    I left Bicknell at 9 a.m. and in clear weather I rode west on Route 24 about 10 miles to Lyman. It was then that the rear tire began to deflate. It was the first flat tire in the entire 3,000 miles I'd traveled to date. I suspected the tube was worn out from the trek, or perhaps punctured from a particularly sharp thorn I had been encountering along roadways throughout Utah. The thorns had stuck to my sandals in a campground three days ago, and I subsequently removed a few of them from the tires. I wondered then if the thorns would come back to haunt. I walked the 520 back to a pavilion in town and sat at a picnic bench in the shade to inspect the tube. Patching the pin hole leak, I pumped up the tire and pedaled on through Loa.

    What followed Loa was more desert remoteness, 50 miles of empty terrain, off-route from the Western Express and headed northwest to Richfield. There were two mountain passes to scale, one at 8,300 feet elevation and the next at 7,800 feet elevation. It was dry and shadeless, the road flanked by expanses of sage brush. The climbs up the mountain passes were among the most arduous sections of pedaling I've faced. Ever present were very strong headwinds which made pedaling strenuous. A few times I stopped on the roadside and ate from the supply of bologna, bread and trail mix I'd cargoed. I took many breaks, including stops on the roadside to pump up the patched tube three times. A long downhill into Richfield helped. I drank the last of four water bottles I hauled along the leg as I neared Richfield. Two miles from town and the tire was deflated again, but this time the tube wouldn't hold air anymore, and so I pushed the 520 the rest of the way. I tried to hitchhike, careful to solicit only pickup trucks for hauling the 520, but to no avail. Eight or ten trucks drove by without stopping. It was dusk as the sun set behind the bare mountain range to the west at 8:30 p.m. In town a couple in a truck I asked directions from gave me a ride, with the 520 in the back, and I ended up at New West Motel for the cheap rates. I showered and had pizza and soda before sleep.

    In the morning I scouted the town for the bicycle shop listed as being located on Main Street. On the walk I noticed that the town showed beginnings of the same blight I had seen in hundreds of similar small towns across America. Freshly closed storefronts, car dealerships, gas stations, convenience stores and restaurants, were all along the street. I stopped and grabbed a coffee-to-go at a small cafe and then continued along. I found no bicycle shop. I inquired at a sporting good store, where I was directed to Jorgensen's Honda, an auto and cycle dealership with a bicycle shop and mechanic on hand. I pushed the 520, with the flat tire and the broken spoke, the half mile to the shop and handed the 520 over to mechanic Jeff. He said the probable culprit for the puncture through the kevlar tires may indeed have been the thorn I suspected, which he called Goat Head thorn. He inspected the tires and removed a few more thorns deeply embedded in the tire. He also had the right size spoke on hand. When finished, the 520 was outfitted with heavy duty thorn-resistant inner tubes, a chain cleaning, a spoke, a new strap for the right pedal, a trued wheel, and a lube, and is ready to roll again. Jeff gave me a bottle of lube, a couple of extra spokes, and an extra tube, to take along with me. Then I returned to the room to do some work. I went to a grocery store later for chicken, beans, salad, bagel, and milk, for dinner back at the room.

    Moya, Jennifer and I explored a site called Westwater Ruins, 1,000-year-old remnants of an Anasazi Indian village in eastern Utah. The Anasazi, ancestors of modern day Pueblo Indians, made a community there in the canyon. To access the ruins we hiked about a half of a mile over a broad dome of rock amid sparse flora, juniper and pine trees, cacti and tufts of desert grasses. The sun blazed on the rocks. Nearly devoid of sound, the three of us found we could talk to one another from quite a distance, our voices carrying in the ampitheater-like bowls and ledges of the place.

    During our ride, Jennifer and I went off the road a bit to see a historical marker, which ended up being a fenced-in gravesite and a hand-made metal sign, explaining the story of a settler killed by Indians. The letters on the sign were each hand soldered or welded. There were spelling errors. The author used the word "calvary" for "cavalry," and someone corrected the mistake in black marker. Also in marker, someone changed the word "settle" to "steal." Jennifer and I laughed aloud at the rough-hewn sign.

    Entering Fruita, I rode into an oasis where I picked apples in an orchard. The unlikely patch of green in the desert sprouts up in a canyon around the Fremont River. On the walls of the canyon are petraglyphs etched in the rock by ancient people who inhabited the oasis. At the orchards, people wander around through the trees to pick apples, then weigh them on a scale and put the payment through a slot in a box. I took four yellowish green apples, which cost me $1, and ate them over the next two days.

    In the high-altitude desert everything is different. Riding into Utah was like coming into a power field of some sort. There is a sense foreboding amidst the vast distances of empty and arid desert, looming mountains, and odd rock formations, that invokes a certain seriousness. This place can kill. To range here, particularly on bicycle, requires some forethought about water supply, distances, emergency plans, lack of cell phone reception, the unshaded sun, and the frigid nights. Along the roads there are no houses, gas stations, or rest stops, just sage brush expanses and road. The seriousness of the land seems a subtle trait of people here. On the road, motorists don't bother waving, but stay focused on the road ahead.

    I've had to do some work this week, and so took a room in Richfield for a couple of days. It's a small town, but served me well by having a competent bicycle shop, a cheap and quiet motel, WiFi, a large grocery store, the things I needed for a bit of reclusion. The detour off the ACA maps was worthwhile.

    until later...



    (click to enlarge)

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  • Day 82: Off the Maps


















    I     had planned to stay on the Western Express route until Nevada, but a mechanical problem has me abandoning the route today to ride to the closest bicycle shop, located in Richfield, Utah, for the repair.

    A broken spoke, signified by a terse ping sound, as I rode through central Utah, stopped me in my tracks two days ago. I sat on the side of the road amid the desert flora and made the fix, easily replacing the broken spoke with one of the spares I brought from New York City, only to find that the spoke was the wrong size. A bike shop gave me spokes made for 700c wheels and not the 27-inch wheels the 520 is oufitted with. Next to a cactus on the roadside, I thought of Al Pacino as Richard Roma in Glencarry Glen Ross, saying "What you are hired to do, is to help us. Does that seem clear to you? To help us. Not to (expletive deleted) us up!"

    I replaced the broken spoke with one of the 700c spokes, which is too short, and as such remains too loose to do its job of keeping the wheel true. The wobble could be considered slight, yet apparent. I've gone 70 miles so far on the ill-fitting spoke, my front wheel wobbling out of true the whole way. Today on the 54-mile push from Bicknell to Richfield, Utah, I must ride again on the bad spoke. There is a bike shop in Richfield which today lies 52 miles away, where I must remedy the problem.

    From Richfield I'll be on Interstate 70, and pedal a half day to reach Interstate 15, to begin the fast run to Las Vegas along the freeway. Riding on an interstate is not the first choice of most touring bicyclists, in fact it's generally shunned, but at this point it represents the fastest and safest way to get to the coast, which time and budget demand. Fortunely, bicycles are permitted on interstates in Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California. I'll take parallel roads when I can. The highway won't be as peaceful or scenic as along the former route, but I've done my share of America's backroads and don't lament a dash for the end on the fast, and mostly flat and down hill interstates from Richfield, Utah, to Barstow, California.

    My mother Moya, on her way home from visiting me in Utah, reported that the entirety of I-15 along the aforementioned route is more or less bicycle friendly, with several sections of narrow shoulder at Virgin River Gorge, Arizona, representing the only challenging spots between Cedar City, Utah, and Las Vegas.

    I rode two times with a cyclist from New York City named Luke who I met in Telluride. A Marine Lieutenant, the 26-year-old from the Lower East Side is traversing the Western Express to San Francisco. We cranked out miles through Utah on two seperate occassions, once before the Mom and Jennifer visit, and once after. It was the stretch of miles before Torrey where I had just finished addressing the broken spoke problem that Luke appeared, coasting over a hill in my direction. It was good to have another cyclist with me, not only for drafting in the fierce headwinds we faced, but for company on those dual 60-mile rides.

    Since entering Utah, three months into this thing, the nature of the trek has changed. I pedal each day mechanically, robotically, aiming only for the end. What was once a trek of discovery, is now a challenge of endurance. Yet, that has not diminished the rich experience or intent, as I acknowldge fatigue as necessary and inevitable on such a journey. In these remote stretches of Utah a new perspective has dawned, in which the epic nature of this three-month endeavor is more apparant than ever. It is hard to fathom how far I've come, how many people I've met, how many places I've seen, how many miles I' ve pedaled, how many days I've been out here. Yet I still have 600 miles to go, from here in Bicknell, Utah, where I am writing from a motel room, to Los Angeles. There will of course be another few hundred miles to Santa Cruz, but to reach the ocean will mark the significant continental crossing I've endeavored for since May. All this resolves the day when the Pacific Ocean makes the horizon, and the 520 is across America.

    until later...

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  • Days 81 to 83: Desert Riding




















































    video

    Seeing my mother Moya and sister Jennifer arrive in Monticello, Utah to meet me was having the sun break through the clouds. It was a joy and relief to find familiarity amid the long and lonely last days of this trek, now through austere desert. They drove hours from California to participate in the tour, as they annointed me with their smiling faces and hugs. When the three of us were united there in the stark Utah remoteness I felt the bonds between us shine like sunlighted quartz in the desert.

    And so we camped, ate spaghetti Jennifer prepared at camp, made a bonfire, cycled through the desert, and made a day together that was, as Moya said, "one of the best days we ever had." After a night in tents, we hit the road. Moya drove ahead to select rest spots along the road as Jennifer and I sailed with a swiftness along the cactus and rock formation-lined road. Jen was a capable and strong rider, and kept up with me over a few hills without pause. With her on a shiny and sleek road bike, and me on the tired and battered 520, we rode alternately abreast and single file in the Utah wind, pointing out scenes along the way, chatting, pushing hard up hills, coasting fast down them. In the empty desert, Jennifer's presence was warm and radiant as we pedaled shoulder to shoulder along the road.

    This Utah landscape is extraordinary and extreme. Never have open roads, in full light of the day, felt so lonely. The canyons are lined with oddly shaped rock formations, rocks that seemed melted, cliff faces that seemed carved, color striations that seemed painted. Here marks the first landscape in America which yielded complete silence. When the wind ceased, and I stood surrounded by the desert, I heard for the first time in years, nothing. Through those canyons the silence was tainted only by the sound of my spinning chain and wheels. When my mother and sister left, the lonely expanse of the desert was never so windswept and empty.

    until later...

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  • Days 77 to 81: Utah



































    Hanksville, Utah, 6:30 a.m.

    I escaped Telluride days ago, and am now pushing through the desert vistas of Utah enroute to Las Vegas. In the interim there were several long and scenic rides, and a great visit from mother Moya and sister Jennifer to ride and camp in the desert. Jennifer and I pedaled 30 memorable miles, while Moya drove ahead to find suitable rest spots. It was fantastic.

    Currently in my tent at Red Rock Campground in Hanksville, today I aim for Torrey, Utah, 50 miles to the west, to camp again. I may leave the Western Express Route tomorrow at Torrey for a modified route, to be decided. I'll make a thorough update of these times and places, along with many photos, at first opportunity. This morning I'll pack and load, buy a gallon of water to haul along the day's route, take some gas station breakfast fare, and pedal one day closer to Arizona, Nevada, Las Vegas, and California.

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  • Days 75 and 76: To Hell You Ride







































































































    Telluride, Colorado.
    Monday morning and I'm in a coffee shop in this high-mountain town, sometimes called To-Hell-You-Ride, recovering from a freezing cold night in the tent and an elevation-induced headache that feels like a hangover of sorts. I rode here yesterday over a 9,000-foot mountain pass called Dallas Divide. Across the divide the landscape changed dramatically, from the aridness of desert to lush flora and tall Ponderosa pines. Today I'm committed to ride to Dolores, Colorado, after I make the summit of Lizard Head Pass, at 10,000 feet.

    At Dolores tonight I will camp again, and hopefully...
    (interruption)
    It's now late afternoon and I am still in Telluride, where I secured a camping spot for the next two nights. Things change fast out here on the road. Here is what happened: As I was writing that first paragraph, I stepped outside to check on the 520, which was leaned against a railing at the entrance of the coffeeshop. I retrieved a map from the handlebar bag, to check the day's route, and a man of about 55 or 60 approached with a question.
    "Where ya coming from?"

    I went into my spiel, honed of two month's practice, and found myself in a conversation with the man, who introduced himself as Jim, a physicist from Arizona. The white-haired, sandals and khaki shorts-clad man said he was also the owner of a Trek 520 on which he had toured across Europe and Colorado.
    "Great bike," Jim said.
    Jim was staying in Telluride with his two kids, hiking and soaking in the grandeur of the mountains. He eased my mind about Lizard Head Pass, which I will climb on Wednesday afternoon.
    "It's not that bad," he said. "You'll reach a crest where you think it's the top but it isnt, the summit comes a little further ahead, just so you know."
    As is typical for me on this tour, the conversation soon spiraled away into tangents, and soon Jim and I were discussing physics, faith, and life. About life, we took stabs at its meaning, cause and effect.
    "It's not about having a big house," noted Jim. "It's about the relationships you have inside that house."
    I explained to Jim how I recently glimpsed the real brevity of our exisitence here, and the new trajectory the realization had spurred for me. He described himself as a scientist, a researcher with a PhD who was open to the spiritual, who believed in God, who experienced the blessings of belief, and who could see past "the idea that we can figure out the universe. Listen, if the laws of physics govern the universe and its creation, we still need to understand how the laws of physics came into being."
    Jim had experienced an incredibly tough personal and professional challenge recently. A traumatic legal accusation of which he was innocent of yet which had held him a hostage to worry and angst for four years. It rocked him, hard. "Here I was, telling the truth, and I had to pay thousands of dollars, go through depositions, be accused of all manner of things, in order to prove my innocence," he confessed. He was eventually vindicated, but the experience seemed to have tinged this sensitive and affable soul, and I could see the reverberations of the trauma in his eyes as he relived it. "There is true evil in the world," he determined. "And America is sick, there is a sickness here that, well, it's everywhere."
    I agreed that there is evil and sickness in the world, and no doubt in America, but I offered that there is also nothing to fear.
    "I understand that," Jim said. "What is that chapter of the Bible? The one that outlines how senseless our pursuits are?"
    "Ecclesiastes," I said. "It's the Old Testament, and it assures us that 'Everything is Meaningless.'"
    "That's it," Jim said. "Let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I drove to visit a friend who lived a day's drive away in another state. I didn't call him to say I was coming, because it was something I often did. On the way, I decided to stop and visit a certain natural site I had always wanted to see, and I decided to take a hike there. Well, by coincidence, at that same time my friend, the one I was on my way to visit, called my wife to ask to speak to me, and my wife said 'Jim came to visit you.'"
    In panic, after several hours went by, and not knowing where Jim was, his wife and friend organized a search party to find him. "When I returned home everyone was shocked," he explained. "There were 30 people with backpacks ready to search the mountains for me. When I got home they were upset with me, but they were really relieved that I was alive and well. It showed me how much people cared about me. Let me tell you, after what I've been through professionally and personally, I can say that the only thing that matters in this life is the love you have for your family and friends, everything else is meaningless."
    By the time Jim and I had completed the wide arc of our exchange, it was too late in the day to make Dolores, and so I mulled staying in Telluride another night. I was loathe to do so because of the frigid night temperatures of this high elevation, a real bane for primitive camping. Having phone-related work to accomplish in the next two days, and with the better part of the day waned away in discussion with my new friend, I determined it wise to stay in Telluride where I could rely on cell phone service and plentiful WiFi connections to enable the work. And so I'm here for two more nights. Lizard Head Pass, Utah, and the rest of the west, can wait.

    To solve the problem of the frigid night temperatures I will surely face again, I went to a spot in town where there is a bin called the Free Box, where people drop off unwanted clothing, objects, supplies, materials and odd and ends for others to claim and use for free. I saw people perusing the bin when I arrived, and so I did the same. I needed to find something that would keep me warm when the temperature sinks to 45 degrees fahrenheit at night. Just under some childrens' clothing I found a big blanket. I took the blanket back to my campsite. I'll return the blanket to the Free Box when I pedal out of town on Wednesday afternoon.

    Telluride exists for fun. There is no other purpose to visit or stay here. In the mid 1800s it was a town of brothels. There were supposedely hundreds of prostitutes at work. These days the fun comes in tamer, but no less exhilerating, fashion. There is fun on the ski slopes, fun on the mountain biking and hiking trails, and fun in the town's bars, restaurants, cafes and gift shops.
    Named for tellurium, an metalloid found along gold and silver deposits which has been mined here since the 1800s, the 5,000-population town is trapped in a box canyon, with only one road going in and out. Towering rock-faced mountains surround the town, where ski trails are veined all throughout the Ponderosa pine-covered slopes. Gondolas and ski lifts cut along the mountain faces. The main thoroughfare through town, Colorado Avenue, is lined with high-end shops all catered to the outdoorsy, wealthy, hip, and fun-seeking tourists which flock here by the thousands throughout the seasons. The town is about ten blocks long and six blocks wide. Homes are quaint in a modern Switzerland mountain cottage type of style. Architects, it seems, contend to exhibit the most angular and daring designs possible. Many are ski-lodge condos featuring natural wood finishes and high-arched roofs intended to deflect the big snows the town faces in winter. The restaurants, all filled with retirees in designer dresses or polo shirts, pressed khaki pants, and shiny loafers, look plucked straight out of SoHo in Manhattan, or West Palm Beach, Florida. Interspersed are cafes and coffeeshops targeting the young ski, bike and hike crowd, where reggae music and the scent of espresso wafts. There is wealth here, both in monetary and experiential measure, all invested in the pursuit of leisure. Telluride serves that purpose singularly. I wander around on the 520 feeling at once right at home and completely out of my element.

    On the way into Telluride yesterday I met a man named Damon. A very friendly and charismatic man who gave me a ride the last few miles into town, showed me around, and offered to give me access as a guest to a luxury spa at a mountaintop hotel of which he is a member. A real estater, Damon has been in Telluride for several years. He was among the nicest people I've met thus far on the trek, and we found a fast and easy freindship between us. I took Damon up on his offer for the spa, and so today rode a gondola high up and over a slope to Mountain Village, a town at the summit of the box canyon that surrounds Telluride. I enjoyed lounging around in a robe, sitting in a steam room and a dry sauna, and pampering myself with lotions, aftershave and other luxury amenities of the place. I felt a bit silly in such undeserved luxury. This was as high as high luxury gets, and I was, of course, an imposter. But afterward, closely shaved, ultra clean, and smelling of eucalyptus aftershave, I descended back into town on the gondola and walked around like a tourist.

    Day 2:
    The blanket served me well last night. I slept thoroughly and warmly in the tent, wrapped in my fleece sleeping bag and Free Box blanket and wearing my hooded sweatshirt and pants. I awoke at 6 a.m. and slipped through the woods to the shower where I paid three dollars in quarters for a five minute hot shower. I coasted into town on the 520 with my breath fogging in the chilled air, where I'm now in a cafe called Baked in Telluride, swilling coffee and thinking ahead to the telephone interview I will conduct this afternoon as part of my work.

    The sun is angling in over the mountain peaks and starting to warm things up. Here with my coffee, I read the town newspaper, Telluride Daily Planet. There is a story on the front page today about a 74-year-old woman killed by a bear in nearby Ouray, Colorado. She reportedly had fed bears for years from her front porch, and last week one of them attacked and killed her. I took interest in this story since I am camping on the edge of the Rocky Mountain wilderness, not far away from Ouray, in my little tent, set up just feet from a stream called Bear Creek.

    This week I will meet up with my sister, Jennifer, and mother, Moya, in Utah. We will ride together, Jen on a borrowed road bike, and Mom in an SUV, for a week or so as I head west through Utah. They are accompanying me to show support for this trek, to honor our lost cousin Rich, and to share in the experience of travel and discovery out here on the road. I am honored they are taking time off from work to participate with me. We will have a good time.

    We are inching closer to a total of $1,500 raised thus far. It would seem at this point that the $4,000 goal seems unattainable since the trek is nearly two-thirds complete. It matters not, as I am astonished, grateful and impressed with the amount we've raised thus far.

    I have committed to the decision to abandon the Western Express route in favor of a shorter, faster, and safer route along Interstate 15 from Cedar City, Utah, to the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles. From Cedar City, the prescribed Western Express route would take me 800 miles on Route 50 through the Nevada desert, over eight steep mountain passes, and across several barren stretches of terrain without services for 100 miles or more. While the route along Interstate 15 would include only 400 miles to the Pacific Ocean, over much more horizontal terrain, with many more towns and services along the way. The 800-mile Route 50 option, with mountain climbs taken into consideration, would realistically take three weeks to complete, while the 400-mile I-15 option may be finished in ten days or so. This would mean a difference in expenses of hundreds of dollars. It would also be safer, as the remote stretches of Nevada present the threat of running out of water enroute. On I-15, with Las Vegas as a mid-way point, water and services will be more abundant.

    I will, perhaps, aim for the Santa Monica pier as my new finish line. Coasting out along that pier to the Pacific Ocean would be a fitting end to this trek.

    until later...

    more

  • Days 72 to 75: Rocky Mountain High



































































    Montrose, Colorado.
    Saturday Morning Post.
    It's Saturday morning, time for me to hit the road again. I am in western Colorado, having spent the night in Montrose and enroute to Telluride. The past few days through Colorado's High Country have been spectacular, in arid mountains, through winding canyons, and over high peaks of spruce and aspen.

    After having coasted into a massive valley here to Montrose, a valley so expansive as to nearly reach the Utah border to the west, today I must push back into the mountains toward the 10,000-foot Lizard Head Pass. I have traversed some high mountains in the last few days, including the epic climb up Monarch Pass, a challenge like none other thus far.

    I climbed Monarch Pass three days ago. Heading along the shoulder of Route 50 from Salida I started the push up the gradual grade that would take me from 7,000-ft elevation to more than 11,000 ft to cross the pass. The uphill incline was subtle at first, slowly climbing up into rounded hills of spruce and aspen. The higher I went the more difficult it was to breath. I was forced to pause every few hundred feet and hunch over the handlebars to get my breath. With five more miles to the summit, after having climbed for a steady 20 miles, it became grueling. The high-altitude air was cold, and even though it was an 85-degree fahrenheit August day down below, I had to don my hooded sweatshirt against the chilly breezes on the mountain. I stopped at a ski lodge just to sit on a chair for a few minutes, then pushed on. The last three miles I paused continually, to sit on the bank of the road and stare into space while I fought for breath, or once just to stretch out on my back on a gravel pull off. Ants crawled over me and I didn't even care. The final mile was even tougher. I felt like a Mount Everest climber who, with the summit in sight couldn't make it and had to turn back. Never before has a mile, a half mile, 300 yards seemed so far. The last half mile I dismounted and began to push. Rounding the final bend in the road and seeing the summit where a restaurant and gift shop were was a victorious moment. I idled around the shop for an hour, eating and resting. It was cold, and I wore my hood under my helmet as I prepared to coast the miles back down the other side of the pass. I didn't take any pictures, it was too demanding of a ride to bother, and the steady flow of traffic along the road, tractor trailers and 10-wheel RVs with little or no shoulder, made it dangerous enough without stopping to dismount. There was no sightseeing, only concentrating on the white line ahead of me as a succession of vehicles rushed beside. The ensuing coast down the other side was harrowing. I braked the entire way as I balanced precariously between the traffic and the narrow road shoulder. After coasting back into warmth, where breathing became a bit easier, I took a cabin at a campground for the night at the foot of the mountain.

    Are You Kidding Me?
    A man from Texas was in the cabin next door. He asked where it was that I came from on the 520. "From New York?" he asked. "You're kidding right? You mean you rode that bike all the way from New York? Get the hell outta here, you serious? You gotta be kidding me."

    The next two days took me back into desert climes. I made a 60-mile trek along Blue Mesa Lake, through Gunnison, over Cerra Summit, and finally to Montrose. Along the way I met a few characters, including a bicyclist named Doug, a 47-year-old free spirit with eyes as blue as the stratosphere. He said he sold everything he owned and hit the road on his bike, indefinitely. He spoke words that I too had uttered in the past two months, that people are "in too much of a hurry, working and paying bills, just look at them all," he said, pointing to the steady stream of traffic along Route 50. "I was an auto broker, with lots of money, but I just couldn't do it anymore. Now I live in my tent, biking where ever I want, working whenever I have to, and I finally feel like I'm living, no kidding." I gave him a Snickers bar. He shouted out as I pedaled away, "keep on pedaling brother!"

    I stopped into a store in a tiny place called Parlin, which consists of a few houses, a post office and a store, and conversed with the proprietor named Jack, a New Jersian wearing shoulder-length gray hair and cowboy attire who came to Colorado for reasons similar to Doug's, and mine. "I had one of the most successful insurance agencies in New Jersey, the biggest house, very successful, and I would take vacations here," Jack explained. "Over time the vacations became longer and longer, and I eventually didn't want to go back, I guess I was burned out a little, I came here and never went back. I'm not kidding when I say it's the best thing I have ever done."

    I found a brochure put out by the State of Colorado intended to educate bicyclists how to coexist with ranchers. It advised bicyclists to "remember to go single file through herds of cattle when encountered at cattle crossings," and to "keep in mind that bicycles may look like monsters to cattle, and make them stampede." (I'm not kidding). It seemed like those government messages in the 1950s telling kids to get under a desk in the event of a nuclear attack. On the cover was a bicyclist in helmet and lycra poring over a map with a cowboy rancher.

    On Thursday's ride, I consulted my map for the trek from Gunnison to Montrose. In between is a town named Cimmaron which was noted to have a restaurant. It was the halfway point of my trek from Gunnison to Montrose, and so I made that my mid-day goal. It was a long trek to Cimmaron, located in lonely and dry desert remoteness. When I arrived, and coasted up to the restaurant, a sign in the window said "closed." I pushed on to a tiny general store and bought some kippered herring. I asked an old woman at the store about the restaurant. "Are you kidding me? Ha! That's been closed for three or fours years," she said sharply, as if I should have known.

    Further down the road I stopped at a rest stop overlooking Blue Mesa Lake. I sat on a picnic table until a family in a truck pulled up.
    "Where ya coming from?" the man asked.
    "New York."
    "Holy shit!" he exclaimed. "You gotta be kidding me, you serious?"

    And then, a few miles down the road, when I stopped to drink some water, a postman in a postal truck pulled up and spoke to me. He was a man of about 70, and took interest in the 520 and its load.
    "Where ya coming from?" he asked.
    "New York."
    "You mean to tell me you came all this way on a bicycle?"
    "Yes."
    "You gotta be kidding me."

    High Country
    Colorado is full of people looking for refuge or escape. You see it as they pass by in their vehicles, RVs and campers outfitted with everything they need to get away from home for an extended amount of time. Vacationers and tourists, the roads here are clogged with them. There are also the out-in-left-field souls who've found some kind of freedom or release in the mountains. They are not unlike the untethered wanderers found in other such places, like the boardwalks of California, the beaches of Florida, the mountain towns along the Appalachain Trail, the streets of New York City, the coffee shops of Amsterdam, the tourist trails of South East Asia, or the surfs of Mexico. There are ski bums, who in the summer transform into mountain bike bums. I see the same type of hiker here as in the Appalachain Trail towns, such as Waynesboro, Virginia. People saddled with backpacks appearing sullen, bearded, scruffy, sometimes dreadlocked, self-righteously hermitted in some outdoorsy endeavor. But they are outnumbered by their counterpart, the RV vacationer with expensive 10-wheel camper and luxury gear, staking out patches of earth in campgrounds to lounge in folding chairs and grill burgers as kids play and radios blare. They are opposing ends of the same thread which winds through this outdoorsy paradise. Stores for camp outfitting, rock climbing and mountain biking are ubiquitious.

    I am one of these escapees, I suppose, sailing through on my fully loaded touring bicycle, scruffy from months on the road, looking for something. We have ended up here in Colorado on our expeditions, looking for a new perspective borne of mountain vistas; a cleaner and quieter day; a way to reconcile things.

    Death Valley
    I talked to my grandparents, Mom mom and Pop pop, on the phone last night. They have stayed in touch with me regularly on this trek, calling me on my cell phone and leaving messages, asking "how far have you made it." Pop pop advised me against trekking through Death Valley, as I was considering. He drove through there in 1959 in a car with no air conditioning.

    Earlier in the trek, Mom mom had advised me to say the Lord's Prayer and to recite Psalm 23 on challenging hills. I have held those prayers in mind and heart through New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas and the High Country of Colorado.
    Even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
    I will fear no evil, for you are with me,
    your rod and staff, they comfort me.

    Detour
    I am mulling a decision to abandon the prescribed route, the Western Express, which would take me along Route 50, called the "Loneliest Road in America," through the deserts of Nevada enroute to Reno and then into Sacramento, California. Instead, once I have trekked through the entirety of Utah, I will take Interstate 15 to Las Vegas, then skirt south of Death Valley enroute to Bakersfield, California. From there I'll reach the Pacific Ocean to ride Highway One north through Big Sur, Monterey, and into Santa Cruz. The long-spoken-of goal of San Francisco would be no longer, and instead I would see Las Vegas, and avoid climbing the Sierra Nevada range to cut directly to the Pacific Ocean. After having followed this prescribed route for 2,500 miles I long to make my own path.

    Post Saturday Morning
    I am still in Montrose. It is Saturday afternoon now. It is long after I should have left. It's a coffee shop. I must pedal to Ridgway today, since Telluride has now become too far to make at this hour. Or maybe I won't go anywhere. I'm stuck here, with the 520 in repose outside, as I stare into the soft space of a wasted day. I need a break. Maybe I will stay here another night. I can't decide, but I loathe another day of climbing to some rarified summit. As you can tell from today's post I am drifting in the current this day. Ten weeks on the road, pedaling through all manner of terrain and weather, and sometimes I just have to stop and let the fluence of the hours take me where they will. Telluride, 60 miles away. Not today.

    until later...

    more

  • Days 70 and 71: New Elevations









































































































    Salida, Colorado.
    Today I pushed high and deep into the Rocky Mountains. Tomorrow I climb to Monarch Pass, at nearly 12,000 ft to cross the Sawatch Range and the continental divide. Tonight I am at 7,000 feet, high enough to feel shortness of breath, here in a motel in Salida, Colorado, resting from a 60-mile ride through red-rock canyons along Route 50 from Canyon City.

    The ride provided spectacular scenery which went on for miles. Jagged and rocky hills, sheer cliffs of striated rock face, the whole scene dotted sparsely with scrub pine and cactus, and all converged around the rushing white water of the Arkansas River which wanders through it. Otherworldly, arid, nearly barren, the rocky scenes were strangely evocative.

    Exotic except for the traffic on Route 50, as cars and trucks buzzed me all day in a never-ending stream every bit as constant as the river. The beautiful landscape is like a museum, where awed before these ancient natural forms we can only ask "what was this like when it was still wild?" In the river were dozens of rafts rushing over the white water. Rafters were clad in life vests and helmets. Guides steered with a paddle at the rear of the craft, while the excited tourists made sounds not unlike those heard on an amusement park ride. There were whole trains of the rafts at times floating in between rocky banks no wider than a city street. The Arkansas River and its gentle fluent is the gem of this dry landscape, a gleaming anomoly and paradox in a land of sun-baked thirst. In the parched air nearly devoid of scent, save for wafts of heated pine pitch, I could smell the water in the same way one catches the scent of a swimming pool on a summer day.

    I kept looking along the cliffs for bighorn sheep but never saw any. In fact, I didn't see any wildlife the entire day. Instead my mind swam off in tangents of association the desert scenes evoked. There were gulches and cactus scenes where Clint Eastwood or John Wayne would have sneaked around or had shootouts or had campfires to cook up beans and bacon.

    There were some long descents. I coasted downhill once for several miles. These long downhill rides are not as easy as they would seem. A hard grip on the brakes has to be maintained to avoid reaching dangerously high speeds. The hands get sorely fatigued during a big descent while gripping the brake levers. Braking also must be done strategically. As the brake pad clenches the rim it heats up, causing the aluminum rims to potentially weaken and fail. An ugly crash could ensue should a rim fall apart during a high-speed descent. Braking on each wheel must therefore be alternated, front to back, to allow each rim to cool.

    On the roadsides were RV campgrounds, gift shops, fishing supply stores, small motels, rock and crystal shops, and state park picnic and fishing areas. Signs along the way sang out Rafting, Mountain Climbing, Gems, Gold Panning, Motel, Cabins, Bunkhouse, Bait and Tackle, and one for a tour of the suspension bridge that spans the 50-feet-wide, 1,250-feet-deep Royal Gorge which said Goodbye Earth, Hello Sky. There was also much commercial traffic on Route 50, tractor trailers, which rumbled along the narrow-shouldered road unceasingly, making me focus on balance and position on the road instead of loosely gawking at the scenes. I rode from Canyon City through place names of Buckskin Joe, Royal Gorge, Echo, Texas Creek, Cotopaxi, Coaldale, Vallie, Howard, and Wellsville. From people along the way I garnered various exclamations about the distance I have traveled. At Texas Creek I took lunch at a small cafe in a canyon, where several people asked about my trek. When I told them I came from New York City one man said "holy!" At Cotopaxi a motorist at a store said "that's amazing!" At a general store in Howard a woman said "that's insane!" At the motel I took tonight the receptionist said "wow!"

    Throughout the day the route climbed nearly 3,000 feet, so gradual as to be imperceptible. To climb 3,000 feet in the Appalachains would have been epic, monumental, but here the huge climb was merely an easy step enroute to the 14,000 foot heights the rocky giants reach. Still, the climb was felt by the end of the day. I had to push on hard at the end, into a headwind which had me in low gear even on downhill grades. After two months of bicycling I am honing the long-haul day, and to pump out 60 miles is all in a day's work.

    The weather here changes on a dime. Yesterday on the push from Pueblo to Canyon City I rode headlong into an approaching rain storm. I tried to outrace it, but when bristles of lightning began to hit nearby I stopped and hitchhiked for a ride. A man in a truck, named Mike, picked me up and took me the final miles to town as a torrent of rain and thunder exploded.

    So far I have not seen the snow-capped peaks. These giants of 10,000 feet don't seem as impressive when I myself am viewing them from 7,000 feet. Here on their shoulders the rocky peaks appear as if no larger than the Blue Ridges of Virginia. But the extremeness of the environment is apparent, undeniable, and I do struggle with some shortness of breath in the rarified air. The subtle lack of oxygen which followed me through the arid canyons today felt like extra weight was being hauled.
    .

    until later...

    more

  • Days 68 and 69: At the Foot of the Rockies














































































































































































































































































































    Pueblo, Colorado.
    I'm cloistered away from the road in the peace of a luxury hotel provided as a gift, for two nights, by Bear. He offered the room through the use of his accrued points at the chain, a reservation stipulated only for family members of the point holder, which Bear and I deemed the term "brother" would suffice, and it did. "I consider you a brother anyway," Bear had written to me, and the hotel receptionist remarked "very kind of your brother to do this for you." Indeed.

    This is the desert. The dry air is calming and comfortable. Cowboys, Latinos, cattlemen and outdoor folk congregate as Coloradans in this high arid valley crouched beneath the Rocky Mountains on guard to the west, blue peaks making an elevated and jagged horizon.

    I made it here today after an easy 50-mile ride from Ordway, where I spent a night at the Hotel Ordway, a 105-year old relic of the past in a small Coloradan town of farmers and cattlemen. At the hotel I was shown my room by the proprietor, a woman who said the place was run by her family for decades. She said a ghost named Sebastian inhabited the historic building. Following her up the long staircase to my room, a clean room outfitted with WiFi, old furniture and sink but no television or air conditioner, the old feel of the hotel made me believe in the haunt. I stowed the 520 (aka Old Blue) in a garage outside then took a shower down the hall and returned to my room to prepare for dinner. As I was dressing, suddenly the door shook violently for a moment and I believed Sebastian had revealed his presence. I was taken aback, and even said the Lord's Prayer under my breath, but then acquiesed, allowing the ghost his salutation and then going about my business in peace, with Sebastian apparently there in the room with me, I figured. I'm too tired to be afraid of you ghost, so do what you will, I conceded.

    I headed out to explore the main street, another broad-thoroughfared stretch of stores, and found my way into the Bits and Spurs restaurant where I ordered a Spur Burger, consisting of two beef patties over toast topped with hot green chili. It was delicious, and I ate while examining the displays of local cattle ranch brands which line the walls of the place.

    A man named Rob whom I had met at first arrival in the town, who waved me down and launched into the typical litany of questions: Where are you coming from? Where are you going? How many days? etc., explained a situation the small town was afflicted of since 1980 when town officials sold off water rights of the Arkansas River to larger towns in the north. Previously a valley lush with crops of sugar beets, orchards, wheat and hay, the town and its valley were now arid and barren as Denver and Colorado Springs drink up the irrigation water Ordway gave away its right to 30 years ago. "This used to be a thriving town, we had everything, and it all revolved around our crops, but now we have no water and the town is dying, slowly," Rob said. "We are the poster boy for what not do to."
    The town paper, a small 10-page weekly which I read as I ate my Spur Burger, featured the headline in its most recent issue "Ordway Dealt Blow over Water Contract Suit." The story explained an attempt by current town officials to withdraw from the contract signed in 1980 that gave away the town's water rights. A judge denied the complaint.
    "I remember whenthere were orchards here, that's long gone," said a waitress at the restaurant. "The town up the road called Sugar City got its name because it used to be a center for sugar beet production, but now there are no sugar beet crops grown there at all." The town of Sugar City, which I passed through on my ride from Eads, was nearly a ghost town, holding on to a post office and a cafe and not much more, its very name is a cruel reminder. "Everyone's moving away," said the waitress in Ordway. "Next it will be our school to disappear, it's too bad."

    After dinner, haunted now not only by Sebastian, but by the town's sad story and the after effects of stomach-burning green chili, I ambled over to the Columbine Saloon across the street. The waitress had warned "I wouldn't go into that place, gets rowdy in there." Just the kind of place I was looking for.
    I sat amid the locals and downed a beer as a succession of rock songs reverberated from a jukebox. I heard a few voices acknowledge my presence.
    "Who's the new guy?"
    "No idea but tell him he gets a free beer for happy hour, he just made it in time."
    The bartender asked "just passing through?"
    I told him about the trek. And he said "well welcome to Ordway man, we're just a bunch of poor and desperate people trying to have a good time," he said. So are we all, I thought. I left the joint and walked the two blocks back to the hotel. Upstairs, as I shut my door, I turned around only to have it shake violently again. Sebastian? Is it you? I stepped toward the door and my foot dislodged a loose floorboard. I tested it and found that when I put my weight on it just right it made the door shake. This room was haunted, not by a spirit, but by old floor boards.

    In the morning I eagerly headed west to view the peaks I had been promised would come into view. It was a long and straight stretch of road that led out of the town, through clusters of homes, and eventually into empty and remote desert scenes. I enjoyed finding myself surrounded by desert, and for the first time on the trek felt some sense of exotic excitement after having spent two months traversing familiar and tame agrarain scenes of the east. I felt I finally had shaken the last vestiges of the east and the midwest, and was now firmly west. I pedaled past prairie dogs and pronghorn antelope. This was more like Mexico than Kansas, as the road led me through scenese of cacti flora and arid hills. By the time I reached a town called Boone, about 20 miles east of Pueblo, the Rocky Mountains came into view. Not white and rocky granite peaks, but blue humps not unlike the Appalachians, only taller and more ominous against the sky.

    I stopped at a store in Boone and had a meal of convenience store fare. The man behind the counter looked like a character in a western movie, clad in cowboy boots and wrangler jeans, wearing a handkercheif around his neck and sporting an exaggerated mustache. He was not unlike Yosemite Sam. I sat oustide at a table, feeling relaxed in the dry air and cool breeze, and called Stephen, Rich's younger brother. We made small talk of the trek's progress and then talked about Rich. It was good for me to speak his name again, refocusing the trek's impetus and reminding me why I had come 2,500 miles on a bicycle to buy a frozen burrito from Yosemite Sam.

    We talked about the loss until I lost the cell phone signal halfway through our conversation and the line went dead. I went on my way, doing what I always do, pedaling west. The same desert scenes flicked by. I was sad. After a few miles I entered onto a highway, the final leg toward Pueblo. A few cars honked horns in salutation to me, as they usually do on the highways, and I gave each one, as I always do, a sharp Army salute with my right hand rigid and elbow up at a hard right angle, as I was taught. I felt as if those honking horns were saying "hey buddy, we are with you." And so I saluted them, and felt something which could have been profound sadness or joy, I couldn't tell the difference. Suddenly I felt, after longing lately for the finish, afraid for the end of the pedaling. What will I do when there is no more west to pedal into? Who will honk for me then? I wish I could pedal all the way to China.

    Tomorrow is a rest day. I'll explore Pueblo. Upcoming are ten days of cycling through the high elevation of the Rockies. This day marks the end of my time on the TransAmerica route which started in Yorktown, Virginia, so long ago. The next day's ride I begin the route called the Western Express, which climbs over several mountain passes and heads into the dry and strange environment of Utah. I'll climb up beyond 11,ooo at Monarch Pass, then again to 10,000 feet at Lizard Head Pass. There is the danger of altitude sickness, and the challenge of big climbs. The Western Express will highlight the trek. I am fully ready.

    Tonight I went down to the bar here in the hotel. I thought I could indulge again in my new hobby of drinking a beer before bed. Maybe a nice cold Heineken before returning to my room to watch reruns of M.A.S.H. I stepped into the bar and was slammed by pounding rap music. The bar was clustered with middle-aged hotel guests, men, hanging there with beers in their fists in the dim light. Women were hooting and hollering. Balloons were strung about the room. One woman wore a tiara, stumbling drunk. A male stripper in his underwear undulated around weirdly before them. A DJ sat behind a turntable, shouting out "how's everybody doing out there?" I stood there for a moment looking at the scene, then turned and left. Outside, the arid air felt calm, and was easy to inhale. The strip of fastfood neon went on for miles and miles in the night before me. Signs for McDonalds, Boston Market, Del Taco, Burger King, Subway, and Taco Bell hung suspended up in the dark sky. Pueblo's highways hummed, a massive chorus of motors and wheels, an ongoing baritone of din, the drone of America which just never seems to rest.

    until later...

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  • Day 67: High Plains Drifter























    Eads, Colorado.

    "Sometimes you give and sometimes you receive; and sometimes it's hard to know the difference." ~ Bear

    I rolled tonight into Eads, Colorado, a rough little crossroads on the arid and windswept High Plains, feeling just like a road-weary cowboy ambling into town on a horse after long miles on the dusty western trail. This is the American west.

    Colorado, after a week of sailing along through the agrarian prairie, is a whole new world. I left the fields of wheat and dead-level flatness dramatically behind when I made the Colorado border, as new scenes of semi-arid desert flora and undulated and duned expanses suddenly exploded before me. These are the scenes where movie Westerns were set, where tumbleweed and wagon trains were icons of the American west, where cowboys and gunslingers roamed. And still do, in fact, only now in trucks and without the six shooters. As such I can't shake the feeling that I am one of them, as is anyone who rides into this place, a drifter on the plains who just skulked into town on a tired steed, looking for grub, a bath and a bed.

    I've climbed and climbed, ever so gradually, for two weeks. Always on flat ground but with a horizon that is always just above eye level. The upward push culminates here, nearly resolves, into a high plateau which is evident not in a vista but in the lack of it, as the horizon pauses to catch its breath. It is only a sense of resolution, a feeling of being up against the ceiling of the sky, like standing on a chair with your head up in the rafters, it just feels different than the air down below. We're not in Kansas anymore, and certainly not New York. Here there is a sense of peril that can never exist in agrarian plains to the east, absolutely because of what looms just ahead. It is a presense so foreboding, unyeilding and massive as to instill fear just knowing they are near: The Rocky Mountains. They are just over that horizon. Mutely awaiting me in the heights of rarified air. Seperating me from my destination.

    I also left the flat-lined spirit of the tour back there in doldrumed prairie. After pedaling for a few days with other cyclists, always a psuedo experience of sorts, like peering out a window only to find it's merely a mirror, I found myself alone once again as accompanying cyclists sped ahead. I stayed to find solo peace at a table in a gas station just after leaving Kansas. I sat there eating a sandwich of turkey, beef, pickles, cucumber, olives and cheese, when a young man of about 18 years of age in billed cap and farming attire spoke to me from across the room.
    "From New York," I answered.
    "San Fran."
    "67 days."
    "Probably make it in another month or so."
    I explained to the man, Daniel, a farmhand eating his lunch at the gas station, about the trek's impetus and the fundraising effort for American Brain Tumor Association. I queried him about this land, and learned about the nuances of raising wheat and millet, and hunting mule deer and pronghorn antelope.
    When it was time for him to leave, he approached and handed me a $20 bill.
    "It's not much, but I had a friend die last year from brain cancer, so..." he said, almost shyly, but so strong and right in his response as to seem mature beyond his years.
    "She was 18, her name was Olivia," Daniel said. "It happened real fast."
    It was then, solo again in the gas station, that I knew that the mission, the business, of the Life's Too Short Tour was back in focus, as sharp and vital as it was back in New Jersey, Virginia, or Missouri.
    I gave Daniel the tour card.
    "Tell Olivia's family what you did, they need to know," I said.
    "I will," Daniel said.

    Bear, who hosted me a night of the trek while passing through eastern shore of Virginia two months ago, and has since become a friend of ours here, called while I was in that same gas station, informing that he took it upon himself to give me two nights at a Clarion Hotel in Pueblo, to be enjoyed as a rest day Friday and Saturday. I could launch into a paragraph of gratitude about it, but Bear says "thanks" is enough. Thanks, Bear.

    Then I got a call from Jennifer, my sister, who lives in Santa Cruz, California. Jennifer will join me for a leg of the trip through Utah and Nevada. She will pedal along with me. My mother Moya, who lives in the mountains outside of Santa Cruz, will follow in Jen's truck. This plan will happen in about two weeks. We will ride together for a week or more.

    I ventured into a place at the edge of Eads called Mill House Saloon. A cowboy hat-clad proprietor served a draft and I sat back and listened to the patrons voice their culture over Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Farmers, most of them, their banter centered on crops and weather.
    "I got 2,900 acres and nearly got 47 bushels per acre."
    "If I could get 40 or more on my wheat over by the Kansas line, you know I got 1,000 acres over there, I'd crap apples and eat 'em."
    "Yeah well lookie there, weather report, rain every day comin' up."
    The farmers and cowboys in the saloon said I'm only a day away from seeing the Rockies rise. Pike's Peak will be dead west, Twin Peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Range will appear southwest.

    until later...

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  • Days 64 to 66: Colorado Ahead






    Kansas.
    I'm at the library in Scott City, Kansas, after a half-day's ride toward the border in flat prairieland surrounded by fields of wheat. The last few days have included some of my longest rides yet: 65 miles, 70 miles, 80 miles, 82 miles, and yesterday's 94-mile push. Today I face another 60-mile ride to make camp in Tribune, Kansas, just a few miles from the Colorado border. I am eager to put Kansas behind, even though it has provided the easiest riding yet. I want only to see the Rocky Mountains edge up over the horizon.

    I camped last night in Dighton, Kansas. It was another one of the Sunflower state's windswept and tired towns, a cluster of small store fronts, motels and gas stations all clustered around an intersection of roads. I pitched my tent in the town park, accompanied by two biking duos also headed west: Ben and Liz from Connecticut, and Eric and Amaya from France. I am eyeing motels, planning soon to take a room for a proper rest. Today's route takes me along Route 96 through mostly empty prairie, and more near-ghost towns.

    Crossing the Colorado border will be a significant milestone. I'll cross into Mountain Time and officially be in the American west. The Rocky Mountains loom. But although the journey up and over the Rockies will take me to elevations of more than 14,000 feet, the climbs are gradual and considerably less physically demanding than the steep grades I traversed in the east.

    My body is holding up fine and my legs feel stronger than ever. The only weak spot is my left hand, which is losing gripping strength each day. I can no longer open a bottle of Gatorade because of the condition, an apparent result of the constant handlebar grip I've maintained for two months. Mentally, I've gone through some changes. I'm gradually losing focus on the finer nuances of the trek, looking too far ahead each day, to the next border, to California, to the Pacific Ocean, and so find myself reluctant to be in the moment. The patch of road I'm on at any given moment is merely a means to an end, rather than the end in itself it was earlier in the tour. In short, I'm growing weary and am increasingly eager to be nearer to the finish line. I'm not surprised at this subtle shift in perspective, and instead merely embrace it as inevitable, the unavoidable result of 66 days of primitive living and grueling pedaling. I long for the motel stays, a luxury limited by my budget, respites necessary to regain the ease and excitement of the tour which too easily becomes a drudgery of pedaling revolutions and unending stretches of road. This is not sightseeing, this is a hard-won push west, mile by mile, town by town, day after day.
    Colorado might change things. Witnessing the granite peaks of the Rockies piercing the horizon may spark a new excitement.

    And with that, a few words dashed out between rounds of pedaling through an ever-changing procession of scenes, like the continent is a conveyor under my wheels to slowly unveil, grudgingly and massively slow, the west, I must resume the push. Back on the road.

    until later...

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  • Day 63: A Pause in the Prairie
    Hutchison, Kansas.
    A rest day in Hutchinson, Kansas. I'm staying in the cyclists hostel at Zion Lutheran Church. It's free. There is a shower, kitchen and bed in the church basement. Last night I shared the quarters with a Seattle couple, Frank and Allison, both retired teachers in their late 60s who are making the TransAm bike trek eastbound. I enjoyed conversing with them last night and this morning and hope to remain in contact with this nice couple in the future.

    I made a radical change today. I made the decision to lighten the load significantly, stripping the 520 of the front panniers and rack, and mailing home about 15 pounds of gear that I have not used in the two months I've been on the road. Included are several items of clothing, my tarp, and a few miscellanous items. I estimate it makes the load about 15 pounds lighter which should make a real difference going forward. The 52o (aka Old Blue) now looks svelte and streamlined.

    Hutchinson is a town of about 40,000 population, and as such offers plenty of amenities for a rest day. I'll spend the night in the church reading, and in the morning head out again. Tomorrow I'll attempt to reach Larned, a 71-mile ride.

    Just as I was lamenting the lack of writing opportunities an offer to do two stories for a magazine came in yesterday. I accepted them, and have one month to produce two 900-word articles. This means I'll have to carve out time along the route to do the work, which involves making a few phone calls and then doing the writing. This greatly helps the budget situation.

    My friend Tim, an editor I work with, inquired about the books I'm reading while out here on the road. I have been reading two books lately: Over the Hills by David Lamb, and Masked Rider by Neil Peart. Both are travelogues of long-distance bicycle tours. Lamb, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, set off on a Trek 520 to bicycle across the United States in 1996. It was interesting to read about his travels and travails. Many of his observations were strikingly similar to my own. It was a decent read. Peart, the drummer for the rock band Rush, chronicles the bicycle trip he undertook as part of a guided tour of Western Africa in 1988 in Masked Rider. Peart's main focus is on his riding partners, and on the nuances of his encounters with Africans. He never reveals the brand of bike he rode, but judging from the pictures it appears he too may have ridden a Trek 520. Peart is the lyricist for Rush, and as such is no stranger to the written word, but Lamb is a seasoned writer who pulls off the account of his two-month trek in a well-balanced and expertly crafted book. I have enjoyed them both, if only because of the topic.

    until later...

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  • Days 61 and 62: Road Runner




































































































    Chanute, Toronto, Eureka.
    Sixty five miles through prairie, gracefully hilled grassland, the Flint Hills, the Bluestem Prairie, a region of Kansas considered to be the largest tall grass prairie land in the world. I pedaled along past pastures of cattle, once stirring up a stampede as the 520 hummed by. I often shout out to the animals I pass. They turn their heads, horse or cow, and stare.

    Sometime after Chanute someone in a passing truck tossed a bottle at me. As the truck approached I saw the hand of the passenger reach out from the window with the bottle, and when he flung it at my head at high speed I ducked it. I can't fathom the bottle thrower's motive, but I can duck.

    These Kansas towns appear as relics of the past, nearly all of them. It's like they were frozen in 1960, maybe even earlier, never to evolve or grow beyond that year. The downtowns are near-ghost towns, with main street promenades all boarded up, dusty and sleepy. In time they will disappear completely.

    Day 62: Eureka, Rosalia, Cassoday, Newton.
    80 miles of prairie I pedaled and a string of Kansas towns I put behind. I'm really trying to put some distance on here in flat Kansas. I made the 40 miles from Eureka to Cassoday in a strong headwind and was fairly tired when I arrived. Finding the tiny town without anything of interest or amenity, I pondered pushing forward another 40 miles along a route which the map warns has no services. I called Elisa, and said "it's a gamble, there isn't even a place to get a Gatorade between here and there." In the end, I decided to go for it, and lit off toward the west once more. About 30 miles into the second leg, past fields of grass and pasture and under a searing sun, a man mowing his lawn called out to me as I passed by.
    "Would you like a Gatorade?"
    .
    I took the man up on it and coasted into the driveway of his home, remote in the windswept Kansas prairie. A big, gregarious man in overalls and wire-rimmed glasses, he introduced himself as Dave. As I gulped the Gatorade he revealed that he too raises funds for cancer treatment, with a music festival called String Break which he holds each spring on his property, hosting several bands, for four years now.

    I saw a road runner at one point on the ride; perched on a fence post; tall and long-legged. It got me thinking of the theme song for the cartoon The Road Runner; seeing parallels in the lyrics to my own travails on the tour; I shouted the song to a herd of startled cows.

    If you're on the highway and Road Runner goes beep beep.
    Just step aside or might end up in a heap.
    Road Runner, Road Runner runs on the road all day.
    Even the coyote can't make him change his ways.

    Road Runner, the coyote's after you.
    Road Runner, if he catches you you're through.
    Road Runner, the coyote's after you.
    Road Runner, if he catches you you're through.

    That coyote is really a crazy clown,
    When will he learn he can never mow him down?
    Poor little Road Runner never bothers anyone,
    Just runnin' down the road's his idea of having fun.

    I made it to Newton drained and sore. Took a meal at a chinese buffet and a found a room at a cheap motel. The budget is dwindling day by day, I hope I can stretch it all the way to California, it isn't going to be easy. I awoke this morning to decide I'll make a short day, 35 miles, in order to avail myself of free accomodation at Zion Lutheran Church bike hostel in Hutchinson. That will set me up for a long push toward Larned tomorrow, and put me closer to the Kansas border. Colorado is in my sights. I am dreaming each day of the Pacific Ocean.

    until later...

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  • Days 60 and 61: 2,000 Miles Down
    Kansas Prairie


    Oil wells of the plains


    The Lutheran church where I spent a night

    Chanute.
    This is Chanute, Kansas, my third night in the state after sleeping last night at a Lutheran Church which offers space to cross-country bicyclists. I had the church to myself. I cooked some hamburger and green beans, then retired to a couch where I read a book until I fell asleep. A thunderstorm raged throughout the night. I had strangely vivid and unsettling dreams, then awoke to pedal a fairly short day to this motel here in Chanute.
    It is flat ground mostly, although each mile is a gradual climb up unto the high plains that are central Kansas. Winds were coming at me from the side, even slightly from behind at times, and so headwinds were not an obstacle. But when I turned north for a four-mile portion of the ride the headwinds hit me hard, slowing me to a crawl.

    Tomorrow I want to put a high-mileage day in after three days of short treks. I have conceded three days now to short rides, unwilling to push hard and far, the result of a certain malaise that has set in just recently.
    Other tourers speak of a malaise that can set in along this phase of the transcontinental trek. Know I now what they mean. Kansas, for as great as the people seem to be, is mostly featureless and boring. There are no vistas to await, no photos opportunities to expect, and a lack of towns to find interest in. It is well known among TransAm tourers that this mid-way point is bleak, and most challenging. The beginning third of the trek, no matter from which coast, is filled with excitement and anticipation, while the final third of the trek is highlighted each day by the approaching finish line. But the middle third, here in the prairie, are doldrums. I must fight through these doldrums to the west, where new and spectacular scenery awaits, and assuredly a new perspective will dawn. I long for the coast, where the ocean and sun evoke a spirit of freedom for me, while here in the middle of the continent I only feel trapped, trapped by miles and miles and miles of land.
    But what helps sustain my mood are encouraging words from those I have met along the way. The fire chief in Farmington, Missouri, where I spent two nights a couple of weeks ago, commented on this blog, saying:


    "The Farmington Fire Department (Missouri) are keeping up with your travels. Stay safe and keep riding for your cause, you are doing a great thing to honor your cousin, your family and yourself." Chief Todd Mecey


    The wind on the prairie is a different kind of wind. It is like the wind that comes off the ocean, with a momentum to it that carries with it all the miles it has traveled. The wind here in Kansas feels like it has come from a long way away, across the continent. It is a large wind, like a tidal wave, which makes you feel small when it hits you and knocks you off course. Eastbounders who I've met along the route have complained about the Kansas headwinds, expressing relief to be facing the hills and mountains as they head east toward the Appalachian. Having pushed through some prairie headwinds I can concur, up to a point. A headwind is tough to pedal through, but it is nothing compared to the grades of the Appalachians. Pedaling into a headwind is stifling, and reduces speed drastically, but it does not demand the same level of sheer physical exertion as climbing hill after hill. In the mountains the bicycle is in terrain it simply isn't made for, on inclines that make pedaling a painful experience. Not so in the headwinds of the prairie, where slow and steady pedaling is tedious, but not physically demanding. I can only say that I am happy to be finished with the mountains of the east, and happy to only have wind to contend with.

    Today I will attempt a 70-mile ride, to Eureka, where free camping is offered in the town park. Alternatively, I may pull up short and camp at Toronto, which is 50 miles away. I am growing weary of the camping. I long for the day when I can retire the tent and the thin sleeping pad. I believe that I'll find excitement again in the scenery of the west. But there is nothing that will excite me more than the sign that says "Welcome to California." I have ridden nearly 2,000 miles thus far, and there is about 1,600 miles to go. I am officially two-thirds into the trek, even though geographically I am in the exact middle of the continent. I figure I can arrive at the Pacific Ocean in about five weeks. At 1,600 miles, if I bike 50 miles per day, I will finish the trek in 32 days, not including a few rest days. I look forward fiercely to finishing.

    Today is Rich's birthday. It is a day that the family will recognize the loss. I pray that, instead of sorrow on this significant day, we can instead find the joy of life as the sun gives another beautiful and precious day for us to behold and partake in.

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  • Days 58 and 59: Prairie Terrapin


























    Missouri, Kansas.
    In the past three days I''ve stayed at towns in Missouri including Springfield, Ash Grove, and Golden City. Today, Sunday, I finally made it to Kansas, to work on this blog here at a McDonalds in Pittsburg.
    Three days ago, I took a detour from the TransAm route to pedal quickly along Interstate 44, from Marshfiel to Springfield, a Missouri city of about 125,000 where I was hosted in another round of hospitality offered by Dustie, Jonah and Moner. Speeding down the Interstate for 22 miles was a new experience. Most states don't permit bicycles on Interstates, but Missouri does, and so on the wide shoulder and smooth surface of the four lane highway I rocketed the 22 miles in about one hour. The rush of air in the wake of tractor trailers pulled me and the 520 along in the vacuum.
    I made it to Springfield, did my laundry, and found my way downtown where I relaxed in the citified environment of coffee shops and bars. Springfield is a nice town, gentrified to the hilt, a college town that is rich with culture. It was an oasis after weeks in the mountains. Sitting around in cafes in Springfield was almost like being home in Manhattan. I enjoyed the city experience for a day. I found a guitar shop and played guitar for a while, ate dinner, and found an Internet cafe to check my email. Several people struck up conversations with me. I enjoyed Missouri and its people and places more than any place along the trek thus far, and Springfield was an unexpected highlight. After perusing the city I spent the night on a spare bed at the hosts home after talking into the wee hours of the night.
    The next morning I pedaled north, partly along a gravel trail made from an abandoned railroad track, back to the TransAm trail, and found accomodation after a 40-mile ride at Ash Grove. This was a ghost town. Store fronts along a main street were empty and boarded up, looking like ruins. The town's outskirts were more bustling, with a restaurant and convenience store, a library and a park. The relic of the downtown, the vestiges of a railroad economy apparently faded over the years, mutely told a tale of demise that appears to have settled upon the main street over the past 20 years. I asked a couple people what caused the exodus from Ash Grove, and they attributed it to the shifting economy and culture of the times, in which small-town main streets have been exchanged for Wal-Marts and malls. This dymanic has left many downtowns across America as relics, and I have seen my share of them from Virginia to Kansas.
    All across Missouri exist these relics and roadside ruins. Stores that appeared to once be thriving, at an intersection or railroad stop or some other strategic location, sit idle and decrepit and in the process of being overtaken by encroaching vegetation. The relic downtowns and stores look like aged buildings from the 1950s or 1960s, faded and forgotten Mayberrys.
    I found the Ash Grove police and informed of my intent to camp in the town park. As I was pitching my tent, a woman in a wheelchair approached along a walkway in the park and inquired about my destination. She said she visits all the bicyclists who camp in the park. This is the part of TransAm culture that surprises me each time I encounter it, individuals along the route who embrace and engage the cyclists arriving for one-night stays in their town, always from far-flung locales. I took a nap shortly after making camp, and when I awoke there was a jug of water and a cup of ice placed on a picnic table near my tent. There was a note taped to the jug, it was handwritten, from the woman in the wheelchair who spoke to me earlier. The note said "Welcome to Ash Grove, make sure you stop at Cooky's Cafe in Golden City for pie on your way west."
    At a general store at a main intersection of the town, the store keeper gave me a post card that said Ash Grove...Local Biker Hangout, and had a picture of a bicyclist hung upside down from his ankles while two locals with guns posed with the quarry. I found it to be hilarious and laughed aloud in the store. The storekeeper, a gray-haired man who was probably in his prime right around the same time the town was, said to a woman in the back of the store "See Lucy, he likes my card!" He had apparently staged the photo using TransAm bicyclists as models. This is the kind of TransAm culture unique to the tiny towns along this route.
    I sailed 45 miles over mostly flat road to Golden City to camp out in the town park there and partake in another bit of TransAm culture: Cooky's pies. I took the advice of the woman who left the note at Ash Grove and visited Cooky's Cafe on Main Street in Golden City. The town was another near-ghost town, with one storefront after another closed and boarded up. It looked like at any moment a tuft of tumble weed would roll across the street.
    I took a seat at Cooky's and had Dutch peach pie, and it was uncommonly tasty. The waitress at Cooky's gave me a guestbook to sign, a tradition at the cafe where TransAm cyclists have been stopping for a piece of pie for decades. I looked through the entries to see who I could recognize from among those riders who passed ahead of me. One entry, written by Mallory three days prior, who I rode along with once in the quartet she is part of, and whom I shared accomodation with at L.L. General Store in Hardin Springs, Kentucky, and again at Farmington Firehouse in Missouri. Mallory wrote, "I hope everyone else finds this place! Including Tom." I saw other names who had signed the guestbook, some of them weeks ahead of me by now. I felt a bit forlorn realizing how far ahead of me everyone else was, people I will never see again, yet shared such rich and brief moments with.
    That night I spent time observing the Golden City Harvest Days festival, in the same park I'd set up camp in. Barbecue pork and chicken, a few rides and games for children, and a country and western band rounded out the festivities. While standing next to the Lion's Club booth, an elderly man asked "so, you're traveling across the country on your bike?"
    "Yes, I have my tent set up on the other side of the park, I'll spend the night here."
    "Then you aren't far from home, are you?" he remarked with a laugh. "You're just like a terrapin, you bring your home with you where ever you go."
    The comeback response was too obvious and easy to let go unsaid:
    "Yes, and I'm about as slow as one too." I offered.
    Actually it isn't my legs slowing me down anymore. They don't hurt, but alas are healed. My body has acclimated to the daily exertion and as such I can march up hills with authority now. On the flat ground I can hammer along fast and far, with the best of them. The slowness of my trek is a result of the ongoing blogging I am committed to. I explore, stop to take photos, and then hunt down WiFi to spend entire afternoons at the keyboard. Meanwhile, the cyclists I've befriended along the way without such constraints are far ahead into Kansas and Colorado by now. I may be a terrapin, but this is no job for a Jack Rabbit, and besides we all know the old parable involving those two creatures and who came out on top, don't we?
    I am gradually making my way into cowboy territory. It started back in Hartville, when I spied the first cowboy hat-clad people, several of them. As I have pedaled farther west the cowboy hat and boots have become more and more abundant. Three days ago it was a ratio of about two out of every ten men observed wearing cowboy attire, now that ratio is about 50/50. Armadillos, cowboys, prairie -- it's a long way from Manhattan.
    I pedaled into flatter and flatter ground, with actual prairie surrounding me, on my way to Pittsburg, Kansas today. Along the way I met two eastbound bikers, sisters, and stopped to chat with them for a few moments along the road. They had come through the Western Express route, for which I still have not acquired maps. I offered to buy their maps from them, but instead they gave them to me, asking that I mail them back to them upon my arrival. So now I have the maps I need, arriving in typically serendipitous and unexpected fashion as so often on the Life's Too Short Tour.
    I have been out here on the road for two months now. It's been a long time. The days are spent as work, waking up to pump out another 50 miles before retiring back to my tent in some town park. It is a strange existence, alone, often dogged, tired and dirty, the days grueling and alienating, but I am settling into this way of life.
    Today I will look around Pittsburg and later set up my tent in the park. It is Sunday and the town is very still. Maybe I'll lay down somewhere and read. When the post office opens in the morning I will pick up another book Elisa sent for me.
    Tomorrow I'll make another push toward California, this is what I do.

    until later...

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  • Day 57: Enroute to Kansas: Down from the Hills



    Missouri
    This maps shows the final leg of the route through Missouri that I will make today and tomorrow. It represents the end of the hills and mountains and the beginning of prairie. You can click to map to enlarge it for a better view of the topography.
    I took a detour into Springfield, Missouri, where I spent Thursday night, then pedaled north on Friday to camp at Ash Grove. There are photos and reports from both of those days, which I will publish at tonight's stop, either Golden City or Pittsburg, Kansas. There is much to tell, but little time to tell it.
    In the past two days I have encountered increasingly flat ground. The flat ground is a much different experience to bicycle on. Wind is more of an issue. A strong headwind can stop you in your tracks. A tailwind boosts you along noticeably. For the first time on the trek I am using high gear, finally being able to engage the 50-tooth chain ring (the largest sprocket in the front) to gain speed along the flats. Actually being able to stretch out and pedal is a new experience after the incessant climbing, shifting and coasting required from Virginia to Missouri. The flat ground is bike-friendly terrain. And so this is the end of the mountains of the east, today I will coast down the descent of the last one, somewhere between Ash Grove, where I am now at the library, and the Kansas border about 80 miles away. Next are the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, a couple of weeks or more away.

    until later...

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  • Day 56: Camping at the Courthouse












    Hartville, MO
    I am in Hartville, Missouri, where I've set up camp on the lawn of the town courthouse. I have found WiFi outside the library where I'm sitting on a step and writing.
    I have to apologize for the many typos and errors in the previous post. It's merely a result of the guerrilla-style writing I am forced to do out here on the road. Finding WiFi, electricity, time, solitude and energy to do the writing is incredibly difficult, and often when I have all of those factors aligned there is some time constraint forcing me to rush, deadline-style, to finish the day's entry. Take tonight for example: I am writing in a very unlikely setting, sitting on concrete, with a WiFi connection I discovered drifting out of a corner of the library building. This is great, a real jackpot, but there is no electric outlet, and so I must race through this entry before the battery power of my laptop computer wanes. This is the most challenging aspect of the tour, guerrilla writing.

    I fell short of my goal to reach Marshfield today, stopping instead about 25 miles early, here in Hartville to complete a 40-mile ride. It was fairly hilly terrain, but continues to get flatter as I make westward progress. I am about two days away from the Kansas border, where instead of hills there will be winds to battle. Eastbounders I've encountered in recent days have said I will enjoy a tail wind through Kansas, if that holds true it will be ideal for a few 100-mile days.
    On the ride today I encountered a few hills that were substantial enough to warrant dismount and push. But I am relishing the progress now as the horizons flatten down with prairie land approaching. I drank some of the Cyto-Max again, and once again my legs feel stronger and lactic acid-burn free. I should contact this company and ask for a sponsorship. This is what Gatorade only pretends to be. The newfound power may not be entirely attributable to the product. I have been on the road for nearly two full months now, with only a few days in which I did not pedal hard throughout the day. I am stronger now, no doubt. My body has changed. My legs are bigger, my gut smaller, and my skin is getting darker by the day. Two months of hard physical endeavor and I see the results. I feel at last like a strong bicyclist. I can also handle the 520 with more agility than ever before, I am one with this machine.
    Amazingly, I have not experienced one flat tire on this trek. This is unheard of among the other bicyclists I've encountered thus far. Most have flats continuously. These Continental Ultra Gator Skins, kevlar tires, have performed like a miracle. When I tell other riders I have not had a single flat in 1600 miles they are dumbfounded.

    Hartville is a very small town, with a population of about 600 people. There is a county courthouse here, a library, a post office, and a few restaurants and businesses all situated around one main intersection. It is a bit odd to be camping in the courthouse lawn, in full view of everyone, but I've grown accustomed to camping like this and feel somewhat at home. I set up my tent, organized my gear, and have settled in here on this step to do the day's writing.

    The town was the site of a Civil War battle in 1863. It was a one-day clash, on January 11, between about 1,000 confederate and 700 union soldiers. The Battle of Hartville was initiated when confederate forces raided union outposts around the area. Union forces in the area consolidated in Hartville, taking a defensive position on high ground outside the town. On the hill union forces arranged cannons and a line of soldiers as defense. The confederates charged the line repeatedly during a four-hour period, plunging ahead again and again into the union fire, and many were killed. When the confederates finally withdrew, leaving the union defense weakened but still holding the high ground, union forces also abandoned the town, leaving both sides to claim a victory of sorts for themselves.
    I can see that high ground where the battle happened from where I am now sitting, about a mile beyond the town. I hear kids laughing, a man operating a remote control car, people sitting on benches and talking, all in a place where 125 years ago hundreds of men met bloody and horrible deaths.
    When I checked into the courthouse today to inquire about camping, the clerks informed me of the town's war history, pointing out a mural recently installed on a prominent wall in the town that depicts a confederate soldier praying over a bible. These Civil War vestiges linger deep in the former confederate states. Missouri was a slave state, but was the first to concede to the union. I cannot forget these ghosts, and apparently neither can the residents of this town, as there is no counterpart mural depicting a union soldier. This was a confederate town, and in a deep way, still is, I suppose. Tomorrow, before I ride, I would like to investigate that battlefield up close. This will likely be the last Civil War battlefield I'll encounter on my westbound trek.
    The clerks also asked me several questions about my trek:
    Where are you from? You don't have a New York accent. How many days have you been riding? When will you finish? Are you alone without support? Don't you get lonely?
    The town itself is a typical small and rural county seat. There is the same friendly demeanor among the Missourians here as I've encountered elsewhere in the state.
    Earlier I ventured a half mile outside town to a park to investigate camping possibilities there. As I was sitting under a pavilion near a lake, two teen boys drove up in a truck and struck up a conversation with me. These guys could have been from anywhere, New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, there was no pretense of region or locale in their speech or perspective. The boys described a small-town country life that included sentences like "there's nothing to do here really," and "the closest mall is an hour away." The Subway sandwich shop in the center of town was a main venue for the teens, as was the pavilion I had chosen to sit under. "We call this the patio and everyone hangs out here, smoking cigs, skateboarding, stuff like that," one of them said. They informed me of the scourge of crystal meth which had infiltrated their community,. The yard of the courthouse, the teens said, is the "main place where people hang out at night, you'll see them" one of them said, warning also of rowdiness.
    "I'll take my chances," I said.
    As I am writing this, sitting here in the courthouse yard, there are people sitting nearby on a curb, hanging out. A couple pulled up in a car and sat on a bench. The girl looks like she got dressed up a bit for the occassion. It looks like a date, sitting on a bench on the courthouse yard, watching cars go by. The Subway sign is lighted up like a beacon. They are proud of their Subway shop. This is the kind of place where, experience on the road has taught me, curious onlookers may accost me for questioning about the 520 (aka Old Blue) and my trek. The night is young.

    I look forward to the flat lands ahead of me. The 520 will shine there. The tall 27-inch wheels it has are the tallest of any I have seen among the many riders I have encountered on the road, and that bodes well going west. The height allows each pedal's revolution to cover more distance. This is a bane on hills, where smaller wheels have an advantage. But on the downhills and on the flats the 520 dominates, and I often leave riders behind on such road. On the flat lands of Kansas the 520 will perform like a thoroughbred, a mule transformed. So look out, here we come.

    until later...

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  • Days 55 and 56: Pushing for the Prairie







    Houston, Missouri.Add Image
    A downpour lingered over the area all day, and so I decided to forego any pedaling today, and took a room here to wait it out. Yesterday I pedaled through delightfully flatter terrain. The hills are getting smaller day by day. At one point I saw a stray dog with two pups, emaciated. I stopped and fed them two cans of tuna fish I had been carrying with me.

    Midway into the day, a man pulled over in his car and accosted me for conversation, in a replay of many previous incidents just like it. He introduced himself as Jim, a bicyclist from Pennsylvania on vacation in the Ozarks. Just like with others before, it was a few minutes into the meeting that he opened up to me about his personal travails, and I assumed my default role in these situations as roadside counselor. He showed me two portfolios of photos he had taken, gave me a water bottle, and a supply of energy drink powder called Cyto-Max. I spent 45 minutes listening to Jim, who called himself a Christian and quoted a few verses during the exchange. I am puzzled as to why these interactions continue to happen, in ongoing fashion, all along this trek. The Cyto-Max, incidentally, which I mixed into my water, is designed to alleviate lactic acid buildup, a nemisis for me throughout the past 54 days on the road. I mixed some into my water, and drank it down, and was shocked to discover a new power in my legs, with minimized lactic acid pain over the hills. This stuff really seemed to work.

    I pedaled to Houston quickly, and checked in with police before setting up my tent in the town park pavilion last night. At the camp I spent a few rich hours with two fellow Trans Am bicyclists, Tom and Paul. The east-bound duo are from Cincinatti, both around 60 years of age, have been on the road from Oregon an equal amount of time as me.

    I found a connection with the older riders.  There was a lot of laughter between us throughout the night and then when we breakfasted together. Paul, a retired police officer, was riding a recumbent bicycle, the first of which I have encountered on the tour. On a recumbent, the rider sits upright as if on a chair, with pedals out ahead. He towed a trailer with his recumbent for his cargo. Tom, a pipe-fitter and custom-home builder, rode a new Kona touring bike with matching a panniers and two American flags waving from the rear. After our camps were set up, we sat on picnic tables in the pavilion as darkness overtook. I shared with them, over maps of our routes, several short cuts and accomodation possibilities. Paul retired early, leaving Tom and I to spiral deep into conversation until after midnight, with moths orbiting about the pavilion lights and Tom puffing on thin cigars. We delved into esoterics late into the night.

    Tom said he put two American flags on his bike to increase his visibility to motorists, and was surprised at the favorable reaction he been garnering from passersby ever since. "It's incredible how much more friendly people are since I put the flags on," he said.
    The next morning the three of us went to McDonalds for breakfast, and Tom stopped at a nearby Wal-Mart and bought two such flags for me to fly.
    I spent some time in a coffee shop in Houston, trying to blog. I was invited to stay at a church in town, but declined as it was four miles off-route and I was not up to the extra bicycling that evening.

    Day 56: I awoke from the motel feeling fairly well-rested, packed up and loaded the 520, and am now in McDonalds where I am finishing up this post before heading out to Marshfield. The WiFi at the motel didn't work last night, another saga in the WiFi problems that seem to exist everywhere. McDonalds is the only place where I can rely on it. A typcial challenge in trying to think and write in McDonalds or in coffee shops, as I have stated here before, is the music that plays constantly in those places. Thankfully it is at a low volume in this particular McDonalds.
    Today I will pedal west from Houston, along route 17 to Bucyrus, then to route 38 through Fairview, Bendavis, Hartville, and finally to Marshfield. It represents about 65 miles. At Marshfield there is free camping in the city park.

    The terrain is getting flatter, the roads straigther, looking more and more like prairie land. Eastbounders I meet, such as a group in the motel last night, deem this terrain "hilly," but their perspective is borne of the horizontal landscapes they've traversed through Colorado and Kansas. Westbounders like me have pushed for weeks through the vertically oriented Appalachains, which make these western Ozark hills seem downright flat. I look forward from here on out to easier riding, and corresonding high mileages, as the plains unfold before me.

    until later...

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  • Days 53 and 54: Being in the Ozarks



    Eminence.
    It's early evening here in Eminence, Missouri, deep in the Ozark Mountains, in a cheap motel room, the television is droning, the 520 (aka Old Blue) is leaned against a wall, and I'm staring into space looking for words again. The words that come forward first, like soldiers stepping out of formation to volunteer for a mission, are: mountains, heat, and miles. These are the hallmarks of this trek through the Ozark Mountains. The mountains are significant and beautiful; the heat is thick and sweltering; and the miles are stubborn.



    I made it here to Eminence, population 528, after 30 miles of bicycling over relentless climbs in these mountains, cutting short the 70-mile day I had planned along with the three riders I began the day with from Ellington, to take a room here in this river-tourist town to write and rest. The other three riders, whom I met the previous day and became a group with by default of a shared route, have sped onward. This challenging terrain does not scare me. After three weeks across the ranges of the Appalachains I am accustomed to the pain the hills demand. The pain doesn't hurt anymore, it's just there, coalescing on the slow ascents and dissipating briefly on the rapid descents, cycling over and over like that for miles. It's no big deal.


    In just two or three more days the Ozarks will release out into Kansas prairie land, flattening down and spreading horizontally all the way to Colorado. I am nearing the geographic midpoint of the trek. And that is partly why I stopped short today. Let me explain:
    I had discovered, in getting caught up in the marathon-race mentality that arises out of riding along with other riders, that I was once again falling into the trap of speeding through terrain without stopping to see or feel or think. There was only the road and the distance. This is the rote routine most of the tourers I've encountered on this trek maintain. And having fallen into a group of three other riders, each intent on making the longest possible distance of the day thier goal, I too was looking past everything but the miles. We must make 70 miles today, was the mantra. I pushed hard yesterday under this premise, and accomplished 64 miles. Standing up on my pedals to attack the hills, speeding downhill in aerodynamic crouch, refraining from taking photos lest valuable time-for-progress be wasted. I raced the marathon, and completed it, but not today.


    An hour into the ride, after the four-man peleton I was a part of began to spread out, with one rider sailing far ahead, two riders falling far behind, and me in the middle, I found myself racing. 
    It is true that I want to get to the Pacific Ocean before September, before the budget runs out, and so I must make incremental progress on my rides, but more importantly I want to make that distance by touring, not by marathon racing. Racing is the antithesis of touring. Racing is the attempt to get somewhere, touring is the attempt to be somewhere. Once I realized I was riding too hard and too fast, during a downpour as I struggled up a hill somewhere between Ellington and Eminence, it was a diamond bullet moment, and I knew I must release the tension and reclaim the ease of the journey, because soon this trek will be over and done with and so I shoulod absorb and feel every mile of it while it lasts.
    What occured to me so clearly in that diamond bullet moment was that I had fallen into the same distraction that I left Manhattan to escape. In New York, I was too busy racing to stop and embrace the real meaning of the journey, too busy to simply be a friend to my cousin Rich. I realized that the very moment I learned he had passed on. I lost the chance of rekindling our tandem because I was not paying attention. I was just speeding along through my days.
    And here I was out in here on these roads in the Ozark Mountains replicating that same mistake. Pushing on for my goal, and never realizing that the goal was right there beneath me, in the road that I was so fervently working to put behind me. I was not at ease. This was the Great Dis-Ease, and it got me again.
    And so to me, the 70-mile distance through the mountains represented more than a difficult goal to attain, but a senseless one. So I stopped here in Eminence to reassess, and to slow down, to cure the Dis-Ease.
    I cannot say I am cured this night in this windowless motel. But close. However, there is always depression to battle in these lonely places I sometimes find myself in at the end of the day. But there is ease even in the depression, because at least I am in the moment, and if the moment is a lonely one, then I am there, and not working to escape it. I feel that the Dis-Ease is not borne of what is apparent in the moment, but in the attempt to flee from it.


    I walked through Eminence's one main street this afternoon, stopping for a salad, having a drink at an old time soda fountain bar. It's a tourist town, however nondescript and small, centered around the clear and pristine waters of the Current and Jack Forks rivers which are a prime canoeing and fishing destination of the Ozarks. Restaurants, motels and campgrounds comprise the town, and canoeists and floaters on inner tubes dot the slow-flowing ripples of the rivers. I was attracted to the town because of this. The town is at once sleepy and bustling, forgotten and vibrant. It is a town adorned of signage delcaring Camping, Floating, Canoeing, Hot Showers, Motel, All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, Ozark Tour, Mountain and River Guides, Bait and Tackle, Horseback Riding, Trail Guide and Outfitter, in a commercial menagerie like the New Jersey shore or the Florida Keys, only with a folksy mountain feel to it all.
    As I pushed the 520 along the street an old blood hound ambled up to me and prodded my knee with his nose for a petting. I passed the office of the town's newspaper, called The Current Wave, a reference to the river which is the lifeblood of the town. I went into an upstairs restaurant called Ozark Orchard, and ordered a salad. The college-age waitress asked where I was biking from, and gave a surprised look when I revealed I'd come 1,500 miles from New York. She said she had lived in the town her whole life, now graduated from high school and planning to attend beauty school in Springfield, the largest city in the region.
    She talked about boredom of the small-town existence, where the closest mall is an hour away. But she understood when I said I found the town interesting. "I love it here and hate it here, both," she said.