The Life's Too Short Tour: Days 47 - 49; To the River and Beyond

Days 47 - 49; To the River and Beyond

I left the comfort of a motel in Harrisburg, Illinois, three days ago and pushed through a series of experiences, hills, people, intersections, towns, days and emotions, until at last I find myself here, taking a day to rest in Farmington, Missouri.

Yes, Missouri, across the Mississippi River and into the undulating cusp of the Ozark Mountains, I've discovered one more state.

I am enjoying my day here in Farmington. It's a nice town and this coffee shop where I've found elusive WiFi connectivity is a cocoon of soft heaven after three days of what were at times grueling and trying treks over Mississippi River hills.

Illinois, which had for 40 miles since the Ohio River presented roads every bit as flat as Broadway or Madison Avenue, was reluctant to allow my escape, slowing my departure from the state with a currogated obstacle of up-and-down hills which cropped up at my approach to the Mississippi River. And so, after enjoying 45 miles of flat land to reach Murphysboro from Harrisburg, Illinois, by afternoon, I felt courage to push to the Mississippi river, 35 more miles ahead. It would make it an 80-mile ride.

I knew it was a long ride, but felt it was within the limits of my ability, and only decided to pause for a break before making the final push toward Missouri.

When I took the break, at a Dairy Queen, I chanced into a conversation with Joe and Ruby, two septaugenarian retirees, both widowed and now married after finding each other via the Internet. Ruby inquired about writing, an endeavor she'd taken up in retirement, and Joe regaled with stories of his time as a Navy officer, saying that he had graduated from the Naval Academy with Sen. John McCain. Joe bought me a lemonade and he and Ruby shifted their chairs so that I may find a seat beside them beneath the shade of an umbrella. These were people so smartly inquisitive and easily befriended that I found myself there for an hour in their warm embrace.

As widowed retirees, the two had found each other online, with Ruby in Illinois and Joe in North Carolina, and courted via airplane flights to Nashville, a midway point between them, until at last their stories became one. I liked how, in their lives, they took sad stories and changed them into a joyful one. Hey Joe and Ruby, thanks for the umbrella shade, for the drink, and for the time you spent with me.

I left the Dairy Queen in anticipation of a fairly easily 35 miles to Chester, Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. A few miles into the trek, however, the folly of the final push became apparent as the terrain morphed from flat to hilly without warning. It was getting late as the sun sank dangerously low and I found myself in an unexpected battle with steep and repetitive grades. I pushed on, with the sun angled low like a hot lamp in my face, and Chester still 15 miles, hard miles, ahead.

I stopped in a tiny town called Ava and quickly downed a burger at a roadside store, and removed my shoes to lay in the grass for a few minutes to regain my composure for the remaining slog to Chester. It was 95-degree heat and I was depleted of energy and enthusiasm. With Chester the only possible place for accomodation along the remote and rural route it became apparent that I was in fact "in trouble," I confessed to Elisa on the cellphone as I assessed my mistake. "I am so tired," I said to her. "I have 20 miles to go and I don't think I can make it." Elisa encouraged me and I crawled up the succession of hills, despising each revolution of the pedals.

I got within a few miles of Chester when at last the sun fell. Dusk, dreaded hour, shrouded the road as a buzz of crickets rose up around me. I had no choice but to forge straight into the encroaching night.

After five more miles it was with utter relief at last that I found the road ahead turning into street. It was the city of Chester. My legs and hands hurt. My lips were burned from the salted sweat. My feet were numbed from the pedals.

Wal-Mart greeted my arrival, and I coasted into the parking lot to find a bench where I could telephone motels in town to arrange for my stay. But Illinois would not release its grip, not just yet, not that easily.

There were two motels in the town. The first motel I called gave me a message which said "this number is no longer listed." At the second motel I called, the desk clerk said "sorry but we are all booked for the night." And so it seemed now that my emotions, once sunken low in hills and then soaring high with their escape, were now back into a valley to mirror the very Illinois terrain of the travail. Dusk merged into bonafide night, I was soaked wet with the day's sweat, crushed in fatigue, in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with no prospect for accomodation. This valley had no floor.

I examined the listings for motels on the TransAm map. Ahead, across the river, there was a motel listed that was called Family Budget Inn. Althought I doubted I could reach it in the dark, it at least offered a glimmer of hope, something I could shoot for, somehow. I called the number, and as the phone rang I waited in anticipation for a reassuring voice to quote me a fair price on a soft bed. Instead...

"(unintelligble mutterings)..." A muddled voice responded.

"Hello? Is this the motel?" I asked.

"(unintelligible mutterings)..."

"What's that?"

"(unintelligible mutterings)..."

"What a minute, I can't understand you, does anyone there speak English? Is that English you're speaking? Is this the motel?" I asked.

Here was a voice so absolutely garbled as to be as clear as utter nonsense. Could this really be happening? I was completely unable to discern even one word of this person's speech. I thought it might be a woman, perhaps Indian, although I wondered if perhaps I'd mistakely phoned a different dimension in time, perhaps in deep space, so that maybe I was speaking to an actual alien on a faraway planet for all the clarity being offered, a deep-space alien with a hoarse throat.

"(unintelligible mutterings)..."

First it was the heat, then the hills, then the underestimated distance, then the hellish fatigue, then nightfall, then the blow of no accomodation in the town. And now this.

"Are you kidding me?" I barked into the phone as my composure melted into a puddle in the Wal-Mart parking lot. "I can't understand one word you'e saying, not one word."

"(unintelligible mutterings)..." the voice sputtered.

"You gotta be kidding me!" I cried. "What are saying? Ok Ok, try this, just answer 'yes' or 'no' -- is this the motel?"

"(unintelligble mutterings)..."

I considered having the creature tap once on the receiver for 'yes' and tap twice for 'no.' I could deal with a no vacancy. I could deal with price too high. I could deal with a motel no longer in business. But the idea that the person on the other end of the line would not be able to make lucid speech was the far side of ridiculous.

"Please, just please tell me, is this a motel or not?"

"(more unintelligent mutterings)..."

I hung up and cursed so loudly that a few Wal-Mart patrons looked my way.

Ok calm down, it's been a long day, just stay calm, I told myself.

So I phoned Elisa and asked her to call the number, maybe she could discern this alien tongue. Elisa called back ten minutes later, laughing her head off into the phone, but I was not amused. "I can't understand what she's saying at all," Elisa said. "But I think I made out that it's a motel and that it's $56 per night."

"You think?" I barked."I can't forge ahead more miles on think."

It was a matter of boiled over frustration in which, after all the water in the kettle was evaporated in the heat, there was nothing left but resignation.

I rode a mile into town to the police station and asked if there was a park I could pitch my tent in. The police officer on duty directed me to a park where a bathroom and pavilion would be my accomodation for the night. I took what I could get, there had been enough pain for one day.

My angst was calmed when I reached the park in encountering two fellow bicyclists, Alan and Morgan. They had been riding their bicycles in circumnavigation of America since October, totaling more than 9,000 miles thus far. They are riding as part of an art project for which they'd obtained a grant to pursue. Both photographers, they are documenting perspectives on the American environment. "We've been on the road so long it just feels normal now," Alan remarked.

Brooklynites, the three of us talking about our city, our home, so far from that dark park in Chester. At one point as we conversed a red fox sneaked along past our camp. This couple, on an epic bicycle tour, truly understood the pain of my day, and we laughed about it. I went to sleep with teeth in mouth, happy for the day, even as my legs ached, lips burned and hands throbbed. This was bicycle touring, and here I was, under the stars with the two bike-touring photographers from Brooklyn, this was wonderfully alien and deliciously foreign territory, and it made the pain of the day worth it.

In the morning, after tea with Alan and Morgan, I headed for the Mississippi River. Through the town of Chester I passed by a plethora of signs and references to Popeye, the cartoon character, created by Elzie Crisler Segar, a Chester resident, in 1929. This town enshrines Popeye, Olive Oil, Swee' Pea, and Brutus. The last thing seen of Illinois was a large granite statue of Popeye before crossing over the Mississippi River toward Missouri.

It was amazing to be there at that great river. I crossed it feeling accomplished, so far from my starting point, so iconic a signpost that I tried to muster enough emotion to do the moment justice. Instead, like so much of the progress along my trek, like so many of the people and places I've experienced these past six weeks, it became something else to be put behind me in the name of westward motion. I pedaled over the bridge and looked ahead to the Ozarks on the horizon.

I found a place to check my email, and was astonished to see a donation of $500 to our cause to raise funds for American Brain Tumor Association. Renee Surren McNeece, a long-time friend and one-time neighboor of Rich, our inspiration here, made the generous gift. Renee, thanks to you, very much! That is our largest donation to the $4,000 cause to date.

I should also take this time to thank the anonymous donor who sent $250 to me to assist with expenses here on the road. Whoever you are, Mr. and/or Mrs. Anonymous, be aware of the great gratitude with which I accept your generosity. Wow, is all I can say, wow, and thanks.

After the previous day's 80-mile trek over Illinois undulation, I was resigned to make as easy a day of pedaling as possible as I set off into the Ozarks. But Missouri, like its neighbor to the east, would have none of it.

On legs and forearms still shaky from the 80 miler, I found Missouri terrain to be formidable. I had 45 miles to make for Farmington, where the firehouse offered free accomodation including shower and soft mattress for sleep. The terrain of the Ozarks was every bit as challenging as that of Virginia. Steep hills, like a roller coaster's ascent which gave way to quickly ascended valleys, were aligned in cruel succession. The road that rolled ahead went on like this for mile and after mile, and in time I was reduced to tatters just as the day before. I faced the hills as if they were an adversary, one which I tried to reason with, to dicker down, but to no avail. When I could not climb another, I compromised to push the 520 up the steepest grades. And so I would push up, and coast down the other side without even pedaling once. Push, coast, push, coast -- this was the Missouri Compromise.

With 20 miles to go, I again phoned Elisa with a replay of the previous day's woes. "I'm so tired, I don't think I can make it," I whined.

The road ran through grape and winery country, scenic and bucolic, but I could not muster the energy to take a single photo. When I ran out of water I knocked on the door of a winery and begged to fill my bottles. Winery, whinery, its all the same to me in retrospect.

I can't create a way here on this page to approximate the grueling nature of the next 20 miles toward Farmington, on relentless hills, in near 100-degree heat, on legs as strong as balsa wood. I can only say that the hills went on and on and on and on and on and on and on, maddeningly, until I was delirious enough to laugh as a hyena to the roadside flowers and trees, who taunted me menacingly in their quiet repose. Bouts of dizziness in the heat ensued as such that I was certain at times that I'd slipped down the Rabbit Hole and floated away from reality into weird and fuzzy tangents. I had to drop to one knee several times in order to regain my human being.

I was delighted then to see on a sign the word DELI, leapt into view at the top of one hill. In remote wine country, there it was, a place of nurishment, something to that was on my side, an ally against the road. DELI!

It was an ale brewery there on the roadside, a tourist spot for vineyard-trail trekkers, and I knew there within was a sandwich and soda.

I sat in the touristy restaurant, soaked and road-worn, shaky-legged, famished, and devoured a ham sandwich, chips and Coke. I sat in the air-conditioned environment as music played over speakers throughout the grounds, allowing my body to rekindle enough energy to make the final ten miles. Ten miles. I can do this, it won't be easy, but I can do this.

After the meal, I stepped outside next to the 520. I took the handlebars, so familiar now the grip, and prepared to mount. Through the speakers it was Fleetwod Mac, a group I remembered from long ago, nothing remarkable, just another wafting memory of the past, emanating there in the Missouri countryside. It was the song You Make Loving Fun, from 1976, with Christine McVie singing the lyrics and Stevie Nicks in the background. The song made no impression, but just as I was about to swing my leg astride the 520, the chorus of the song rose to its crescendo:

I never did believe in miracles

But I've a feeling it's time to try

I never did believe in the ways of magic

But I'm beginning to wonder why

There was Christine McVie swooping through those lyrics, precise and plaintive; and Stevie Nicks in the background like cascading sunbeams, their voices and a guitar swimming around one another in a high-vista of harmony, falling in steppes and rising in ranges, wrapped in sharply wrought emotions of sound and color and sadness and beauty, absolutely gorgeous. I had never really listened to that old song before. I had never noticed before the poignancy of that chorus. Yet here in the Ozarks on this day, in the lonely and remote road of the vineyards with miles to go, I knew that the chorus to this song was quite possibly the greatest harmonized wave of emotion ever brought to fruition. I can't explain why, but at that moment I burst forth into tears there at the brewery. Here I was overcome again, a blubbering wimp and idiot, and I had no idea why. What were these tears? Sure, I was grieved over the loss of my cousin, we all were, but this was something different, something that transcended the sadness. I wasn't crying for the loss, but for the something the loss had taught me, shown me. I was caught unprepared again for the fount, exploding really, and I sobbed hard into my arm. I don't have words precise enough to arrive at the cause.

Later I tried hard for an anology to express it, and this is the best I could come up with:

When life is merely worth a nickel, its brevity remains apparent and looming yet also easy to forget as we plod along toward the end. But when life is worth more than every molecule in the infinite universe and more, its impending end game is too excruciating to name. As such, in grasping tighter the joy of this existence we share, in understanding it deeper than ever before, there is equally a deeper remorse about the course it must take. And so the tears are not because life is sad, but only because it is so beautiful.

At the firehouse I found the Farmington firefighters friendly and accomodating. They showed me to my quarters in their Greyhound-bus sized Emerengy Response Unit, where a cot is my bed. The four riders I met back at L.L General store in Kentucky: Lou, Mallory, Daniel and Greg showed up later that night and we whooped in reunion as old friends.

We pedaled without gear to a pizza dinner down the road, and this morning shared a breakfast of muffins and coffee before they departed once again to the west. I stayed behind.

It is afternoon now and time for me to retire back to the firehouse, to allow my thoughts to focus ahead deeper into Ozarks. Tomorrow I must go forward again.

until later...

9 comments:

Anonymous says:

9.7.09

“A man plans his direction, but God orders his steps”

- Anonymous

Milt says:

9.7.09

Tommy,

S10 is armed and ready. Just say the word.

Uncle Milt.

Anonymous says:

9.7.09

Steve:

I do not see the mule resemblance with Mom and Dad, but I think Tommy resembles Popeye in front of the Missouri Sign (all Tall and Stout)! Looks like he has been eating his spinach!

All in jest Tom, you look great!!

Love, Robin

Stephen says:

9.7.09

To Dad:

The 5-20 will NEVER ride in the S10!!!

Keep pedaling, Tom!!

Elisa says:

9.7.09

Life is so precious and beautiful so when we have the time to really look at it and take it all in, it can be overwhelming. Those are the days we shed tears of joy!

Tom, you have made amazing progress! Pretty soon you'll be reaching the halfway mark!

For those of you who are wondering about the unintelligible mutterings from the possible motel receptionist, Tom is not exaggerating at all. I felt like I had reached the twilight zone!

Wishing you a good night with lots of rest Tom. :)

Kathy says:

9.7.09

Tom,

This post takes me all over the place - from worry to laughter to tears.

In your pain and delirium you come out with some of the funniest stuff ever - "The Missouri Compromise"!!! I love that!!! Laughed out loud when I got to that one. And "winery, whinery, it's all the same to me"!!! Too, too funny. "I can't forge ahead more miles on THINK!!" Perfect lines for a young Jack Nicholson in the movie version.

Then there's the utter sweetness in your words as you feel the God-awful beauty of life, and it brings me to tears.

Your days are full, Tom.

Your tremendous resolve to get West is awesome.

But now you need to rest. It's the key that unlocks your strength. REST.

Love you very much,

Kathy

chrissy says:

9.7.09

Tom, the S10 won't make it past a thousand miles! You are so strong now! You do what you need to do out there. Get er done!
love and peace

Milt says:

9.7.09

Thomas

Did cornerman first class forget Floridas vote didnt count.

Uncle Milt

Anonymous says:

10.7.09

Tom,

This is your Tour, but your trail is leaving imprints on so many of us!

It seems the simplest of things mean the most. You did not have to go on a Caribbean Cruise: The DELI parking lot was the moment of your epiphany! And a simple act of kindness lasts a long way; such as Joe and Ruby sharing their umbrella and buying you a lemonade! Your tour is an advocate of how special people really are in our lives; even the ones whom we spend only an hour with!

Funny how you mention Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. The last time I saw Richie, he said to me, "Robin, you look like a Gypsy!" (because I had just gone to the gym and I had a bandana wrapped around my head). So, of course, I find the song "Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac Special! Ironically, the words have correlation as they descend, "And a memory is all that is left for you now"!

It's all Good!

Love, Robin

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