September 5: Trail Closed

haven’t we seen this kind of crap before? Good thing signs like this don’t apply to people on bikes…

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oh.

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September 4: hennepin Canal Lift Bridge

Why am I hooked on bike trails? Scenes like this. A big reason for bike touring is to go places where cars can’t. Hennepin Canal was 60 miles of just about perfect car free travel packed with scenes just like this.

September 3: Hennepin Canal Trail | Illinois

Mornings like this are why I ride bikes. This great trail starts in Colona, IL just east of the Mississippi river and runs along an old canal tow path all the way to Bureau Junction nearly 60 miles east. One of my favorite rides of the tour so far – the trail include a mix of paved paths, gravel, and dirt. In a few places it becomes little more than a grassy strip along the canal. There are plenty of places to camp, and other than waking up in the morning with some kind of 24 hour bug, I loved it.

September 2: Illinois – More Corn

September 1: Corn branding

This sign is from a field of test crops for a major seed company. There are dozens of these plots – if not hundreds – all through the midwest, and many fields have signs just like this telling what brand of corn or beans are being grown in that particular field. I had a closeup look at some of them though, and from my decidedly unscientific view, I couldn’t tell the difference from one type to another. This got me wondering about a few things.

• Is there a difference or is it kind of like designer sunglasses where they are all the same thing with different lables attached to them?
• Do farmers get in arguments like the PC/Mac debates?
• Do you think any of the less well-off farmers just snag a few signs from the rich farmers field so they can appear to be more cool?

I’m sure I’ll never really know the answer. But I am certain that the feeling I get from DKC 62-63 can’t be matched by any other corn. I can tell the difference. really. C’mon, I’ll do the blind taste test and everything. I’m no sucker for marketing I just think DKC 62-63 tastes better. (Actually I liked their older stuff, you know the 60-61 series, before they went all mainstream. But this stuff is pretty good too.)

Rainbow or not, you can bet that after old Noah crawled out of his ark he spent the rest of his days  looking over his shoulder every time he felt the first few drops of rain from a summer storm. There is no promise of tomorrow and after years of following his heart, of listening to his god, of walking his own solitary path one thing the old man must surely have learned is that following your heart is the only way to survive. You must follow your heart because no one else is going to build your boat.

There are a thousand reasons for playing it safe.

The magazines tell you the products to buy, the formulas to follow, the safest route to security. Advisors tell you about the middle road, how to follow your dreams on the weekend, and be a productive member of society during the week.

They tell you how to be safe, how to bottle it up, put it in a jar, store it on the shelf. Canned heart.

Canned hearts never saved anyone.

The truth is that there is no secure path. Careers falter, houses fall into disrepair, life savings get swallowed up by misfortune and disaster. Anyone can end up on a park bench, tired, hungry and unsure.

There is no safe harbor when the whole world is flooded, but following your heart builds a boat tougher than any storm.

No, don’t follow your heart for the wealth which may not come, for the memories which may be more bitter than sweet, or for the hope of a brighter tomorrow that may never arrive. Follow your heart because it is the only way to fully embrace every second of life from the glorious moments of triumph to the depths of loss and despair. It is the only way to know that you can make it through the storm because you laid every plank and set every nail yourself.

Follow your heart because it’s the only option. Sure, there are easier ways to have a pleasant life, better plans for a nice future, statistically safer steps to apparent security. Life is risk. Any plan can falter, and the odds are too great, the rewards too uncertain, the shame of failure to close to do anything else.

Choose bold, choose brave, choose foolish. Be afraid and do it anyway.

Go big or start small, but start right now. Do something that tells that inner part of you that you hear the call. Pick up the hammer and start building your boat, and keep building it even when it doesn’t rain for thirty years. You must follow your heart because when you are old and gray and hairless and ready to die; when everyone else has gone on before and your best life’s work has been surpassed by the next generation; When the rains come and sweep normal and sense and reason off of their foundation; your heart is what will carry you to high ground.

You must follow your heart, because your heart is all you have.

August 31: Chevrolet | Pioneer Village | Minden, NE

“Follow your heart” they tell you, pointing to a few well chosen examples of people who found happiness by following theirs.

“Follow your heart” they say, and point to a select group who followed theirs and found untold riches.

“Follow your heart” they say while pointing to the broken detritus of broken people who failed while following theirs. “Even if you fail, at least you will have lived you life the way you choose.”

They are wrong.

They are wrong, because following your heart is the best way to break it. What you should do is follow a reasonable plan. Make a budget and stick to it. Work out a good career and build your nest egg until you can retire and pursue your interests on the weekend until then.

Part time heart following is the way to go. Put off your dreams, follow the steps laid out in places like “money magazine” walk the same path as everyone else, because statistically that is your best chance for building a well adjusted life. Save. Invest. Build for the future.

Passion is a fool’s game. The odds are astronomically stacked against you; the truth is that following your heart often leads to disenchantment. It leads to hating what you once loved. It leads to failure. It leads to pouring your life savings into a bad idea and ending up broke and broken. Choose sensible. Choose smart. Hearts are easily distracted and following one around can lead to years of wandering in the wilderness with nothing to show for it.

Following your heart is a dangerous business. I’ve spent big chunks of my life following mine and I am out here on a park bench nearly broke, tired, hungry, and often unsure of my next move. I learn from my strengths and my weakness by force, because they are all I have. There is no road in front of me except the one I make. I have nothing to show for my life but a few scattered files on a hard drive and a used bike. Following your heart is a total crock. It will never work, you will risk everything on the whims of fate, and more than likely you will fail.

“Follow your heart” they tell you, “I wish I had the time to follow mine.” But they don’t tell you about the peril, about the risk, about the hardship it can entail. They don’t tell you because most of them haven’t been there. I have, and you probably shouldn’t.

Following your heart is impossible.

But maybe that is exactly why you should do it.

Sure for the majority of people ‘follow your heart’ is the worst piece of advice imaginable, but maybe you aren’t most people. Maybe you can take it, and you want – you need – to know what it feels like to be deliriously wholly entirely alive. To know that everything you dream of rests with the roll of a pair of dice that you carved yourself. Maybe you can take the risk of losing everything you’ve never had and any hope of ever getting it. Maybe you can live with sleepless nights filled with eager anticipation of what the morning will bring. Maybe the tough times thrill you just as much as the good ones.

Maybe you don’t see any other way.

Don’t follow your heart for the wealth which may not come, for the memories which may be more bitter than sweet, or for the hope of a brighter tomorrow that may never arrive. Follow your heart because it is the only way to fully embrace every moment of life from the glorious moments of triumph to the depths of loss and despair.

Follow your heart if – and only if – it’s the only option left for you. There are easier ways to have a pleasant life, better plans for a nice future, more certain steps to security. It’s too much for most people, the risks are too great, the rewards too uncertain, the shame of failure to close.

But if following your impossible dream is the only thing that is left for you to do, if you must live this life because the other one is killing you, know this: You are not alone. There are more of us here than you know, and you’ll see us from time to time walking against the currents of life, smiling into a driving rain, out on the edge of broken, doing the impossible, because it’s all we know to do too.

And we are cheering for you.

August 30: John Deere Green

I was riding on a bike path along the Mississippi, when a bit of construction closed the path and forced me to turn up onto the main road right in front of the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, IL. Pretty cool little place.

August 29: At least the bike is cleaned up

August 28: Household Cryptozoology
This is Ella. They say she is a dog, but I saw her running along side a car I was riding in late one evening and she was faster than any dog I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure she is a mix between an Ewok and a Chupacabra. Sure she looks sweet, and she’s friendly enough, but I’m still not turning my back on her…

August 27: Houseguests
This little critter decided to spend the night under the rain fly of the tent. I figured that so many people have taken me in over the last few weeks it would be wrong to turn him away so I didn’t. He was still there in the morning.

August 26: Midwest Elevators
Yep, I did post another one of these from back in Limon, Colorado. You can always tell when you are getting close to a town because every single town has a grain elevator right off the main street. I haven’t quite got the ratio figured out but if it has three silos there is usually a convenience store close by. Four or more silos and we’re talking Subway baby – and maybe an ice cream shop.

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Lately I’ve been a bit stuck and burned out. I ride the bike too much and write too little. I have hardly made any photographs of the plains because I got burned out on corn fields and grain elevators after the first day. My writing brain works best in the early morning hours but during the summer, early morning is the best time to ride so I end up riding instead of writing. I scribble my thoughts into a notebook when I take breaks, but by the end of the day, my writing, thinking, planning brain is fried and all I want to do is sleep. I still haven’t found my rhythm, or a system that works consistently.

I am bored and frustrated.

Riding on the Raccoon River trail was one of the coolest riding days of the trip so far, and I want to try more of that, as well as more riding on dirt and gravel. I’m really close to the American Discovery trail, a collection of routes and trails that stretches from California to Washington DC. I can get on the trail near Davenport, IA and ride it nearly all the way into DC with a few detours in places too steep of too far off road for traditional touring bikes. It will be about 1600 miles of mixed terrain along old converted rail beds, state parks, some roads, and some paved bike paths. I know that I can ride the trail at least as far as Ohio, and it looks far more interesting than miles and miles of state roads with big trucks and no shoulders and endless rows of corn and soybeans.

The downside is that I have old friends along my current route, and riding the trails will mean that I will miss most of them. I sat up late yesterday night wrestling with the decision. Both choices – visiting friends or riding the trails – are appealing, and I found myself as usually wishing I could do both. I wrestled with the choice – when I am old which will I want more, to have spent a summer riding around the country catching up with old friends, or to have spent a summer riding my bike places where cars can’t go and seeing things many people will never see?

Finally about eleven o’clock last night, I pulled a quarter out of my handlebar bag and held it in my hand for a moment. I balanced it on the tip of my thumb, and went through the motions, watching it sail through the air, catching it in one hand and slapping it down onto the back of the other. I didn’t even need to look at it though; I made my decision the moment that I picked the coin out of the bag.

I’m going to ride the trail.

If you want to learn more about the discovery trail, you can click this link and it will take you to the site. I’ll be getting on the Hennepin River trail portion of it just outside Davenport IA and will follow it all the way in to DC.

I’m going to try to make more time to write too, and I hope to stop riding hundred miles days. 50-75 is a much nicer range and gives me the time I need to process everything and get it down on paper so I can remember it later.

August 25: Power Wagon

“I’m a steam-roller, baby. Gonna roll all over you.”