On the Road Again (with a friend)

After a week of making and eating good food and fixing bikes, I am on the road again.  I am joined by my friend Alexander , who will be with me the rest if the trip.  We followed the Blue Ridge Parkway north for 100 miles, and went up some serious uphills, but in reward we had stunning views and some spectacular downhills.  We are now cutting northwest meet up with the TransAmerican Trail.

Warm Showers

Last night, for the first time, we made use of an online site called WarmShowers.  It is a network built by and for cyclist, where people can offer up their house with the promise of at least a warm shower.  For Alexander and my first time, we got significantly more than that.  On the site you can see where there are houses in your area, and call or email to see if they are available.  We found the house of a woman called Stephanie, and she was happy to host us for the night.  When we pulled in, we learned that Stephanie was actually about a week away, having biked from CA toward her home since May.  Her housemate, Sherri, was happy to host us in her stead.  She told us to come on in, put our clothes in the wash, and think about what we wanted for dinner while taking a shower.  When we came out we found a table with fruit, delicious bacon-wrapped chicken and pepper, and chips with guacamole.  Pizza was later added to the mix.  We chatted and ate, and Sherri mentioned that she had a hot tub.  Our eyes widened. 

We slept in a bed that night, and woke up to find coffee, and travel snacks arranged on the table.  We left early in the morning after much thanking and cheer.  It was our first time using Warm Showers, but I don't know if we can ever top that experience.

A good meal under any terms

Thoughts on Fancy Gear

I am riding my Grandpa's bike, with my Grandpa's panniers.  This has earned me not a few whistles of surprise and admiration, and perhaps a few raised eyebrows that say "and you are still alive?"  For all that, it is a good bike that wears its years well, perhaps better for being built before carbon fiber was a thing- back when durability was the watchword of the bike industry.  But that does not stop me from covetously eying the all-systems-integrated carbon fiber heavy-as-a-butterfly bicycles in the windows of the bike shops I pass.  I myself converted my pedals to clipless and am trying to find a cheap way to convert my shifters from drop tube to bar end.

It can be hard to tell when you are being manipulated by popular opinion, and not following your own values and logic.  To be honest, I did not have any problems with my former pedals and cages.  I could wear whatever shoes I wanted, and slip in and out of them with ease.  But I had heard that clipless was the way to go- it would put my feet in just the right place, I would pedal more efficiently, and a myriad of other convincing and enticing reasons.  I admit, it is nice to snap in to my pedals, and I do find myself pulling up as well as pushing down, but the score for falling down before and after these fancy pedals is as follows.  Cages: 21 days, 0 falls.  Clipless: 3 days, 4 falls.  Alexander tells me this is just because I am new to them, but for the sake of both my wallet and my elbows, I am going to pay special attention from now on what advancements I hear about and then want, and what advancements I Viaduct
 could to be done before I realized someone else already thought of it. 

The following images are me trying to cycle circles around Alexander going uphill, only to eat it because I was clipped in.  The other times I fell were valid, though.

 

So far I have gone 1444.8 miles, and I am writing this from the Watauga Public Library, in Boone, NC.

Recent highlights:

• Stopping for lunch at Christa's, a little deli off the parkway and having one of the best sandwiches of my life.
• Bombing a four-mile hill at 35mph past gorgeous vistas
• Exploring the Craft Center outside of Boone, and convincing Alexander to buy the most beautiful mug.
• All the overlooks on the parkway, especially off the Viaduct
• The holy grail of dumpster finds: semi-frozen ice cream, and loads of it

My First Rest

I made it to Asheville!
It took me 21 days, and 1300 miles.

I am currently staying at my friend Xenia's house near Warren Wilson College, indulging in food and friends.  I will be here for a week, and then hop on my bike again and head west.  This initial southern journey was sort of a test run, a shake-down cruise, to see if the rest of the trip would be possible.  I know that it definitely is, and even as waves of soreness catch up to me even after three days of rest I am excited to get back to cycling.

I will be riding with my friend Alexander Blume for the rest of the trip, and he is a great writer/editor so maybe I can get him to contribute words here.  No large stops are planned for the rest of the trip, but we will visiting as many people as we can between here and California.

The most picturesque spot at all of Wilson.

I didn't give myself a zero day until I arrived here, so my plans for the week include relaxing, delighting in food, showering, seeing friends, and modifying my bike to make it clipless and add bar-end shifters.  Also, Alexander is a big planner so he is making me figure out what the future looks like a little more.  We even have a rough itinerary now.  

An odd thing happened to me when I went for a walk with my friend Xenia earlier.  We went for a two mile loop or so, and halfway through it, as we were descending into a slight valley, I had the distinct impression that I was in fact going uphill.  I love it when my brain misfires like this, and try to analyze what I am feeling.  The impression persisted despite looking closely at the slope and verifying that I was going down.  I stopped moving so as to put my whole mind to the sensation, and then it hit me.  I have not had to work to go downhill in over three weeks.  Normally I just stop moving and pick up speed, but this time I distinctly wasn't.  The feeling lingered, a vague niggling in the back of my mind, for the rest of the walk.

Also, since I got my resupply box, I can upload some of the photos that were on my camera since the beginning.  These span my trip so far.

The first day! Dipped my rear tire in the Atlantic

Helen, my riding partner for the first three days

Our not-very-impressive 'America-by-memory's

On more reason not to trust Google Maps Bicycle Beta (this is a road)(this is also a pond)

Biking with my Triathal-aunt

Trying out other approaches

Visiting DC

Traveling solo through beautiful lands

A Poem

I like to make up stories
About people
Based on their trash by the side of the road.


All
Of my characters
Are drunk.

Say Yes

In improv, one important trick to making a good scene with someone else is to always say 'yes.'  It keeps the scene moving, the action flowing, the energy high.  Saying 'no,' is a stop sign, a flat tire.

The same is true in life, which in all ways is one big improv scene.  I want this journey of mine to be full of surprises and interesting encounters, and saying yes despite internal objections (besides personal safety issues) helps accomplish this goal.  I realized this desire when I screwed up early on.  Somewhere in Massachusetts I stopped for water at a house with an English flag.  A pleasant woman with an English accent answered the door, and showed me where to fill my bottles.  She was one of those magical few that left the sheltering fortress of her door frame and came out to talk to me.  Kind, if a bit spacey, she offered me fruit as well.  Like a polite fool I declined and thanked her for the much needed gift of water.  Walking away, I kicked myself for turning down kindness.  I had to remind myself that she would not have offered if she wasn't happy to give.  I tend to not want to impose or cause a fuss with others, preferring to find my own way than bother someone else, doubting other's honest willingness to give/share time.

Many days and several states later, I was studying my maps in Virginia when two cyclists stopped to chat.  Their names were Dan and David, they lived in the nearby town of Ashland.  After hearing my plans they invited me for a beer after they finished their ride.  This time I accepted.  Dan told me of a place in town called Ashland Coffee and Tea, and we went our separate ways.  Hours later we reconnected, and after a beer and great conversation, they took me out to dinner where Dan treated me and David, and we shared stories of cycling and beyond.  They were both awesome guys who knew everyone in town.  I am constantly astonished and grateful about how open some people are to share their lives, and connect even if only for a few hours.  We had fun, it kept all of our plots interesting and new, and it's all because we kept ourselves in the yes-space.  This was the first time I really interacted with locals for longer than it takes to fill up water, and I hope it happens much more.

I'm off the Adventure Cycling route now, making my own way over to Asheville, NC.  I've decided to not take the Blue Ridge Parkway the whole way over, remembering that the Blue Ridge contains some massive hills.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So far I have gone 1124.0 miles (over 1000!) and am writing this at the Kernersville Branch Library in North Carolina.

Highlights of the last few days:

• Meeting up with my friend Elena Malkov in Richmond, VA
• Finding myself back in blackberry country.
• Sending off my sleeping bag and rain gear in order to lose weight an reclaim pannier space.
• Hopping a fence to get into a waste water treatment area after Google Maps took me 10 miles down a no-outlet trail, then having to quickly unload my bike and push everything under a chain link fence with barbed wire on top in order to get out to the road.  Note to self: don't trust google maps' bike routes.
• Darklight: finding a whole crate of unripe peaches in a dumpster and only being able to take a few.  If only my mom had been around, she would have a field day canning them.

For those of my relatives who have expressed concern that I will waste away on this trip, I just measured myself on the scale that they oddly enough have in this library and I have neither gained nor lost a single pound.

I didn't really take any action shots this time around, but here are a few animal close-ups on trail.

A Graph of Days

Here is a graph of my daily mileage and average speed in mph.  

I know I misspelled mileage on it, and the axis aren't labeled, but this took a long time to just figure out how to get this graph on here.  If anyone knows a way to get an editable graph on the side of this blog where the Blog Archive is, I would love to hear it.  Ideally I could simply add more data into a table every time I came to a computer, and the graph would update and remain on the front page, on the side.

Tough Guy

I'm a pretty tough guy.  There isn't much in the woods that frightens me besides bears, humans, trees falling on my tent, moose stepping on me as I sleep, those frog people from the Nathaniel Cade series, monsters from bogs, evil things from corn fields, zombies, werewolves, dogs, choking on food when I'm alone, big vehicles passing me on my bike, "kind" strangers poisoning the water I ask for, humans wearing masks, that lady from The Ring, murky water, those undead people from the Goosebumps show I saw when I was 10, boarded up houses, and any other scary things I have ever read or seen on TV.

I was going to use this post to then talk about how lightning scares me the most, but having just made this list, that is not true.  So instead of talking about lightning, I'll talk about fear.

I deal with all these fears through a combination of preparation, denial, fatalism/bravado, and a bit of common sense.  (The only constant preparation I have is an emergency road flare I found, to use against bears if they come snuffling around my tent at night [this method is not commonly recommended]).  I go out across the country, alone, despite all of these fears because the flip side of having an overactive imagination is seeing extra beautiful things in daily life.  I won't make a similar list as to above so you don't all think I'm daft, but I chose to accept more than I see/hear/touch.  This isn't religion.  It's my life, and I'm choosing to make it magical.  

Midwest? No, Pennsylvania!


I finally made a century!  First one ever! 104.1 miles.  Like most of my day what happens to me these days, it was unplanned and unexpected.
So what goes into a century day?  Is it all focus, getting up early, driving hard and taking few breaks?  Not at all.  I average about 11 mph (nothing tremendous) and so all it takes is 9 hours of pedaling.  When I think that I wake up from 7-9am and pull into camp from 7-9pm, it seems like it should be a cinch, even with lunch.  I can't explain this.  For some reason, 50 miles often finds me looking for camp around dusk.  So what went into this century day?  Eating pints of wineberries because the bushes are absurdly bountiful.  Stopping for a wrap and ice cream at the best store in the world- Jarrettsville Creamery.  The picture below is a small ice cream cone.  It's bigger than it looks.  Getting stuck under a tiny porch in an abandoned house in a lightning storm for an hour.  Realizing I have gone 70 miles already and was feeling great pedaling through the steady downpour.  Refusing to look at the odometer for just a few more miles and then cracking an checking, only to see that I was at 99.74 miles! Triumphantly watching 99.999 tick into 100.00.  Looking for camp in the dark because I pushed myself to go into late dusk, and eating a celebratory veggies stew with pepperoni.

This is one of the biggest ice creams I
have ever had the pleasure of eating



Free veggies from the Kimberton CSA, and pepperoni!


















So far I have gone 776.3 miles, and I'm at the Prince William Public Library in Virginia.

Highlights of the last few days:

• Hanging out at the Landowne's farm in PA
• Buying ice cream for myself because I'm an adult and I can make these choices
• Darklight: the sky opening seconds before I can get the fly on my tent and everything I have developing puddles... then realizing in my haste that I set up on top of brambles and poison ivy)
• Zooming around Washington DC in the rain.  I got a good picture with me in front of a not broken down Parthenon (take that, brother who is in Europe!)(the Lincoln Memorial) but I can't figure out how to upload pictures from my regular camera.
• The Dunkin Donuts lady adjacent to the laundromat giving me free donuts because they were old.
• Being only one state away from my rendezvous with riding partner Alexander Blume at Warren Wilson College!



The Things He Carried

The Things He Carried
And the thoughts he had about some of them.

• Helmet
• Bike Shorts
• Bike Shirt
• Sleeping Bag Liner- This thing is awesome.  I haven't used my sleeping bag yet, but I use this every night and it is teeny and weights nothing.
• Down Jacket
• Sleeping Bag- Insurance.  I haven't needed it, but I am scared to get rid of it in case I do.
• Tent 
• Tent Poles
• Thermarest- I have never had a blow-up pad before.  They are so comfortable, it's incredible.
• Biking Shoes
• Crocs
• Sweater- Will not keep
• Zip-off Pants
• Wool t-shirt- Have I ever told you how much I like the Stoic wool t-shirts?  They are thin so be careful, but they are awesome.
• Rain Pants
• Rain Coat
• Med Kit- no need so far, knock on wood.
• Hygiene Stuff
• Embroidered Stuff Sack
• Running Shorts
• Wool long top
• Bandanna
• Socks (2)
• Sharpening Stone
• Camera- redundant to The Oracle, without a good way of getting photos off of it onto any computer.  Will not keep.
• Phone- The Oracle.  It's like a magic box of cheating, with a map that has a dot where I am, or a internet browser, camera, or directions to the nearest bike store.
• Charging Battery- This thing is also magic.  It holds the special food for the Oracle so it can work for me for three times as long without dying.
• Headlamp
• Wallet- great for buying ice cream and new books.  Oh, and also food.
• P-cord
• Cook Kit
• Bike Repair Kit
• Knife
• Watch- I haven't seen this thing since the first day. I forgot I had it.  I wonder if I still have it.
• Books- "The Prophet" and a Journal

Day Ten-

I repent my earlier hubris- mosquitoes are the true rulers of the unclaimed lands.  This truth is thrown in my face every single night as I lie in overheated exasperation, locked away in my tent.  Too much has already been written about these barbarians, but in my life- they force me to withdraw to my tent rather than take time to draw what I see.  They make me think twice about whether I cook dinner or just eat my quinoa raw.  And last but not least, the make this page dificult to transcribe onto a computer because I am too busy sscratching.  That said, I still find myself in beautiful locations every night, whether forest or field.

A Story:
Yesterday, I tried to cycle a new record for myself, and top 100 miles.  This is called a century day (or some such language, I haven't seen enough other cyclists [two] to get the lingo down) and my record so far has been 89 miles.  This day was going well, including a stop for ice cream, and a perusal of a library in my brother's college town.  I have been seeing less and less blackberries, but fortunately I have been moving into wineberry country, a treat I have not had before.  At mile 70, however, my rear tire started to go flat, slowly.  It has a tendency to do so, so I ignored it for the time.  I felt the press of time and so I began passing by things I would normally stop for- interesting skeletons, deer sightings, and good berry patches  Then I realized I had left my maps at a water stop two miles back.  At the same time as I retrieved the maps, my front tire deflated.  Deflated myself, and wet, I decided this day was not the day to make a century, and I found a decent campsite next to a tractor-trailer loading facility.  It was a wet camp, but it had a great wineberry selection.  I decided that the world had stepped in to slow me down, and force me to eat berries.  I complied.

The next day I worked to patch both tires, only to have both valves break at the seam to the tube through some yet unknown error of mine or simply age.  I still had my spare, but for those of you unfamiliar with bicycles, they necessitate two wheels.  I sat for a while by the road, before resigning myself start walking my bike on the one wheel to a bike shop in Frenchtown, 10 miles away, and hope someone with a pick-up would give me a ride.  I did find some nice folks in a car, but they were also broken down, waiting for AAA.  We consoled each other for a while before a very nice cyclist named Peter swung by and gave me an extra tube.  I am constantly amazed by the  interest and generosity of people once you get them out of their cars or homes.

Looking out over the Delaware

On My Phone:
I still think that it is unbelievable that I can be in my tent outside Nowhereville, PA in a thunderstorm and can check my email.  For those of you who didn't see in a picture I haven't figured out how to put up yet, I brought with me a smartphone, whose intellect has cause me to dub it "The Oracle."  It is my wee scrying glass into the technological world, and when thunder crashes overhead and I am dry but for the grace of nylon.  I can see some of my wilderness teachers shaking their heads if they knew, bit I can see others saying "yeah, use what you've got!"  This trip isn't meant to be like the others, adventures into wilderness.  This journey is me trying to figure out how I can live simply, carefully, without abandoning other parts of who I am.  Both times I did the Kroka Vermont Semester, as a student and as an instructor, I put my outside life on hold.  I want to experiment with integrating two (apparently) disparate parts of my being.  So there is another reason for this trip.  I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of paragraphs on this blog will turn out that way.

So far I have gone 460 miles, and I'm at the New Hope Library in Pennsylvania.

In other news, the last few days' highlights:

• Talking with Peter, a retired German man from South Africa who has cycled over 50k miles, and was travelling from Florida to Maine.  
• Seeing a black bear in a corn field
• Seeing more fawns in a day than I have in the rest of my life.
• Eating wineberries for the first time!

There is a sense of owning the world.  I stop where I want, eat where I will, and sleep in field or forest at my leisure.  I am the king of unclaimed places.  Instead of having a decreased sense of place with this nomadic life, my own space in the world has become more at ease.  I enjoy blackberries along the road, fill up water at kind houses, and electricity at outdoor outlets.  Every 25 miles or so there is another town with its library and grocery store and people, with lives.  I have listened to the old squeaky librarian here in Amenia chortle about a picture of a bear in a swimming pool asking "where are the fish?" and had kind strangers offer me fruit and advice, or just want to talk.  Despite travelling solo I am not alone; I am the king of unclaimed spaces, but I travel often.

And I suppose with this first real post I should say where I am going, so we all know.  I am doing this journey because I want to see the west, and I don't want to drive there.  I want to travel and see the world, but not through a window.  I love to travel under my own power (see the name of this blog), and biking has a sense of speed (relatively), power, and freedom which I love.  Currently I am making my way south on Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast Trail (the yellow one) toward Asheville, NC.  When I get down there, hopefully in late July, I will continue with my friend/former roommate Alexander Blume on the TransAmerica Trail (the orange one).  Below, there should be a rough google map of my intended route.
Yes, I know I'm going the wrong way, but you know what- local wind is determined by local geography, whereas the jetstream determines larger weather patterns.

In other news, the last few days' highlights.

• Biking with friends the first few days of my trip after dipping our tires and selves in the Atlantic.
• Eating delicious food and relaxing with my aunts and uncles in MA and CT
• Getting smoked one ride by my aunt Nancy as she preps for her Ironperson race.
• Camping in a beautiful field with blackberries, far from humanity.
• Finding three grapefruits and two bags of grapes in a dumpster.
• Talking with a biker who traveled California to Florida, and is now headed up to Maine.
• Taking the time to write this blog.

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped or tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass though doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. 
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and silences of night.

Kahlil Gibran