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:
  • 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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