Saddle Sore (1000 in 24)

I've been in physical therapy for the past couple of months for a herniated disc in my low back. When I told my PTA I was going on this trip, she raised her eyebrows and said, "Well that'll be a test of your back." I bought a back brace and lots of ibuprofen and Tylenol, and the PTA gave me some stretches to do at gas stops.

Our first stop was 145 miles in. My back was cramping, so I did some stretching and took some ibuprofen. After that the stops started to run together. 260 miles, 370, 470...I put gas in the bike every other (the joy of a huge tank), snacked, stretched, and took pain pills. I played with different riding positions and discovered that depending on where I rest my feet, I have a choice between back pain or knee pain. Infinitely preferable to being forced into one of the two.

At 600-something miles, Cider said, "So here's the deal... We can make Joliet tonight. We'll get there about 10:30 and have a little over 900 miles. But." He looked at me sideways. "Do you want to hit a thousand?"

I grinned. "You know I do."

He calculated the mileage and booked a hotel in Peru, IL. "That's it. We don't have a choice now. I'm going there, and I hope you're coming with me."

"Oh, I'll be there," I said. But I'd been feeling sleepy for the last fifty miles. "I never thought I'd say this, but can I have one of your Red Bulls?"

"Of course. There a cold one in the cooler."

I drank half, took some Tylenol, and we were back on the road.

Maybe twenty miles later, I started to feel strange. Tired, unsteady, and stupid. I wondered if the exhaust fumes were getting to me, and zigged back and forth in my lane, trying to position myself where I couldn't smell Cider's bike. I couldn't seem to control my speed, though, and I kept finding myself tailgating his trailer.

So this is what happens to me when road exhaustion sets in. I thought about stopping, but figured I should get as many miles done as I could while I still could, since I was probably just going to keep getting worse. Besides, the thought of stopping was actually terrifying. I could keep the bike going on the road, but when I imagined trying to do complicated things like take an exit and come to a stop, all I could picture was stumbling off the bike and dropping it on myself. So I rode on.

I was wondering how other bikers do it. Why was I more affected by the exhaust fumes than most other people? We overtook yet another tractor trailer, and as we went by, I saw it wobble and start to tip over. Alarmed, I scooted sideways to get away. Cider showed no sign of having noticed anything unusual, and as we completed the pass, I realized the truck was fine and the only problem was in my head.

Eventually we stopped for gas. "You ready for some dinner?" he asked.

"I'm ready to do something other than ride this damn bike," I answered.

"Me too," he agreed. But the diner we had found was closed for renovation, so after filling up the bikes, we hopped back on the road. Twenty miles further on, we hit a rest stop and actually had dinner. Even before we sat down, I was already feeling better. By the time I finished my stromboli, I was ready to ride again. In fifty more miles, my head was completely clear, and I realized it wasn't road fumes but in fact something about the Red Bull (possibly combined with the Tylenol) that had messed with my head. I swore not to drink any more, and was grateful I'd only had half the can.

Miles 600-700 weren't bad at all. By 900, I was cold, and by 970 I was sleepy again. I've never had a problem with being sleepy on a bike before, but I felt about ready to topple off into the road. I started singing to myself to keep my eyes open.

At mile 1010, we finally arrived at the hotel. We parked under the portico (something many hotels apparently allow bikers to do if you ask), grabbed our things, and wandered inside in a fog. At least, I was in a fog. I have a vague memory of taking a shower before falling face-first into the bed and passing out cold.

On the Road Again

After last year's success, I really wanted to go on the road again this year. Abel and I started planning a road trip, but broke up before it could happen. That same week, my friend Cider had posted a picture of his new bike all kitted out for touring in preparation for his yearly adventure to the West.

"Wish I was going with you!" I commented.

The reply came back, "So come along."

I laughed. Six days' notice to go on a cross-country road trip? "And if you're doing those crazy 800-mile days, I can't handle that," I said. Then I forgot about it.

The next evening, he messaged me to say hi, and picked up on the fact that I wasn't doing too well.

"You should come with me," he said.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, why not?"

I dismissed the idea, and five minutes later was figuring out what I'd need to pack.

I saw him the next day at one of our games, and he asked, "So how serious are you?"

"Yes," I answered. "Please. I need to get the hell out of Dodge." And with that I joined the adventure.

He asked if I wanted to borrow his extra bike, expressing some concern about the state of Hades. "I'd hate to leave you stranded in the middle of the country if yours breaks down," he said. "But, ya know, I will if I have to."

"Does this extra bike have a windshield?"

It turned out this extra bike not only has a windshield, but is brand new, with only 2000 miles on it, gets 50mpg in a 6.3 gallon tank, and has giant locking hard bags. I met up with him in the middle of the week to take it for a test ride.

"Why aren't you riding it?" I asked.

He looked sheepish. "Cuz it'll get me in trouble."

I was puzzled by that, at least until I drove it home. It wasn't until I saw blue lights that I realized I was doing 80 in a 50, down a twisty, hilly state route where I'd normally stick to 60. When I got home, I texted him: "I get it now. I'm gonna get in so much trouble on this thing."

It also has a very high seat and center of gravity, a long fork travel, and touchy brakes. I nearly dumped it while parking at work the next morning, but managed not to. I figured that with a little more time, the bike and I would become good friends.

Thursday night I packed, finding that all my things fit in the hard bags with room to spare (made easier by the fact that we weren't planning to camp). Friday morning at 6:15, he showed up in my driveway, as I was realizing that I'd misplaced my dog tag, the one I always wear while biking that has my emergency contact info on it. I gave up on it, locked the house, and realized my house keys were missing, too. I decided I'd worry about it when I returned. By 6:30 we were rolling out.

I noticed after I left the driveway that there wasn't as much gas in the tank as I thought, so I gestured at the gas station and pulled in. I was excited, jittery, and not focused, and I pulled up to the pump too fast and grabbed at the brakes. The next thing I knew, the bike was leaning hard left. I fought it with everything I had, but my leverage was wrong and down she went.

Cursing, I hit the kill switch and immediately started trying to walk her upright. Cider pulled in next to me and was parking when a stranger came running over from somewhere, grabbed the bike, and helped me pull it upright. I didn't even have time to thank him before he disappeared again.

"Fuck," I said to Cider, who was now standing next to me, grinning.

"You're okay," he said.

"Yup. I got that out of the way," I said, trying to hide how hard I was shaking. "We're done with that, now things can go right. Every jam is a new jam."

"Yup," he agreed.

"I swear I haven't done that before!" I said.

"It's okay," he told me.

I stopped blathering and put gas in the tank, then gave him directions to the highway. We pulled back into the street while I tried to ignore the voice in my head calling me a clueless, clumsy idiot.

We got on 91 and then 90, and he wedged himself into traffic in front of a tractor trailer. I saw the truck's brake lights come on and immediately lost him in traffic.

Well, I thought, Now we've each had our stupid moment. Hopefully we've used them up.

I darted around the cars clogging the entrance ramp area - that bike really does dart quite well - sped up, and found Cider ahead of the mess. I fell into formation behind him, and we were off into the great wide open.

Mileage Totals and Mapping Advice

Before setting out on this excursion, I made a fairly detailed plan - where I would sleep each night, how many miles I would ride and on which roads, and a list of possible things to do in each city.

Then I proceeded to ignore the plan almost completely. The only things that stayed the same were the people I was visiting and the states through which I drove. The atlas was an infinitely better resource than a stack of printed Google Maps, even when it occasionally directed me to a campsite that seemed not to exist.

It turned out my endurance was better than I had anticipated, so even after leaving three days late, I caught up to the plan by the time I reached Colorado. Here are the final mileage calcuations for each day, and the total trip.

Day 1: Home to the Catskills, NY (114 miles)
Day 2: to Pittsburgh, PA (428 miles)
Day 3: to Indian Lake State Park, Avondale, OH (273 miles)
Day 4: to Kankakee River State Park, Bourbonnais, IL (316 miles)
Day 5: to Cedar Rapids, IA (313 miles)
Day 6: to Pammel State Park, Winterset, IA (226 miles)
Day 7: to Holdrege, NE (353 miles)
Day 8: to Littleton, CO (377 miles)
Day 9: around Boulder, CO (125 miles)
Day 10: to Pine, CO (38 miles)
Day 11: around Pine and Denver, CO (92 miles)
Day 12: to Rocky Mountain State Park (223 miles)
Day 13: to Conejos, CO (298 miles)
Day 14: to Las Vegas, NM (218 miles)
Day 15: to Sterling City, TX (620 miles)
Day 16: to Austin, TX (270 miles)
Day 17-18: 0 bike miles
Day 19: to Tyler, TX (334 miles)
Day 20: to Winnfield, LA (210 miles)
Day 21: to Marathon Lake State Park, Forest, MS (315 miles)
Day 22: to Piney Grove Campground, New Site, MS (272 miles)
Day 23: to Nashville, TN (190 miles)
Day 24: to Morehead, KY (309 miles)
Day 25: to Pittsburgh, PA (351 miles)
Day 26: 0 bike miles
Day 27: to Salt Springs State Park, Montrose, PA (363 miles)
Day 28: to home (243 miles)

Grand Total: 6,871 miles in 25 riding days, for a daily average of 275 miles.

Why an atlas and not a GPS? Firstly, because many, many places along my route lacked cell reception. And secondly, because of this:

It knew where Planet Fitness was. It dropped me in the middle of that mobile home park in the bottom right corner and told me I had arrived at my destination. What?

Salt Springs to Home

I awoke at dawn, wishing I could have a little more sleep, and crawled out of my tent...to realize that it was a brilliant moon casting all that light, and it was still the middle of the night. I crawled back in and went back to sleep.

The next time I woke, the sun was really up. I packed up my tent, sucked down some coffee, and hit the road. There were no bars of cell, so I hadn't checked in the night before, and I stopped near Binghamton, NY to let home know that I was alive and check the atlas. I texted Abel and suggested he ride Kestrel out to meet me so we could ride home together.

There was a giant cloud settled over Binghamton, and the riding became damp and foggy. I got on I88 east and rode back out into the sun, and then into another cloud bank in the next valley. I stopped for warmer gloves and then moved on.

At a gas station in Oneonta, where I picked up 23 from I88, I finally ate the peppermint Luna bar I'd brought from home. The first one got eaten on the first day, the second one on the last day. I should've called them Peppermint Parenthesis Bars.

Route 23 was gorgeous, but I already knew that, having taken some of it nearly a month ago in the other direction. I had some spotty recognition of a few sights, but it may as well have been new until I reached Great Barrington. A text from Abel told me where he was waiting, and I pulled into a parking lot and up beside Kestrel. I'd nearly forgotten what she looked like.

We hugged for so long that a woman gardening in the plaza said, "You two aren't married, are you?" I just stared at her, baffled, until she said, "You wouldn't be kissing if you were."

I let Abel lead, since as of that moment he had done 90 miles on a bike ever and I didn't want to lose him in traffic. Kestrel has also been displaying some shutting-down-while-riding issues, and we had to stop a couple of times to coax her into going again.

That ride was not the best of the trip, and it had nothing to do with a problem bike or a new rider. I was worried about going home. I'd stopped missing home somewhere in Iowa, and that fact had me concerned that I would never want to be there again, and that the homecoming process would be a terribly awkward series of interactions that would have me moving my things out of the house in short order.

Coming home from a big trip to people who have not been on a big trip is strange. When Sheila asked me if it was good to be home, I wasn't sure what to say. "No" is not right but "yes" is not quite right either. It's a pinch of everything, like seasoning soup. It'll be nice having company whenever I want it, and real homecooked food, and a shower every day. It'll be annoying sometimes having company even when I don't want it, and other people to factor into my decisions, and people depending on me to complete random tasks that I'll procrastinate on or forget about entirely. I'm looking forward to giving my clutch hand and my eardrums a rest. I'm sad to lose my new dusk-to-dawn sleep cycle. Talking to other people instead of myself will make me feel a bit less insane. Losing the subtle rhythms of life on the road will be impossible to explain or prevent but somehow unpleasant.

It was awkward at first, but some chatting, a shower, and some dinner helped smooth it out. I neither attempted to leave nor got kicked out. Abel opened the box of things I'd mailed home from Louisiana, and I gave him and Sheila the souvenirs I'd picked up for them, and showed off the ones I'd found for myself. I unpacked a good number of my things, spread them all over the house that was clean when I arrived, and then had to clean up the mess I made. Some of the things are still on the bike, because I wasn't all that inspired to deconstruct the last month of my life in one night. One of the weirder nice things about living in a minimalist fashion is that I never misplaced anything. Now that I live in a house again, I'll be regularly searching for objects that have gone walkabout. Perhaps if I get rid of some objects I can minimize the problem. That should be an easier task now that I've successfully lived without almost all of them for significant length of time.

...to Salt Springs

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, leaving a biker bar after lunch in Cross Forks. I took 144 to route 6 east, and by the time I was in Wellsboro, the sleepiness had really set in. I debated getting a coffee, but decided I'd rather be sleepy now than awake at 2am.

I attempted to camp at Mount Pisgah State Park, but in my tiredness had misread my map, and they didn't have camping. I moved on to Wyalusing, stopped for gas, and was about to set off for the next campsite when I saw a bike loaded for touring parked at the bar across the street.

I moved Hades into the next space and went inside. At the bar, I found a couple with helmets, and asked if that was their bike. They said yes. I sat down and ordered a hard cider, and we got to bike talking. They were from Michigan, on their way to see the east for the first time, having already seen a lot of the western and central parts of the country.

I said I was camping, and they said they had attempted to camp the night before but didn't know what they were doing and were now looking for a motel. I wondered what knowledge they had come up lacking but didn't get a chance to ask. Questioned about my origin, I was about to explain that the western and eastern parts of Massachusetts are quite different when the woman interrupted me and said, "Boston! Why don't you sound black?"

"Ah, you mean, why don't I have a Boston accent?" I asked.

"Yeah, that!" She was very enthusiastic, but perhaps not as bright as many other people.

I again started to explain that the western part of the state is not the eastern part, and she talked over me. The conversation turned to milage, and the guy suddenly looked like he wanted to hide.

"How many miles have we done today?" she asked him. He mumbled. "It's at least a hundred," she said, laughing.

"I'd like to make a hundred today," he said to his beer, looking guilty.

"Are you kidding me!" she said, punching him lightly in the arm. "Don't fuck with me."

I didn't mention my own mileage, since he seemed to have decided that I was there to challenge him. In thirty seconds they had picked up their things, and he said he was going to look at my bike. I would've gone with him, but couldn't pay my tab and finish my cider in time, so I just stayed. It didn't seem like a conversation worth chasing.

I camped in the boonies that night, up route 706 in Salt Springs State Park. The campsite was lovely, right next to a stream, under a tree, with a fire ring. I had a roaring campfire for only the third time since I've been gone. It seemed a fitting end to a wonderful trip, and I went to sleep grateful that I had decided to camp one more night and not force myself to drive home from Pittsburgh in one day.

Pittsburgh to a Soapbox

Driving into the sun still feels strange. I programmed myself to go west when I started out, and apparently it stuck. I have to remind myself to put on my dark goggles in the morning now, instead of changing into them in the afternoon.

I buzzed out of Pittsburgh on 22, stopping at a Sheetz to get coffee and inspect the atlas. A passing biker asked me if I was lost, and I realized that sitting at a table with an open map, a phone, and my head in my hands probably made me look exactly that.

"No, just tired," I said with a smile. "Thanks." The no-sleep-in-Nashville situation was still wearing on me; this was my second coffee of the morning.

From 22, I took 53 north to 144 north, and stopped in Cross Forks for lunch. Everyone at Deb's was very friendly, including a pair of bikers at the bar, one of whom was a woman. She was only the second lady biker I've talked to in an entire month on the road, which blows my mind. She said her experience of other lady bikers is that most of them aren't friendly. She and Isabella were both wonderful, and they are the complete extent of my experience with female strangers operating motorcycles.

I've had lots of people, both men and women, say things like, "I'd be too scared to do that!" when I tell them about my trip. I've had several friends and relatives say they're proud of me for what I'm doing. I've gotten many, many comments along the lines of, "By yourself?!" and "On that?!"

I don't honestly understand what's so difficult about this project. Leaving home was the hardest part. Everything else, in comparison, has been cake. It doesn't require months of planning. It doesn't require thousands of dollars. It doesn't require four weeks of vacation; you can have an awesome experience in a few days. I just chose to make it longer because I had the opportunity.

In that same vein, I don't understand why more women don't ride motorcycles. There is no reason that biking should be a man's world. You don't have to be able to bench 200 pounds to ride a bike (I can't). You don't have to spend an assload of money to own one (I didn't). You really don't need to be special in any way to get a motorcycle license, get on a bike, and go on the road.

It makes me wonder what this fear-mongering in society is trying to accomplish. People love to tell dark stories, but what's it doing to us on a large scale? It's killing the adventurous spirit. It's killing our willingness to see and learn new things, to meet new people, to have new experiences. It's taking away that which could make us a more peaceful society: meeting each other. In person. Face to face, not over the internet.

If you are even slightly interested in going on a trip, do it. Get out there. You don't have to go today, but if you don't take a step toward it today, how will you ever get there?

People will tell you all kinds of awful things in advance. They'll say you won't make it. That you'll get run over in traffic, eaten by a bear, and mugged by a criminal. Possibly all at once. They will raise their eyebrows, waiting for you to come crawling home in pieces, admitting that your venture was ill-conceived.

It was not. Sure, something bad may happen. Take reasonable precautions. Ride with care and carry some pepper spray and a backup phone. But don't stay home. Approximately 99.9% of the hundreds of people I met were wonderful, and even the .1% didn't present big problems for me.

Most of the people I spoke to seemed worried about all the other people. You know who wasn't worried? The long-distance bikers. They already had the experience to have learned otherwise. They didn't say, "Oh my god, you're doing what?" They said, "Ride safe."

The awful crap on the news every day has corrupted us into thinking that the world is a horrible place. It's easy to forget that the news media's job is to sensationalize, and that the stories they show us are news precisely because they are rare events. "Man Wishes Woman Well at Gas Station" wouldn't get them any viewers.

Doubt me? Check your confirmation bias. Stop looking for evidence that people are horrible and start looking for examples that they're awesome. You'll find it. You'll find more than you know what to do with. I promise.

Pittsburgh, Round 2

I'm back in the northeast, at cousin Carl's place in Pittsburgh. I've now officially made a full loop. It's strange to know I'm this close to home again; within 500 miles. It doesn't feel like it's been nearly a month.

Carl, Alisia and I went to breakfast this morning at the Square Café, which oddly enough is decorated mostly with circles.

After brunch, we dropped Carl off at work, and Alisia showed me some of her favorite places in the city. She has memberships to the Phipps botanical garden and the Carnegie museums, and with some quick walking, we managed to see quite a bit before picking up Viv from her first day of preschool.

All of us were tired by dinner time, so we ate and hung out and looked at my trip photos before going to bed at an entirely reasonable hour.