Archive for the ‘Scenes from the Movie’ Category

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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.

ok, I know I’m still behind with the chronological story, and as long as I stay behind its tough for you to keep track of where I really am. So I’m going to just start from here and then fill in the old gaps as we go along. I’m in Des Moines this morning after spending a day off of the bike and off of the road doing absolutely nothing. Today I’ll get back at it rolling through some more of the Midwest up to Iowa City and then later this week on to Chicago and who knows where after that. For now, here’s the Midwest wrap up, a little early but if anything changes, I’ll let ya know.

The mountains made me strong. After my 147 mile day out of Limon I have cruised through the plains, averaging nearly 84 miles per riding day. I’m in Des Moines as I write this, holed up in a cheap hotel for a day off; updating the blog, resting, and laying out the basic route for the next leg.

A few quick highlights from the plains

Corn: Yep, there’s a lot of it. I saw my first field while still in eastern Colorado and it hasn’t let up yet.

Pork: I haven’t seen too many hogs but I think I have consumed about three of them. Nearly every host family I have stayed with has filled my belly with chops, tenderloin, corn and cake.

This brings me to

People: the people of the Midwest really are some of the most decent folks you could ever hope to meet. From the local farm kid in Kansas who insisted I sit with him in an otherwise empty subway because “Ya don’t want ta eat alone do ya?” to the numerous host families who have housed me, fed, me and pointed out the local sites along the way, the people of Midwest are what I’ll remember long after this trip is done. Well, the people and the miles and miles and miles of corn.

Pride: The museum in Minden, Nebraska features a quote from the late John F Kennedy. Kennedy said, “The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.” Several days after touring that museum and reading that quote I rode 80 miles in the rain with a cyclist from Iowa who proudly flew the state flag from the back of his bike. I noticed the Iowa State motto on the cloth, “Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain.” There’s a lot of feeling in that sentences, but not once does it mention feelings. America was built on the ideas of individual liberty and rights, and lately it seems like a lot of people have confused “beliefs” with “rights” and limits with liberties. I haven’t had any deep discussions with the good people of Iowa, but I’d like to think that the ideas expressed in their motto are more than just idle conceits.

I’ve ridden past miles and miles of corn. I’ve seen small towns bursting with life, and small towns withering away to dust, I’ve met people proud of where they come from and happy with where they’ve stayed. I’ve tasted the food, slept under the stars, walked in fields, and pulled apples fresh from a tree along a bike path. People call these flyover states. They say there is nothing out here in the heartland. But if you are quiet, if you get in tune, you can feel the pulse; you can feel the heartbeat.

It’s easy to forget that we live in a place that is bigger than it parts. It’s easy to listen to the divisive dismissive chatter on the television and in the blogs and think that we are a nation of bickering and petty differences. You want to feel pride in your country again, slow down, get off the fast track, take a look across a thousand acres of ‘yeah we can do that’, then drive past a hundred miles farms and into the mountains and through the deserts and back to your own home and see how big and how unbelievable this place really is. Talk to your neighbors, talk to the people you wouldn’t normally talk to, and once you get past all that other crap you find out we’re not so different after all.

We all want a place to call home, we all want some food in our belly, we all want a story to tell, and someone to tell it to. And from the people I’ve met along my path so far, I think we all want our neighbor to have that too.

I wake up in a basement.

I wake up in a campground.

I wake up in a park, on a golf course, in a guest room with bedding that costs more than my bike, under a bandstand, behind a gas station, in a cheap motel.

I wake up and realize that I have been traveling for sixty days, and I get on my bike and I move through the landscape, and the landscape moves around me. There is wind, there is rain, there are blue skies and gray. It is hot, and it is cold. It is flat and it is hilly. It is and I am.

I meet truck drivers, and scientists, school teachers and housewives. I meet doctors, bikers, amateur paleontologists, cops and firefighters, farmers and ice cream vendors. I meet people who are going places and people who have never been anywhere. They talk about them and I talk about me. We find common ground in our experiences, in our hopes, in what we have done, and in what we hope to do. We smile and laugh over a beer, or a pipe, or a casserole, or tacos made from whatever is in the fridge. I am not them and they are not me, but parts of us are the same.

Do anything for long enough and it becomes normal. Normal is waking up in an unfamiliar place on someone else’s schedule. Normal is knowing where I will probably be today, but having no idea where I’ll be in four days. Normal is checking the map and changing directions just so I can say I’ve been to a place called “Funk”. Normal is forgetting what day it is. Normal is realizing that I haven’t known what day it is for a week. Normal is knowing that I haven’t been doing this nearly long enough.

I have only been here for 60 days. The atlas of the unseen grows. Millions of red shifted stars cover the deep dark sky like dust – fireflies a little too fast and a little too far away, and I am out here with my slow legs and my little jar, laughing as I run through the night trying to catch them all.

A long low beam of light sweeps across the golf course. I see the truck driving up the access road and know what’s coming before it even makes the turn into the golf course where I have laid out my bedroll for the night.

It’s Saturday, and the local cops are trolling for teenagers parked in the out of the way corners of town.

The truck slows and stops a few yards from where I am laying, its tires crunching on the gravel driveway. The light swings over and stops on me, so I sit up.

I hear the door of the truck open and close and a voice says “This is an unauthorized location; ya can’t be back in here.” A silhouette steps into the light, a series of boxes with a rectangle for a head.

“You have to leave.” Says the rectangle.
“Hey, man, I’ll be gone by first light, I’m just trying to get a couple of hours sleep.” I say
“Can’t do it.” Says the rectangle. “Besides the sprinklers will come on any minute and those things are like fire hoses.”

I think about telling the rectangle that I’ve already checked it out, that the sprinklers have completed their last cycle and they don’t reach this corner of the course anyway, but I think better of it. Arguing with rectangles never solves anything.

I stand up and hold my hands out to my side “Isn’t there anyplace?” I ask letting my voice trail off. “I’m just passing through man; I can’t afford twenty bucks for six hours of sleep.”

The rectangle steps forward and becomes a man. We have the same haircut.

“Look, I know how it is,” says the man. “Go down by the river – just past the truck stop there’s a beach area. The mosquitoes are probably pretty bad, but no one will bother you. Go through the overflow lot to the dirt road and follow it down to the beach – it’s about a quarter mile, you can’t miss it.”

*****

All of the good and ease of Nevada has been swallowed up by Utah. From the minute I entered the state, small troubles have stalked me. My first day was a Sunday, and after a ninety mile ride through the salt flats in near triple digit temperatures, I arrived at a nice hotel (paid for by a friend and supporter) only to find that the attached restaurant closed because it was Sunday.

So was the pizza shop next door.

And the burger joint down the street.

“Welcome to Utah, closed on Sunday.” I wrote on my twitter feed while eating pop-tarts and drinking soda from the vending machine. The pool at the hotel was nice though and I splashed away the last bit of road grit from the salt flats in the cool blue water.

The next day, I relaxed for a while in a local park looking for the best route through the state, I was still convinced that Utah would be nice – right up until an old man talked to me and told me that the best thing a person can do in Utah is go to Colorado.

I decided to follow the old man’s advice and stay on highway 50 until it intersects with interstate 70, then take the 70 all the way into Grand Junction, but In Salina, I noticed that my tire was nearly worn through, thanks to an unplanned ten mile jaunt down a gravel forest service road the day before. Fortunately a kind older couple helped me track down some places to look for parts, and the man drove me around town looking for a new tire. When it became apparent that the closest tire was in Grand Junction, they even took me home for the night, feed me, and showed me to the guest room, and guest bathroom. The next day I left their house for Colorado. Grand Junction was two hundred miles away, and the only thing between Salina and there was a small town called Green River. I decided then to make a big push and make green river in one day and Colorado the next.

Then it started raining.

I spent the night in a rest area, my tarp thrown over a picnic table. Rain and thunder came and went during the night, but it was clear by morning, and I finished the ride into Green river by mid-day. Exhausted from the long ride, tall hills, rain, and a bad night’s sleep, I made my way to the city park, dried out my gear to dry, then gathered it up again and rode around and found what I thought was a semi-secret camping spot. It was perfect too, right up until the rectangle man with nothing better to do showed up.

*****

I start to gather my gear in the darkness and the man in the truck drives away. I know he’ll be back in a few minutes to check up on me and make sure that I have disappeared. It’s such a funny thing, no one cares if you sleep in the park in the middle of the day when everyone else is awake and moving around, but when it comes to sleeping after dark there are all kinds of rules about where one can and cannot lay down and rest.

I quickly strap my bag and bivy to my bike and head down to the river, still muttering about the rectangle and its rules. There are mosquitoes – lots of them – but I crawl into my bivy sack and zip it up tight and start to relax and listen to the sound of the river.

There is a brief flash of light, and a rumble of distant thunder, and then it starts to rain.

I smile in my little shelter. The rain will keep the mosquitoes away, and I’ll stay warm and dry in my gear.

I listen for cars on the dirt road, but no one is coming down here, not tonight, not during a storm. And I roll over and snuggle down further into my sleeping bag. As I drift to sleep, there is only one thought on my mind. Tomorrow, I’ll be in Colorado.

Memories fade quickly when the world keeps rushing at you every day, and some stories that are funny over a beer don’t sound as good when they are typed out on a computer screen weeks later. Nevada was one of my favorite stretches of road so far. The highway stretched from horizon to horizon, there was a nice shoulder to ride on for most of the way, and even when there wasn’t you could see the big rigs coming seven minutes before they reached you.

It was hot, but not too hot, and since there were only a limited number of geological features and resupply stops, it was easy to have an idea of how each day was going to go and prepare for it.

My first full day in the silver state, I turned down a short dirt road to a hiking path near some petroglyphs. At the picnic area and trailhead, I found a biker and his girl drinking Smirnoff Ice and smoking a joint. They watched my gear for me while I tromped around looking at 5,000 year old pictures scratched into rocks, then suggested I swing by a biker bar several miles down the road if I needed a place to stay. The weather was great – not too hot – and I ended up riding 116 miles that day, finally rolling up to the bar at Middlegate around 11:00pm. The bartender told me there was free camping and showers out back, and I was asleep under the clear Nevada sky 15 minutes later.

Every day along highway fifty was the same – a big climb followed by a long valley and then another big climb. When I left Middlegate I passed “the shoe tree” a bit of a legend with a dubious story. That afternoon I had an awesome bacon cheeseburger at the International Hotel then sat outside waiting for the heat to pass. A stranger walked up and introduced himself as Joe from Cleveland – a cyclist from the east coast heading to San Francisco. I told Joe about the great burgers in the international so we went in and sat at the bar and talked to a couple of girls who were driving to Colorado while Joe ate a burger and I had some apple pie and ice-cream.

The next day I rode all day to the town of Eureka, ate a giant plate full of chilidogs and French fries, then, once the heat died down, got back on the bike and rode through the night under an almost full moon. The night ride was incredible, right up until the moon set and the bottom dropped out of the thermometer as I crossed a 7500 foot pass. I dropped into a huge bowl filled with cold desert air, and by the time the sun came up I was shivering so hard that my arms and shoulders ached and it hurt to move my hands. I rolled up to the city park in Ely that morning just after sunrise and checked my odometer – the two rides combined made it a 150 mile day. I slept for 4 hours in the park until the sun warmed up the earth and drove me to seek shelter in the air-conditioned grocery store across the street.

The next day, I rode over a few more passes, and rolled up to the Nevada / Utah border just before sunset. There was a group of cyclist just pulling out of the Border Café heading west and we stopped to talk.

“Are you guys riding through the night?” I asked.
“Just up to one of the passes.” Replied one of the guys. “They’re having some kind of cook-out or pioneer days thing here tonight.”
“Do they have camping here?”
“Yeah, it’s like ten bucks, but I think there is going to be a band there too – you might like it if you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Nice, I’ll check it out.”

The west bounders rolled up the hill towards the sunset and the loneliest road in America, and I rolled into the parking lot at the border café. At the counter, the clerk gave me a tent site with a shower for five bucks, and for another fifteen I got to help save the water in the Great basin from those greedy developers in Vegas, and also got all you can eat bar-be-que, an auction, a live band, and a raffle.

It was after 2:00am when I finally rolled my bag out on top of a picnic table for some sleep. I blew through Nevada in less than a week – my mental and physical strength pulling me through the desert.   “I’ll take it easy in Utah” I thought “It’s a pretty state and I’ll rest up for the hills in Colorado.” I wasn’t entirely sure of my route through the state – it offered far more options than Nevada – but I knew I’d find the right path at the right time. The Utah I remembered from road trips in the past was a beautiful place full of canyons and mountains and cool breezes and stores and restaurants.

Of course, I had seen very little of Utah, and had never crossed the salt flats on a bicycle in late July.

I spin up the long gradual incline to Spooner Summit – my breath is steady, my legs are sure. I stayed an extra day here in the little town of South Lake Tahoe thanks to the kindness of my new friend who suggested a day off. Andy flew his little sport plane up from Arizona and we spent the day exploring the area around the lake. Making the pass over Tahoe was a breakthrough for me, and the day off has left me rested and strong.

The great mountaineer Reinhold Messner Talked about the was adventure can put one’s life in stark perspective, breaking it down to the most important elements of shelter, food, and a bit on conversation – a chance to gather your physical and mental strength. My friends in Tahoe have given me that and I am focused and ready for Nevada and “the loneliest road in America”.

Big Jim and I round a corner and a tunnel swings into view. Immediately I am back at Gaviota pass – already it feels like a half a lifetime ago – pedaling into the wind, the hills, the unknown.  The bike is lighter now than it was then, and I am stronger. I ride through this new tunnel, still climbing. When I leave the other side, nothing has changed. Everyday has hills, every day has wind, everyday is an unknown until the clock runs out and you have lived it.

There is no magic there is only me. Only my will, my strength, my creativity and my perseverance will keep me going. I smile at the incline in front of me, because I know that I am enough for this.

At the top of Spooner I stop to take a picture of the elevation marker. A man on a Harley Davidson rolls to a stop beside me and asks what I think the best route through Nevada is. I tell him about the loneliest road, and he fires up his beast and roars off, in search of his own loneliness, looking for his looking for his own enough.

I turn my head and look back west for a moment, then clip in, rack up the gears and run out the long descent into Carson City.

At the bottom, I stop for a sandwich. A man – the first person I have spoken to here – asks “Where you headed?” and I tell him the story.

He pushes his cowboy hat back on his head and looks at Big Jim and me, then nods approvingly. His eyes narrow and he squints at the handlebar bag and asks, “What do ya carry?”
“Carry?”
“Your gun. What kind of gun do ya carry?”

I’m going to like Nevada.

The little airplane stalls and dips, its wing tracing the contour of a mountain slope. There is not enough power to overcome the physics of failure and a wing clips a small boulder that is just a bit higher than the rest of the ridge.

Fragments of rock scatter into the valley below.

The plane shudders for a moment, and then tumbles from the sky to join them.

I glance down and see a tiny spot of red on my clean white shirt. The spot grows and stains my hand until I wake up with a start.

Mosquitoes make buzzing sounds just outside the netting that covers my face. I turn my head to the side and see the sky just turning to silver above the trees.  The dream has been following me since I left Oakland – from my first restless night of second guessing my decision, reviewing maps endlessly in a cheap hotel in Vallejo, to Napa Valley with its miles of vineyards and deer running beside me on the side of the road and hawks soaring hi in a hot blue sky. Through a night as a guest in a strangers home who told me that I was doing it all wrong, to a fortuitous meeting with an old man the next morning who said everything I was attempting was right and strong.

But dreams are just dreams. I don’t own a plane and my shirts haven’t been as white as the ones in my dream since before I left Los Angeles. I unzip the bivy sack and crawl out, smacking mosquitoes against my legs, my arms, my head as I do. They leave little red blotches and broken bodies on my skin and I don’t care.

Yesterday I climbed 4000 feet to this spot at the entrance to the national forest, and tonight I’ll sleep in a bed in a stranger’s house in South Lake Tahoe. I think of my climbs in Griffith Park way back in the spring. I remember the assent up Big Sur. A hill is just something to get over, and I’ll get over this one too.

I pack up the gear and push Big Jim down the access road to the highway, look at the deep shadows still covering the road, click on my lights, clip in, and go.

Ten miles down the road and a thousand feet up, I stop at a roadside café for breakfast. I slide into a booth and order some pancakes and a diet coke. A woman sitting at a booth facing mine looks up at me and our eyes meet.

“You’re on the bike?” she asks, nodding at Big Jim leaning on the porch rail outside.
“Yep.” I reply. “Looks like you are too.” I glance at the motorcycle helmet on the table beside her, and the gleaming red Honda cruiser sitting in the parking lot.
“Yeah, I love my bike. I’ve seen so much of California…” her voice trails off as the café owner refills her coffee cup.
“Where are you headed today?” I ask her.
“Just up to Tahoe, it seemed like a nice morning to go for a ride.”
“You’re local?”
“Sacramento. Where are you headed?”
I pause for a moment before answering. In the past when someone asked that I would hedge my answer and say “Seattle” but I’m obviously not going to Seattle. I think about saying New York, or DC, but instead the truth comes out. “I’m kind of just going in circles this year.” I laugh. “I left LA in mid June, heading northeast, then down to Florida for Christmas then back out west in the spring.”
“That’s what I want to do.” She says quickly adding with a laugh “but on a bike with a motor.”

We talk across our tables while she eats her eggs and I eat my pancakes. She retires in a few months and she and her girlfriend are just going to hit the road for a while – see all the things they’ve been waiting to see.  We talk about road bike people and mountain bike people and Harley people and Honda people and how at the end of the day we all really just want the same things, and just have different ways of finding them.

She finishes her breakfast and disappears up the hill, and I finish mine and listen to my tires on the gravel, the click of the derailleur changing gears, the various creaks and pings of the panniers bouncing against the frame.

The phone rings and the stranger who is letting me stay in their house for the night tells me that he won’t be home but that the door is unlocked and there is cold beer in the refrigerator. He says I’m making good time and I’ll make it over the hill with no problem.

A minivan passes me and pulls to the side of the road at a turnout. The driver snaps a photo of me as I roll past. “Hardcore man.” He says, and I flash a smile and wave, but I don’t feel hardcore. It’s a big hill, but an easy grade and I’m ready for it.

It’s mid afternoon when I pass a small house by the side of the highway. A man on the porch yells out “Almost there bro! Keep it up!”  And five minutes later I stop and take a picture of a sign that says “elevation 7000 feet” and then I climb some more.

At the top I send a flurry of happy texts and emails, then barrel down the hill at 45 mph towards the bluest lake I’ve ever seen. A vicious crosswind sweeps across the road and I take the whole lane to avoid getting swept over the edge. I roll through town and smile at the directions I’ve written down to get to my hosts home:

“Get over the big hill.
Turn at Los Angeles Rd.
Turn at Oakland Street…”

I make one more turn and pull up in front of a small mountain cabin. The mailbox has a miniature bicycle on top of it.  I lean the bike against the porch rail, let myself in the kitchen door, grab a beer out of the refrigerator and go back outside to sit on the porch and look at the world around me.

Some dreams are just dreams, and some mountains are just one more thing to get over, but cold beer from a friend you’ve never met at the end of a long hard haul – well, that’s a sign, a metaphor, and a gift all rolled into one.

A mosquito buzzes in my ear and I smack my own head and sit and look at the trees and smell the clean air and drink my beer and smile.

I’m standing between the couch and the guest bed sorting through my gear. I finally have it down to a manageable size and weight, but something else is bothering me. For the past few days, while house-sitting for Mike and Dani while they were on the east coast, I’ve been going over maps and calendars and mileage plans and have come to realize that I’m not going to get it all done. I only have a few appointments to keep this year, but I don’t have time to make the full trip up the coast, see all my friends along the way, enjoy the ride across the country, make it to New York, to DC in time for the show, to South Carolina for thanksgiving, and to my folks place in Florida for Christmas.

I’ve made notes on a little scrap of paper,  a rough guide to get me up to Portland or maybe Seattle and then straight to DC but it involves 90 mile days, short visits with friends, virtually no stops between the coasts, and plenty of stress. I won’t get to see New York. I’m not really looking forward to it.

Dani walks across the loft from the kitchen. “Hey, we got you something while we were on vacation.” She says, holding out a cellophane envelope.

I take the envelope from her and look through the clear plastic wrapper while she continues. “We thought it would be cool for your trip, and even if you can’t make it there you can always pretend.”

Inside the wrapper is one of those little round “I (heart) NY” stickers you can get just about anywhere. Looking at the sticker and hearing the words “You can always pretend” suddenly snaps the next leg of the trip into focus. There are places I’ve been, and places I haven’t, roads I have traveled, and roads that I have yet to see. Life is about doing, not pretending, and when I leave Oakland, I’m not going to go north.

I’m going east.

I hedge my bets. I ask Mike and Dani what they think of the new plan, think about routes through the mountains, send texts to friends asking for feedback – but in my heart I already know what I’m going to do.

I’m going east.

I stop packing up my gear and pull out my laptop to look at maps. I’ll cross the Sierra at Lake Tahoe – a bit over 7,000 feet above sea level – a challenge much taller, and much sooner than I had expected.

I lay awake long after everyone else has gone to bed thinking about the trip, about traveling off the map, and spontaneous flexibility. Mostly though, I think about the climb up to Tahoe – over 7000 feet in less than 80 miles. Mixed with the concern though is something new – something that has been missing from my week of trying to fit too many miles into too little time – a tiny spark of eager anticipation that started when I first saw that sticker and decided to make a right turn. The spark grows and takes over the space of uncertainty. I fall asleep thinking of unknown possibilities.

When I wake up, I put the sticker on the top tube of Big Jim, right where I can always see it – a reminder that the world is bigger than just notes on little scraps of paper. I’m not sure if I’m ready for the challenge of Lake Tahoe, but I’ve never been sure of anything until I did it, and ready or not one thing is certain -

When I leave Oakland, I’m going east.

Mike meets me at the security door out front with handshakes and congratulations and boy are the animals going to be happy to see you.

He is right.

It takes a half a second after he opens the door to the loft, but I hear them coming before I see them tearing around the corner, feet scratching the polished concrete floor. They haven’t seen me since they moved from Los Angeles to Oakland months ago, and they are a mass of tails and tongues and barks and happy-to-see-you-ness.

It’s a happy bunch of dogs in a happy home and I’ve seen this greeting from Murphy and Chuck before. It’s “Hey look! A new person, let’s play!” behavior, and I like and appreciate it, but I know it really has little to do with me. Bully is different, I’ve seen his normal level of new person happy before but today he seems actually happy to see me specifically. I laugh while he dances and barks and acts like Bully, but even more Bully than usual.

“Hi Chip!” Dani walks around the corner followed by two indifferent cats – Goose and Cole – and there are more hugs and happy-to-see-yous and then suddenly we are in a funky bar downing Manhattans and martinis and Long Island Iced Teas and eating massive hamburgers covered with thick slabs of bacon.

It’s good to travel. It’s good to see new places and new people and new things, but it’s also good to stop and visit friends you know and people who are happy you are there, not because you are new or special or different, but because you are you, and because you showed up.

Later, back at the house, I sit on the couch and listen to the dogs make dog sounds while they eat their dinner. Bully walks over and puts his head on my lap and leaves a giant smear of drool and bits of food and I scratch his ears anyway because he’s a good dog, and he recognized me.

“They only live for about a month in the summer.” says the beekeeper. “They live longer in the winter, but in the summer the poor girls literally work themselves to death.”
“The girls?” I ask.
“Yeah, worker bees are always female. They have different jobs depending on how old they are, but all the workers are girls.”
“What about the boy bees?”
“Humph” sniffs the beekeeper. “They don’t do anything except wait to have sex with the queen.”

The beekeeper moves around the boxes that make up each hive, checking for honey and brood (baby bees). My job is to work the smoker and make sure to keep the bees calm and mellow while she works.

I get distracted taking pictures and let the smoker die three times before the beekeeper tells me to just forget it.

I am not a good worker bee.

Fortunately, the beekeeper is patient, and comes up with a new job for me. “Here, lift up these two frame boxes so I can check to see if we have a new queen in this hive yet.” I life the heavy boxes and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y move them to the table. It’s easy to be focused when you are holding a big wooden crate with 60,000 buzzing bees in it.

The beekeeper has not always been a beekeeper. She went to photography school and got an internship retouching photos at a magazine that specializes in the “west coast lifestyle” – gardening, outdoor living, and the like, and when the internship was over she turned it into a full time job.

The magazines headquarters is a beautiful sprawling complex of flower beds, gardens, test kitchens and indoor and outdoor living areas. Everyone who works for the magazine also has the opportunity to help out in one of the garden areas, and when they decided to add beehives she volunteered to work with them and became the beekeeper.

She still has her ‘real’ job – retouching images and prepping them for the print version of the magazine. She has a nice cubicle, great co-workers and an empowering boss. It’s a good gig, but she really comes alive when she is working with ‘her girls’. Working with multiple hives over the past three years, she has gone from complete novice to professional beekeeper.

Standing by the hives she takes off one of her heavy work gloves and sticks a finger into a frame crawling with buzzing bees. She pulls her hand back and a bee immediately lands on her outstretched finger and starts to eat the honey. The Beekeeper laughs. “See, they won’t sting you unless they feel threatened, they just want to eat.”

The beekeeper like both of her jobs for their unique challenges and rewards and she hope that she can keep both of them for a while despite the obstacles presented by things like ‘new media’ and ‘colony collapse disorder’. “Being a beekeeper isn’t a good full time career” she explains, “unless you want to make a career out of being poor. But she doesn’t sound entirely convinced that poverty and bees have to travel hand in hand, and her eyes light up when she talks about doing more bee work.

After lunch, I ride Big Jim north towards Oakland, and I think about my friend the beekeeper and how happy she seems with her life and her jobs and her bees. I remember how excited she was when she first got her internship, and how hard she worked to turn it into a job. I remember her plans and how she thought her career would go, and how the bees seem to have thrown a happily unexpected twist into her plan. I think about how roads don’t always lead where we think they will even when we think we have thought of everything and that sometimes even when you aren’t looking for the perfect thing, the perfect thing comes along and find you anyway.

I’m running behind schedule as usual but thought I’d post a quick overview of the next few days. Highway 50 runs pretty much through the middle of Nevada, there are a few small towns and shops along the way but for the most part it is just empty highway through the desert. Its a great test – especially for a solo rider, and it will take about a week to cover it all. I may or may not be able to update the blog while I’m out as I don’t know what sort of wireless coverage I’ll have access to. I’m anticipating a beautiful week of quiet, heat, big sky, and some hills. Once I get into Utah I should be able to find a McDonalds and let you know how it went. Until then…

“Hey bro, does this road loop back around to your place or something?” I had arrived in Santa Cruz after an easy 45 mile spin from Salinas, (Where I took a much needed extra day off to check out the town and sleep) and my host suggested we go for a quick ride to check out the coast. He said it would be a thirty minute ride, it had already been 45.

“Jake!  Hold up.” I yelled again to the figure on the mountain bike half a block ahead of me.
“Yeah, man, what’s up?”
“Does this loop back around to your place?”
“No, we’ll go back the way we came, but I know a different way too if you want to check out the town.”
“You know we’re about 12 miles into this and I already did 45 today…”
“Really? Twelve? Man I had no idea, I just kinda ride ya know. Yeah we can head back if you want to – hey you want to stop for ice cream? I know this bitchin place, follow me.” And he was off like a shot, the bent back wheel on his department store mountain bike wobbling furiously as he darted in and out of traffic.
“Fuckin cycle salmon” I laughed to myself as he rode up the wrong side of the street. “Dude!” I yelled again. “You’re gonna die!” but he was already gone around a corner and I had to shift down and blow through the light to catch up.

The ice cream was worth it.

Laureles grade road is a 10% slope halfway in the middle of nowhere between Camel Valley Road and Highway 68 to Salinas. I am sick of the ocean and the headwind and want to visit my friend in Salinas; the trade off is that I have to climb Laureles.

So I do.

It’s hot. It’s steep. There are blind corners and no shoulders and not nearly enough turnouts along the way. I left the fog back in Carmel and can feel the sun starting to crisp my skin, so I pull as far to the side as I can under a tree and slather sunscreen on my head, my face, my arms, and my legs.

I resume climbing – grinding it out in low gear – the sweat and sunscreen burning my eyes.  After too few minutes I stop at a spot with a bit of a shoulder and finish off a bottle of water. A small truck pulls into the turnout across the street. A sticker on the side of it says “Monterey County SPCA”. A man and woman get out of the truck and I yell across the street to them.

“Hey, are you chasing something or letting something go?”
“We’re letting something go.” The man yells back.
“Can I watch?”
“Sure, come on over.”

So I do.

Inside the truck is a cardboard box with air-holes and inside the box is a young red shouldered hawk. The hawk found itself on the wrong side of a cat when it was very young, and the SPCA took it in, helped it heal, and taught it how to do hawk things. Today is freedom day.

The SPCA guy takes the box over to the side of the hill and opens it up.

Nothing happens.

“It’s stressful in the box” the SPCA guy says, “Sometimes even when you open it; it takes them a minute to remember they can fly.”

He gives the box a little shake.

Suddenly, in a bust of color and feathers h the young hawk flies from the box, soars out over the valley for a moment then turns and lands in a tree just a few dozen yards from where we are still standing. He stays there for a few minutes while we talk about hawks and the SPCA guy tells me that they always release the animals as close as they can to where they found them, but it is a bit of a risk reintroducing this one here. If he is still young enough, he won’t be seen as a threat and his parents will let him stay, but if he is too old, they’ll run him off and he’ll have to find his own hunting grounds. It seems that even for hawks you can’t always go home again.

The animal people leave and I resume my climb, grinding through the heat, counting my breath. At one point I get off and walk, pushing Big Jim up the hill beside me. Finally we make the crest, stop at the top for the obligatory pictures of the summit sign and the view of the Salinas valley, then find the big chain ring and roar down the hill letting Jim run out to 40 mph. I’m happy to be going off the map again, happy to get away from the ocean, happy to have had the good fortune to see the hawk, and looking forward to whatever is next.

The rest of the ride to Salinas is busy, flat, and fast road alongside big commercial farms.  I think I about the decision to make this trip. I think about the hills and the wind. I think about loss, I think about faith. Anticipation and doubt are my constant companions; I don’t know what all lies ahead of me. I know that the challenges I’ve faced so far have been small, that the real work lays hundreds or thousands of miles in the future. I’m eager to get there, anxious to look inside myself and face the test, and afraid of what I might find when I do.

Head down, sweat dripping from the end of my nose, I ride in the blazing late afternoon sun past fields full of growing things. Somewhere high above me a newly repaired hawk is finding his place in the world, while the question of Laureles grade follows me down the highway.

Am I chasing something or letting something go?

I awake with a start in my bivy sack in Big Sur State Park.  Someone – or some thing – is walking around very, very close to me. I hit the light on my watch – 4:30am and listen in the darkness – More scratching and walking – the sounds get closer and closer.

I carefully unzip my bag and peer into the darkness. Something smallish is rooting around by my bike less than four feet from where I’m laying. I let out a low growl like a dog but the creature is unfazed. This is a state park and it obviously assumes I have food and won’t mind sharing.

I do mind.

I fumble in my bag for my headlamp but I’ve left it on the bike. I grab my point-n-shoot camera instead. Turn it to ‘flash’ mode, point it in the general direction of the sounds and press the button.

The world goes white for a moment then black again. The scratching stops. I look at the back of the camera. This is not good. The scratching resumes and my mind races to all of the incidents I can remember – a roommates dog that fought a skunk under our house and lost nearly forcing us to move, Zidane the big black dog who fought with a skunk in Griffith park and lost, Q-dog and story of her skunk incident – and suddenly I’m very glad that I don’t have a dog with me. I also regret making dog sounds at the skunk.

“Go away skunk! I tell the skunk. Just go someplace else.” I can hear it still scratching around and I wonder if a skunk will eat a hole through my panniers to get at my powerbars. “Dude, seriously, man, go someplace else, go eat some berries or something.” The footsteps seem to move away, but I can’t be sure – it’s still so dark. I debate taking another picture – I know I shouldn’t risk pissing off the skunk but still… I listen in the night while the skunk walks around. Finally I can’t stand it anymore and I point the camera to where I think the steps are coming from.

I look at the back, see the skunk looking at me, and decide I won’t be a photographer anymore tonight.

“It’s okay, no more pictures.” I whisper to the skunk in the darkness.

It’s quiet for a minute then the footsteps resume and grow fainter eventually fading into the forest.

I roll over in my bag and go back to sleep.

A heavy fog smothers ragged point, snuffing out the sunrise, and muting colors. It would be a perfect morning to stay in my overpriced bed, to wake up late, to have a hot breakfast in the expensive restaurant.  But today is not a about sleeping late and having a lazy breakfast.

Today is about kicking ass.

I’ve got two big hills to climb and 50 miles until I reach the campground at Big Sur. I drop my key into the box outside the door of the hotel office, clip my flashing red light onto the back of my camel back, and give Big Jim a present – a forest green sticker in the shape of a highway sign. “California 1” it reads in bold white type, and below that, “Big Sur”.

“OK Jimmy, let’s go get our hills.” I tell him, and we spin up onto the road.

We get right into the climb as soon as we hit PCH and for the next few miles I turn the crank at a steady rate never switching out of low gear. We crest a minor summit about 800 feet tall, then drop back down to 500 feet before resuming the climb back up to about a thousand feet above the ocean. It’s still early and other than a single dump truck heading up to a construction site, not a single car passes. Big Jim responds to each turn of the crank, slowly, steadily carry me up the hill. I can hear the ocean off to the left and far, far below me, but the world itself ends in a cloud at the edge of the precipice. The ocean might as well be a figment.

At the top of my first big climb of the day I check my watch and smile. It’s only eight o’clock.

The Pacific Coast at big Sur is a beautiful sight, but I’ve seen it before and I’m happy for the fog, with nothing much to see, I stay focused on my job and after a big drop settle into my routine for the day – a couple miles of climbing followed by a couple miles of drops. I eat power bars and jolly ranchers and listen in the stillness for things stirring at the side of the road.

Just before Lucia on a downhill stretch I see a line of stopped cars at a construction site. I roll to the front of the line and ask the flagman if I need to wait too – sometimes they let cyclists roll through. He checks his radio and tells me I have to wait. Turns out, he’s a cyclist too and has toured the coast more than once. He asks why I’m going north at this time of year– everyone has this NEED to tell me that I’m going the wrong way, and we talk about places we’ve been, and places we want to go.

We talk about geology. He tells me that this portion of the road is being stabilized to try to minimize the effects of erosion “The big hill you’ll see to your left just up there a little ways is really part of a bigger hill up above us.” He tells me. “It just came down here about a hundred years ago, so it’s still really young and not very stable.”

His radio crackles and he talks into it, then turns to me and says, “You can go on ahead, I’ll hold the cars here till you’re through, the road is pretty chewed up so be careful.”  I push off, ease through the construction zone and fly down the hill on the other side. The first cars catch up to me when we reach sea level and I pull to the side to let them pass and watch the waves crash on the foggy beach. The second challenge of the day lies just ahead of me, a series of steps leading up to nearly a thousand feet above the ocean again before a long steady drop down to Big Sur State Park along the Big Sur River. The sun is starting to break through the marine layer.

About halfway up the climb a group of five cyclists pass by on the other side. “Wooooooo,” Yells one of them flashing me a thumbs up. “You’re an animal!” yells another. They are riding lightweight racing bikes with no camping gear laughing and joking with each other as they rush down the hill. Soon I pass more people – teenagers, kids, adults – on a variety of bikes from heavy mountain bikes to hybrids and racers. Some yell encouragement to me, some wave, and some seem to just be happy to be coasting after the climb they just endured. None of them have any gear, and we’re easily sixty miles from Carmel. Where the hell did they come from I wonder.

A few minutes later I get my answer. A big red pickup truck is parked at a turnout in a level spot on the hill, four bikes lay in its bed and it’s pulling a trailer loaded with camping gear, more bikes, and coolers. I cross the road and roll to a stop.

“Hey man, you want a powerbar or some water?” Asks the driver.
“Sure – you must be with that big group that just passed eh?”
“Yeah, it’s been a great trip so far, this hill wasn’t as bad as we expected, everyone made it over alright.”
“Where are you coming from?” I ask.
“San Francisco. We’re a Boy Scout troop, thought we’d take the kids down to Pismo, started training back in February.”

He hands me a brownie flavored Cliff Bar – one of my favorites – and we talk a bit more about touring, their equipment, SAG versus self supported touring, the training, and the trip.

Three more of their group ride slowly past us without stopping two adults on road bikes and a kid on what looks like a department store mountain rig.  “Are you the last ones?” the driver asks them.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You need a break? Some water? A powerbar?”
“No, no we’re good.”
The kid smiles wanly – the hill beat him up but he beat the hill. They disappear around a corner and I thank the man for the snacks and wish him and his group well. “Hey you too, man.” He says. “I can’t believe you’re riding north – the wind in the afternoon must be just brutal.”
“Yep. It is.”

Less than thirty minutes later, I’m above the marine layer where I’m treated to beautiful views of the coastline. A mile further and I settle into the drops and fly down the hill enjoying the rewards of a long day of climbing. I grab a burger and a lemonade at a restaurant, walk barefoot in the Big Sur River, and enjoy a leisurely ride through the  park before talking to a couple of other cyclists heading the other way and settling into camp for the evening.

I crawl into my bag as the light fades – tomorrow will be another big push and I want to make it out before the winds kick up around hurricane point. “I can do hills.” I think as I drift to sleep. “I can do wind. I’m strong, I’m fast…” It’s the endorphins talking, and two hundred miles to the east, the Sierra Mountains chuckle at my naivety.