The Relationship

The evolution of this trip has been a long affair, hatched first in the primordial soup of our touring-addled brains several years ago. From the beginning, this was to be a tandem sojourn, Jodi and I and the faithful hound, Django, riding across the country, having a great big old epic adventure. But the direction of evolution cannot usually be predicted, and so it was with my trans-continental dreams.

Unlike many long distance cyclists, I am married, with a home, a job, settled in some very conventional ways. I am not a student between colleges or fresh off the stage with a newly minted degree. I'm not hanging in the abyss between jobs or careers. What the hell am I doing taking off for three to four months by myself? How does such a thing happen? Have I been served with divorce papers, or is that my desire upon my return? Fortunately, none of these apply, but the path has not been without its obstacles, pot holes, flat tires and headwinds. It seems important to me to address this more personal aspect of how a long journey comes to be.

Jodi's career as a holistic nutritional consultant has been growing like a summer squash on steroids. Besides advancing her education beyond a basic master's, she has been doing a lot of writing for Bauman College and working closely with its founder and her mentor, Ed Bauman. And she loves it. She's good at what she does and wants to develop her knowledge and connections. She simply does not want to leave while everything is developing so wonderfully. Who can blame her? But what about the tour, our journey? She said that I should go alone. Hmmm.... Well, okay, I could do that, I guess.

But simple sounding resolutions are rarely so. When I began obsessing a bit more about the trip, planning, posting questions on line, starting this blog, I could really feel Jodi getting upset as the reality of our separation began to set in. Her natural resentment at my departure, envy at my impending adventure, home duties she would have to face mostly on her own while I was out having "fun"--all these came boiling to the surface on more than one occasion. She would be in tears, I in mute anxiety, wondering, in my typical, klutzy male fashion, how to deal with this overflow of emotions.

At one point, I decided that I would not do the TransAm. I'd do something shorter, plan a couple of trips, one solo, one with Jodi. That would be great, of course. I could live with that. Compromise, right? A good thing. But a splinter was lodged in my brain, festering. I'd dumped a dream. Something in me, deep inside, needed to try this, no matter the risk of failure. I walked with Django on the steep mountainside above our home and stared out over the valley. Could I let this go? Would my life be complete? Can Jodi and I work through this? After all the planning, time invested so I could take a leave of absence from work, I just couldn't let go.

Ever since becoming a mountaineer and rock climber in my mid-teens, I've been drawn to big dreams and plans, adventures that pushed me in deep, meaningful ways. El Capitan, Half Dome, peaks in the USA and Canada, I found the best moments of my life, times of such burning intensity and joy that I cannot imagine a life without them. And many of these times were with Jodi. But I never did take that really big expedition to the Himalayas or the Andes. I never felt what it was like to push over 20,000 ft. In a way, that particular kind of dream has morphed into this continental crossing, a ride of ridiculous length and scope. As Werner Herzog, author of Annapurna, said, "There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men." I will never climb an 8,000 meter peak, but this ride is my Annapurana. I can only hope that I have the good luck, physical attributes and determination to see it through--although I would like to keep my fingers and toes, which were lost to Herzog after he achieved the summit of his desires.

So I went back to Jodi and said, "I don't think I can give this up. I need to ride across the country." She understood, but the understanding comes with pain, the knowledge of a separation longer than we've ever known--and this pain and worry is mine, too. I don't shrug off her concerns easily and delight in my own "escape." Besides some physical breakdown that would nullify my dream, my greatest worry is leaving her, the woman of my life, the only one I've got or will ever need. I imagine some moments, stopped in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, really needing her by my side, wanting her input, intelligence and good sense of humor. I suspect that such moments will provide some genuine challenges, maybe the toughest. I try to rationalize my feelings and wonder if such contortions work for Jodi: It's ONLY a few months--not the rest of our lives. We can both work through this...blah, blah, blah.

But still the emotions sit there, staring back at us, creatures often deaf to the prattle of our rational selves. As Jodi has taught me, however, we have to let the feelings run their course. We will be okay, of course. We just have to let our emotional selves get used to the idea.

Train of Thought

I recently helped my mother move into her new home in western Sonoma County, California. Because my wife, Jodi, had to leave early to attend to responsibilities in the southern part of the state where we live, I remained behind to help unload boxes and get my mom settled. Dozens and dozens of boxes, mountains of wrapping paper, sore muscles from lifting, pushing, dragging the acquisitions of a life into a semblance of order left me plenty tired. I found myself looking forward to the train ride back south, only the third time I would ride the rails, a sad but probably common statement in this, the land conquered by the automobile.

The morning of my departure, I heaved my duffel up into the bus that would carry me to the bay-side town of Martinez where I would connect with my train. A cool breeze cut across the bay and through the terminal as I boarded at last for the five hour ride down to Bakersfield, end of the line. In a sane world, rail lines would be everywhere as they are in Europe. Here we have to make due with the little that is left, the financially tenuous Amtrak line. With Mussolini in management, they run on time--or close enough.

This pleasant tour down the Central Valley, no worries about traffic, no stress from driving, was fantastic. The I 5 corridor has become a gauntlet of horrors, levels of traffic unimaginable just ten years ago. Rail transport combined with bicycle use provides a paradise of mobility. I wish more people had a feel for its benefits. I had time to eat, doze, contemplate my small place in all of this. Part of my musings took me to the power of motorized travel generally, how it has changed the way we live and who we are. One friend some time ago talked about how this has all been good for the gene pool: people travel far afield and sow their seeds in more diverse environments, the dissemination of insemination, so to speak. Perhaps. But like so much in life, our cleverness rewards us with all manner of unintended consequences. We are curious, inventive. Our agile minds and prehensile appendages give us great power, but what do we release when we open that box?

The carnage on our highways, the increase in crime, the environmental destruction are clearly evident to anyone who bothers to think about them. Evident, too, especially from a cyclist's perspective, is the toll on the human body and spirit. Because physical labor is hard, sometimes very unpleasant, we seek ways around it, and we have grown rich and diseased as a result. Everything must be safe and comfortable, fast and easy. We are now as flaccid and feeble as the Kings of old, hobbled by gout and fattened off the labor of serfs. We build the machines and import the labor so that we may ride in the sedan, a chair once powered by slaves and servants.
The irony, of course, is that now we are slaves to that which would serve us. Even the most vegan, peace loving, bike riding, dread lock-sporting environmentalist eats food that travels, on average, about 1,200 miles from where it was produced. Good God, what madness! We are chained to our machines, "petro-man," as one friend put it. Combine the power of our machines with the laziness of body and spirit and we have modern humans, homo siticus, "he who sits"--and grows ill and weak as a result. Obesity is now an "epidemic," and for the first time in many decades, the young people today are unlikely to live longer than their parents. The average American walks less than two miles a day. And that is an average. Many walk considerably less than that.

This obsession with ease and comfort has some interesting consequences for our perspectives. On the long bus ride to the school where I teach (yes, I sit in the bus like everyone else), I am a freak, usually the ONLY one who has ridden a bike to get to this public transport--even though many who ride it with me live within reasonable biking distance. All of the rest--with the exception of a schizophrenic cycling nut--drive cars to the bus stop. So there's a certified mental patient...and me. Perhaps I am unstable, too? Maybe that 2.5 mile hilly ride from my home to the bus stop really is very extreme, and I have just developed a warped sense of what is considered acceptable. Like the grinning lunatic in the original Dracula film who cackles on about eating flies and spiders, I crawl from the cave of my garage every morning and spin my personal torture device, flagellating my benumbed mind and body for some sin only I can understand.

Once, while loading up for the ride home, one fellow, who had also been on the bus, looked at me as I readied to leave and said, "Bummer. Now you have to ride home." I replied, in my own demented fashion: "Hey, this is sometimes the best part of my day." I'm not sure he understood, but he smiled to humor me, being nice to the village idiot. Later that same semester, as I paused to get the mail at the bottom of the hill where I live, a woman in a car, stopped for the same purpose, saw my bike and said: "You're so brave to ride this hill!" It's about a half mile climb with a bit of 10% grade near the top, something I ride almost everyday. Punishment for one, a courageous deed for another, such are the points of view of people who don't know or understand the possibilities of their own bodies. What should be a common place event, no more unusual than brushing one's teeth or taking out the garbage, becomes pedal powered purgatory or raising the flag on Mt. Sarabachi.

When I tell them I ride the 45 miles into and, occasionally, out of the valley 4,000 ft below, they know I'm fit to be locked up.

Such were my thoughts as I rode the train into the Great Central Valley.

Bum flipper meditations

Went--tried to go--for a hike today with everyone up here in Sonoma county and managed to sprain my ankle. It's not a terrible injury, but it sure is a drag. A mile or so into our ascent of Hood Mt. and crunch! over she went. I haven't done something like this in at least 15 years, so I guess I was about due. Still, I'm feeling pretty defective right now. Django bruised his paw, Jodi fought my cold, now this. Maybe this is a cursed trip as Jodi suggested. I'm feeling marooned and useless--no bike, can't hike. I'm going to get to some reading, but the weather is fine and I need to be active. I should get over the sprain in a few days--at least enough to ride, which is the most crucial thing at this point. The injury shouldn't endanger any plans for the big rides--Oregon in July and the TransAm.

I spend a lot of time imagining how things will go for the TransAm. It's still fully two months away, so I've got lots of living to do between now and then, but still, I keep jumping ahead to the day when I board the plane. I've been thinking about a joke I made in an earlier post--at The Bard's expense--about "sticking my courage to the screwing place." The line, from Macbeth, reads: "Screw your courage to the sticking place." The good lady was inspiring her husband to go to bat and kill all the nobles and guards in the castle so that he might take the throne. The inversion of the expression has some interesting implications, ones that climbers, military personnel, and various others can appreciate.

We can, if we dream ourselves into the right frame of mind, attempt some very impressive deeds. But if our luck is bad or our preparation inadequate, this mustering of courage can put us into desperate circumstances, screwing places, i.e., places where we get screwed, whacked, hammered, shown who the REAL daddy is. Arctic explorers (wasn't one of them named Scott?!), Everest climbers, skate boarders jamming some rad flips down concrete steps--all of us can find ourselves in "Oh, shit" moments when our reaches have exceeded our grasps, when nerve alone was not enough or too much. This, of course, was Macbeth's problem, too. Once the spot is in, there's no getting it out, even with Spray 'n' Wash.

Any seasoned adventurer can provide a litany of such experiences, and these tales form the spice of life, the narratives for late nights around the campfire. Since I am here to write these words, I have always been able to escape the ultimate price. I have a number of nerve-shredding tales from my years climbing and some from cycling, too. Like the time, when I was twelve, and I left a friend's house high on a hill above my home. The rain was pouring down, the streets slick, treacherous, but home was close, just a wee bit down this steep hill--I'll be home in no time. No worries. I jumped onto my trusty three speed--a cool lime green number my father had cobbled together with a Sturmy-Archer hub, drop bars, hand brakes, and nice, shiny, smooth, plated rims. I loved that bike. So with the cavalier courage of youth, I pushed off. Faster, faster, and faster still into the stinging rain I plunged, a fine rooster tail of water flinging off my rear tire, splashing my back. Well, it's time to slow down now. Let's just ease on these brakes, shall we? Nothing. Nada. Where there should have been a satisfying resistance, a rubbing or squeaking sound, there was just the increasing rush of the air across my unhelmeted head and the more painful sting of the rain. The grade only got steeper....

My mind, a rat on crack and cornered by a cobra, scrambled about for solutions. Okay, okay, you can stop this thing, right? Drag a foot? Run it out to the bottom? Crap, not that, too much cross traffic down there, not much chance there. Those bushes? Just ram this rig into a hedge? Drag my foot? Too fast, too fast. I'll just try to make my turn. When the road levels out, I'll drag a foot.

There was the turn. My eyes flooded, my heart pounding, slippery fingers still bearing down on the levers, I leaned into the corner...and right into a station wagon that had just pulled up to the intersection. Thump, crunch of steel, snapping spokes, a scream--I was airborne, free from earthly restraint and somersaulting over the wagon. Then, in an unplanned move that would have done Buster Keaton or Jackie Chan proud, I landed on my feet on the opposite side of the car. A 10! Eat your heart out, Nadia. Too shaken to truly stick the landing, I sagged to my knees, a quaking, terrified kid too lucky for words.

The driver, an equally terrified woman, burst from the car to see how I was doing. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Are you all right?" I stood up on uncertain legs and surveyed my frame. I was fine. Everything bent in the proper direction. No colorful fluids issued from fresh openings. I walked gingerly around the front of the wagon to survey the damage. I had come in at a sharp angle and hit the side just ahead of the front door. There was a dent in the door, and a strip of plated window trim was bent back. The front wheel of my bike was "potato-chipped," one of the pedals was bent terribly--but I wasn't. The woman followed me home the couple of hundred yards to my door as I dragged my bike through the rain.

I never made that mistake again.

So we experiment, take risks, fail, and get back on to try again. When I get off that plane in Bar Harbor, will I be pushing off a hill, limp brakes and polished rims to stop my fall? Over thirty years of experience between then and now tell me no, but there's always that thread of doubt. Sometimes I tug at this thread, worry the suture of uncertainty. Pull too hard, and the wounds can open up, the garment unravel. Sometimes it's best to ignore it. Or take a razor to cut it free.