And We're Off! Day One...
This next installment brings us to Day One of the actual ride across America. I've recieved a few emails from friends saying that 1) I sometimes over describe something and 2) I'm telling the story in a detached way, at a static, unvarying pace. I've tried to look at this pasage and figure out if I can see those things and how to fix them, but I'm at a loss. How do I mix up the pace? Any ideas? Leave a comment, or send me an email at jadedrarity.spamblock@hotmail.com. (remove the ".spamblock" before using that address).
One of these days I'm going to set up an email specifically for feedback from this blog, but until then, that old address will work great. Thanks y'all!
Oh, and as always:
If you are new to NakedMiles, check out the introduction or dive right in with Chapter 1.Day one:
Sunday, June 13th. San Francisco to Sebastapol
I throw on a jacket and step outside to get one last glance around before the action starts. The morning air is cool enough that I can see my breath rising in front of me, even now in the middle of June. I rub my hands together to get the blood flowing. Across the street the Vietnamese family that runs a small corner take-out is opening up for business. I smile and wave. I’ve been a regular customer for the last week, stepping in for a cup of coffee or jasmine tea whenever I had the chance.
It’s a beautiful, if somewhat chilly, San Francisco morning. I love this city. I’ve spent the last week discovering all that I could—by van, bike, and on foot. This is my second visit to San Fran, my second chance to explore, and the city hasn’t yet let me down. Every step has lead to another fresh discovery. I’m excited to get on with our journey, to begin this epic, this odyssey that I’ve been waiting for, training for—and yet San Francisco calls out to keep me here. I love this city.
From my vantage up on the steps of the Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church I search for a glimpse of the bright orange that I know is waiting in the distance. The neighborhood buildings block my view but I know it’s somewhere over to the north, rising above the waters of the entrance to the bay, a gateway to Sausalito and Northern California; a gateway to a journey that will take me 3600 miles from here and ultimately to the capitol of this great behemoth of a nation that I call home.
Crazy? Maybe. But if I’m crazy than so are the thousands of others who have made a journey much like this one. The idea that my mission for these next nine weeks is crazy has crossed my mind, numerous times. Every single time I just shrug and plaster a big grin across my face. It may be a crazy dream, but it’s a crazy dream that is about to come true.
Thus I once again find myself grinning from ear to ear. The old woman across the street must wonder what has me so giddy. Or perhaps she knows. She looks like a woman who has lived her share of dreams, good and bad.
I turn back to go inside and bump into Slava, heading out to do his morning stretches and meditations on the sidewalk, in full view of all passers-by. Now that’s crazy. Me, I head into the stained-glass-light and old-carpet-church-smell of the sanctuary to sit for a moment. Public meditation is not for me. I need solitude while I get my thoughts in order. Plus I think Slava is just trying to show off his new-age-post-modern-cosmopolitan-man skills a bit.
“Chad?” A smoky, though not raspy, voice distracts me from the nothing I’ve been trying to think about.
“Yeah?” It’s Rachel. She sticks her head around the door jamb.
“What are you doing in there? Are you praying?” Rachel is Jewish by heritage, though apparently not much of anything by faith.
“I guess you could call it that.”
“Well, we need you to pack up your stuff. We’re starting to load the SAG.”
The “SAG” I the van. It stands for “Support And Gear”. Kiona demonstrates her artistic talents with washable paints on the hood and fenders. A few others add their own touches too, along the sides and back. Kevin P and Heather spend a long time together in the rear of the van, organizing the gear. I’m jealous, and try to ignore it. There will be plenty enough time for drama later on. For now, we have a long ride and a lot of preparation left in order for it to begin.
* * *
We gather together in three packs of five—we call them pods—each ready to attack the road, to begin a journey that will forever change so much about our lives. I wonder for a moment if it is really a change at all, or if this was destined to happen and thus a part of our lives all along. Perhaps rather than changing our lives, this journey is a continuation of the same one we’ve always be on, begun many years ago? In that case, the change would have been not doing this—
“Pod One. Are we Pod One?”
The moment is gone. I am jerked from my perhaps over-contemplative thoughts by a disembodied voice. I turn around in search of the source. It’s Leslie.
“Yeah, I guess so. We’re heading out first, if that’s what you mean.”
“Umm…Do any of us know how to get there?”
“I’ve got my directions. And so do Dan and Caitlin and Justine, I think. No reason why that shouldn’t be good enough. You ready to go?”
Leslie shrugs and chirps a quick “Yep,” absentmindedly fiddling with her pedals.
I mount my saddle and click into my pedals. We roll out from the sidewalk in front of the church, ready to take on the day, our first in a ride that will take nine weeks. We glide effortlessly across the street toward the hill that will take us flying down toward the bay, pedals spinning in smooth circles, arched low over our grips to minimize the effect of the gusting wind.
It’s the perfect moment, and it’s when Justine’s handlebar decides to come loose and almost sends her to the ground. The sudden stop catches Leslie off guard, and as she pulls up short she tips over sideways and falls like a flesh and metal domino against the pavement, unable to click out of her unfamiliar pedals in time to catch herself. We huddle around to be sure that she’s all right. Aside from a slightly scraped up knee, she is.
We’re all riding clipless pedal systems, since they offer the best energy efficiency for getting power from our legs to the wheels. There are special cleats attached to the bottoms of out shoes that snap into the pedal itself, forming a single shoe/pedal unit. The result is that we can pull on the pedals as well as push, almost doubling the amount of energy we can put into each turn of the crank. The upshot is that we’re attached to the bike if it goes down, and only weeks of practice have gotten me to the point where I can “click out” quickly enough to catch myself during an unexpected stop. Leslie just got her new pedals a few days ago, as did a few of the other riders. She wasn’t the first to fall because of those pedals, nor will she be the last, I’m sure. For now we help her up, dust her off, and get going once more, no longer Pod One.
We have made it all the way across the street. What a way to start our first day on the road. Granted, the ride has not yet officially begun; we are on our way to the opening ceremonies at Chrissy Field. Still, this feels like a tone setting moment, and it’s not exactly the type of tone we were hoping to set. We ride together with the third pod and wind our way north through the hills of San Francisco.
Suddenly there it is looming large and orange, up and to the left. The Golden Gate Bridge, our first official stretch of road that will have us crossing many more bridges before we reach our final destination outside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. This is it. Here we go, for real this time. I’m having a hard time grasping the journey that lies ahead of me. My mind just won’t wrap around the distance.
The other night, before going to sleep, Kiona pulled out a map of the United States. We decided to find our first day’s destination. It’s about as far from San Francisco as the length of the exposed lead in the pencil one of us used to point it out. That’s day one.
How many days is this going to take? The task seems enormous, and, of course, it is. Trying to reconcile the tiny distances of each day’s ride with the length of the journey as a whole makes my head hurt. I decide to stop thinking about it.
When we get to Chrissy field, along the bay-shore by the Golden Gate Bridge, we will have a short opening ceremony for the ride. I’m not thrilled about that; I just want to get riding and start eating up that distance on the map.
Though the pods were intended to leave separately, ours has stayed bunched up with pod three to form a “mega-pod” of sorts. I’m cool with that, until our first hill has the group crawling. I pass them up, partly to keep my cadence, and partly to show off. What can I say? Mornings and meditations I do alone, but biking—my pride gets the better of me sometimes. OK, a lot of times. It’s something to work on, and things to work on are a big part of why I’m doing this ride on the first place.
When I realize just how far ahead I am, I pull over to wait—and to catch my breath, though I wouldn’t admit it to anyone who might ask.
I rejoin the group and we ride over, around, and through northwest San Francisco. We take a shortcut the wrong way down a one-way street and find ourselves at one end of a large field next to the bay. This must be Chrissy Field. So where is everybody? I look around to see if I can make out another group on bikes.
It’s a big field. Huge, in fact. Long enough that I really can’t see the people at the other end. Strewn across the field like feathers fallen after a particularly intense pillow fight are people of all sorts. Families having picnics, lovers walking hand in hand, loners wandering without discernible aim; all in fairly good spirits. It puts me in a good mood to see it, but what I don’t see makes me wonder: I don’t see our group. I don’t see the SAG. I don’t see anything remotely like the set-up for a ceremony.
We pull out our cell phones and start making calls, trying to reach someone who’d know where we should be. We consult the park map posted next the sidewalk. Eventually we discover that there is a small amphitheater of sorts further up the field, toward the bridge. Somehow it hadn’t even occurred to me to look in that direction. Perhaps that large hill-like mound blocking the line of sight is what deterred me from searching in that direction.
That large hill-like mound turns out to be the very place where we are supposed to be. Built into the other side are rows of concrete benches surrounding a small performance space. Not everyone is there yet; so we settle down to take a few pictures and nosh on stale bagels and soy cream cheese.
As a group, we look nothing like what I expected us to look like, and at the same time we look exactly as I realize we should. We are a wildly eclectic lot, physically, mentally, emotionally—though we all tend to lean toward the left, politically. We are on a charity ride to promote social activism, after all.
Dan and Caitlin are inseparable, as always. Heather, with her long hair and short stature, bounds around excitedly, greeting those who have come to the ceremony with a childlike exuberance that belies her deeply mature world-view. Rachel is exchanging stories with alumni, probably hoping to get the scoop on the best party places along our route, and where to buy a certain illegal substance.
After waiting around, chatting with the Alumni Riders and friends and family that have come to see us off, we finally get the ceremony under way. The “ceremony” consists of a talk by a few alumni, a song they wrote about their ride, and an intentionally “inspiring” talk from Kevin Danaher, one of the co-founders of Global Exchange.
The alumni warn us of America’s love for RV’s, as well as their ineptitude at piloting them through the Rockies. They tell us that we will find that each of us will fit into one of two cycling styles: Mosey-ers and Destination-minded speeders. To be PC, they will start by saying that this is fine; to each his or her own. It is clear, however, that these alumni see no use for speedy riding and tend to prefer moseying as by far the best way to go about the ride. I see their reasoning and understand the sentiment. I like to think that I’ll take plenty of time to stop and check out the places we’ll ride through, but deep down I know that I belong in the other group, speeding toward our destination each day, loving the feeling of propelling myself at whatever top speed I am capable of a the moment.
Kevin Danaher’s speech seems almost to be a plug for his small self-published book that he gives us a copy of. The theme, our mission (or so he says), is to remember that there is no “us and them”. We are all “us”. We are all “them”. (I thought it was food safety and security?) We will strive to find the similarities and uniqueness that make us all who we are: humans, people, Americans, and yet each of us unique individuals living in world created by our perceptions of our immediate locale.
When the talks are over and we are finally ready to get under way, a local TV news crew arrives to film our “departure”. The line us up and have us ride by the camera, two by two. It is an amusing farce, a pleasant diversion from the reality of what we are about to do. Once beyond the camera we mill around and anxiously wait until everyone is ready for the real thing, one more starting point for a journey that’s had no shortage of beginnings—before it’s even started.
It is one o’clock in the pm, and finally we get rolling. Deb and Kien, or GX-employed ride directors, are taking care of the driving the SAG so that we can all ride this first day. Each pod is led by an alumni rider from the area. They lead us over the massive presence of the Golden Gate Bridge. Many of the riders take their time, taking pictures, and stopping to enjoy the view. The feeling as one stands looking up to the heights of one of the support towers is amazing. The bridge has a personality and character all it’s own. Perhaps it’s the bright orange that covers its every inch. Perhaps it’s the way we’ve all seen it in the media so many times, in movies and at the start of every episode of
Full House. Either way, the feeling is awe-inspiring. It’s a great way to start the official ride, not to mention the symbolic significance. It is a bridge after all, and Global Exchange’s overarching mission is to “build people to people connections.”
Having already ridden over the bridge a few years ago, and not having a camera, I decide not to take my time and sight-see. I can feel the bridge’s immensity and intensity, and I enjoy the ride as I cross, but from the bike. I don’t make any special stops. I am what the alumni have called a “destination minded” rider, as opposed to the “mosey-ers” who like to take their time, ride slow, and stop to sight-see. Several of the Alums as well as a good portion of this year’s riders see being “destination-minded” as a bad thing, or at least, not as good a thing as moseying. I am not of that ilk. At least the alum leading our pod also seems to like to keep up the pace. As we wait for others in the pod to catch up she explains that she is training for a triathlon. I am duly impressed. We ride past a man wearing a heavy trekking pack while riding. We are both impressed. She gives him a little shout-out as we pass. I grin. “That dude is hardcore.”
Across the bridge is Sausalito. It’s exactly as I remember it from my visit back during the spring break of my sophomore year of college when I visited my sister, who was living in San Francisco at the time. We ride through the same route that I took back then on a rented mountain bike, and I marvel at the difference that a road bike a little training makes.
Not far outside the center of Sausalito we pick up a bike path that will take us out of town. I take the opportunity to let my legs really start working. I drop down into the aero-bars and crank up to a nice quick, steady cadence. I stop periodically to let the group catch up. They roll in at different paces; some of the other riders apparently have to satiate that same itch for speed, while others are taking the “slow and steady” approach. Later, riding ahead again with our alumnus guide, she takes a conspiratorial tone and let’s me in on a little “secret”: “Your pods,” she says between breaths, “probably won’t last the week through.”
Really? I’ll try not to be too disappointed.
After a bit of confusion with the directions—trails not clearly marked and all—we eventually make it to a park that looks like a good place to stop for lunch.
So we stop. And stop. And stay stopped. It’s a long break, a good two hours start to finish. We eat very well, though. Fresh ripe avocados and tomatoes, fresh spinach, “baby” carrots, tortilla chips with humus, sandwiches containing all combinations of the above made on focaccia. It is a good meal.
A few of the girls go over to the swing-set across the park’s field to play, prancing and frolicking the whole way. Everyone takes off his or her shoes. Air on my feet feels very good. Good enough that I don’t want to move. So I don’t.
We sit and lounge in the sun for a long while. Finally, after our two-hour lunch has neared its end, the alumni say good-bye. This is as far as they go. The rest of the day is up to us. So we put our shoes back on and ride.
Along the way we find ourselves trying hard not to argue too much about the directions now that we no longer have an experienced navigator. Leslie meets a cyclist who did Bike-Aid a few years ago. Slava stops periodically to fiddle with his GPS, which I am already finding extremely tiring and tedious. The machine and the previous cyclist have given us conflicting sets of directions. I decide to ignore the ensuing confused discussion as to which road we should take, instead riding ahead because I like to ride fast, and I’m pretty sure I’m more efficient that way, too. I stop at intersections to wait for the rest of the pod, to make sure that we stay together. While waiting a particularly long time at one of these I run into the SAG.
“Everything OK?”
“Yep. Just waiting for the rest of my pod to catch up.”
“Oh, OK. How are you on water?”
“I’m good.”
That reminds me. I take a long pull from the hydration pack tube. The water is good, if a bit warm from resting in a bag against my exercise-and-sun-heated back. I’ve got to remember to stay hydrated.
We ride through some amazingly beautiful terrain. The rolling hills grow larger and larger around us. The vegetation on them is sparse, and I can see hill after hill after hill, unhindered by tall trees. It’s like a postcard come to life in front of me. I have the feeling this summer is going to have a lot of moments like that. I ride with a permanent smile plastered across my face, blown bigger by the wind of my passage.
As we approach the ever-growing hills the wind decides to blow directly in our faces. The hills, together with the wind, are murder. Either one alone—hills or wind—would have been bearable, but together they slow us down at times to an eight mile per hour crawl. Not to mention that it gets rather chilly, too, as the wind blows across and through our jersey’s, which are drenched with the sweat of our aerobic exertion. I grit my teeth and push harder, hoping that I will warm up from the extra effort as well as gaining the speed the I love.
The downhill sections make the climbs worth every stroke of the pedal. I fly so fast going down one particularly curvy slalom of a descent that the reflector attached to the spokes of my front wheel flies off and nearly hits me in the face before shooting thirty feet into the air and out of my line of sight. I love the thrill and speed, though I continue to find myself waiting around for the rest of the pod. This is getting more than a little annoying. After one wait of nearly twenty minutes, I decide that I’m going to stick closer to the group the rest of the way. It’s trading one annoyance for another, riding slowly, but it’s better than waiting all alone all of the time.
Our odometers finally indicate that we should be about ten miles from our destination when we see the SAG ahead and wonder why it’s stopped at the side of the road. As we approach is becomes apparent that Kiona’s got a flat, or some other sort of wheel trouble, at least. It’s the first day of the ride and already the equipment trouble has started. There will be plenty more. We all stop to offer assistance, but Kien, who’s been driving the SAG, has got in under control. We move on. The rest of Kiona’s pod is waiting just up the road, where we stop to chat with them for a few minutes. I find snake road-kill, the first I’ve ever seen. I feel like a little kid, pointing it out everyone.
“Yeah, we’ve seen it” they say, as if they can’t comprehend why it would even be worth pointing out. And of course most of them can’t comprehend it. I guess it’s just one of those little things that are taken for granted when people grow up seeing dead snakes on the road all the time.
We are approaching the day’s sixty-mile mark, and I am starting to wonder. Wasn’t this supposed to be a 55-mile ride? It’s getting nearer and nearer to dark and every turn brings another five to ten miles of unexpected road, or so it seems. A car honks as it passes. It’s Deb, ferrying Kate, with Kate’s bike in the back. I’m too focused on keeping cadence to wave back in time, though, and they are soon long gone out of sight.
Then I notice: somehow I’ve gotten ahead of the group again. I stop to return a phone call from home while I wait for the pod. “Yes, Mom, everything is going great, though we’re not there yet, so I really don’t have much time to talk…” I answer a few questions to help troubleshoot some computer trouble they’ve been having, but I can’t stand to wait around too long. It’s getting darker by the minute and I don’t want to have to take the SAG the rest of the way in.
I continue, though I’m riding slowly, hoping to let the others catch up. Soon I see Dan in my mirror. Good. The group is back with me. I’m concerned about the low light, though. Do we stop riding? I pull over to talk to the group about it.
They’re not there. Where is everyone? I take off the sunglasses and realize it’s not quite as dark as I had feared—but I still can’t see my pod. I could have sworn they were right behind me. Was I hallucinating? No, here they come, with the other pod as well. We decide to keep riding, since we must be so nearly there, anyway. It’s too dark for sunglasses, though, that’s for sure. I’m about to go without them when Dan reminds me that without the sunglasses I have no third-eye mirror, and Deb and Kien will be right there when we get to our destination. He’s right, of course, though I don’t like hearing it. I sigh and put the glasses back on, attempting to look over the top of the lenses so that I can still see.
A few more miles down a small side road, and there it is at last: Laguna Farms. We’ve made it. I throw my hands up in the air with a celebratory “whoop”, and quickly grab back on the handlebars when I remember that I’m not yet familiar enough with my bike to ride no-hands for more than a few seconds. I correct my off-road heading and look back to see that I am not alone in my exaltation. It is truly a joyous experience to finally be here, our first destination among many.
The sun has long been over the horizon and dark approaches quickly. The third pod has still not arrived. From what I can see the farm looks like a very interesting, quality sort of place--though I can’t see much. There is a circular building on stilts known as a yurt, surrounded by hay-bale homes as well as other more conventional farm buildings. A bio-diesel powered truck rumbles down packed dirt roads around the farm, its french-fry smell making my stomach rumble. We eat fresh greens raw and un-dressed. They are delicious. They are also dinner, until the SAG arrives and we can quickly throw together something more substantial.
The owner of the farm is a very “hip” guy. He tells us all about the farm and the local CSA that they run. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a CSA. The third pod finally arrives, pushing the limits of the “not past dark” rule almost to breaking, and they listen in as we all learn more about organic farming and CSAs.
CSA stands for “Community Supported Agriculture.” It’s an old idea, and completely brand new to modern farming. It’s based on the simple fact that the best food is local food, not only in quality but also for the economy and ecology of the region. Without massive cross-country transportation fees, local organic food can cheaper than that found in major grocery stores. The biggest advantage, though, is that it’s far less damaging to the environment, not only because it’s organic but also because it hasn’t required gallons and gallons of gas or diesel and the resulting pollution of burning it. Not to mention that, as I can say from direct experience, fresh organic produce has an amazing taste and vitality to it.
The Yurt is home to bunch of twenty-somethings who work on the farm. They’re all a bit hippy-ish, really… semi-homeless, they travel and work at places like this for a while, making enough to eat and smoke, and then move on to a new adventure. They’re all very much California, and very much high on some sort of drug or another. I avoid them. A few of the girls in our group, though, want to meet them, insisting that at least one of the guys is “totally hot.”
Right.
By the time we get to unload the SAG and think about preparing dinner, it’s quite late. We decide that Peanut Butter and Jelly sounds good. It’s either that or wait around while one of us prepares a cooked meal, and we’re too hungry to wait. We are also tired and smelly. Across the site I hear someone say “I smell like a cat’s ass.” I think it’s Kiona. My esteem for her rises a notch.
We change into clean clothes. I am intensely glad to be out of the sweaty, skin-tight cycling shorts that, while comfortable on the bike, are not so great for wearing around a farm. As I pull out the rest of my gear to set up for the night, I wonder about sharing a tent’s small sleeping space with someone who is bound to be at least as smelly as I am right now. I’m about to pull out a tent, wish for a gas-mask as well, when Kristen makes a suggestion.
“Why don’t we just sleep out here, under the stars?”
Sleep under the stars? Sounds good, but what if it rains?
“It never rains in California in the summer.” Yeah right? Yeah, right. The Californians look at me like I’m crazy for thinking that water might fall from the sky. So Kristen, Kiona and I sleep out.
The others pair off fairly randomly, though Rachel jumps at the chance to share a tent with Kevin P. AKA Kevin “Coffee”. Wait, doesn’t he have a girlfriend? Someone is in for a disappointment!
And on through training...
This section is a quite a bit shorter than the last. It also doesn't feel quite as "Done" to me. Let me know what y'all think! Leave a comment!
If you are new to NakedMiles, check out the introduction or dive right in with Chapter 1. As the rest of the week passes we begin training. We ride around town a bit, but the bulk of our training is more academic and philosophical. We learn to run the group with “consensus”, the fairest form of group decision making possible, but also the slowest, most inefficient, and often frustrating. We learn a few basics of road safety, weather safety, and first aid. We learn about our innate prejudices, and how to operate around them so as to prevent oppression. We learn about our topic for this ride: “Food Safety and Security”. I’m not sure at this point if I really get it. It doesn’t really seem worth talking about much, which confuses me. It just seems like there would be so many more issues that have a much greater impact on our everyday lives.
Take, for instance, the “Toxic Tour.” We take a guided ride around San Francisco’s “SuperFund” sites, areas that are so polluted that no one can go inside, and no one really knows what to do to best clean it up. The areas are right here, and clearly have an effect on the health of the people who live near them. Food? Yeah, that’s important. I’m all for good nutrition. Food Safety? It conjures up images of carrots wearing seat belts, cabbages with helmets. Or at least of signs displaying that mantra of all business bathrooms: “Employees must wash hands before returning to work.”
June 11th, 2004.
It’s my birthday. I’m now officially twenty-four years old, though I’ve been calling myself twenty-four for the last few weeks, already. After the day’s activities and our church-cleaning chores, I want to head out on the town and party it up. I make the suggestion, and more than a few of the other riders are all for it. Kien, the ride director from Global Exchange, tells me about a cool little bar with a Pacific Island theme in the area. They have tropical drinks served in large bowls that sound, well, large. I’m excited to go out, have nothing but fun, and get a little bit closer to my new friends.
“Trader Sam’s” is exactly as I expected it to be, the bowls every bit as large as they could be. We look around for a place to sit, but none seems available for the group of us. We share a seats and standing room at the bar, which isn’t bad because the place is not crowded. At least, not yet. The bowls are meant to be shared. Which we do, at first. Then people start ordering me birthday drinks. I get whole bowls to myself. We talk, dance, and drink, drink drink. The pacific island decor blurs into images of faces close to mine. Palm trees are fingers waved in front of my face. Heather, drinking there beside me, is a great conversation companion, though I’m not sure how much sense I’m making, at this point.
Heather is a petite girl with the strongest calves I’ve ever seen and hair halfway down her back. She’s a dynamo on and off the bike, and I think I find her rather attractive, though I’m far too chicken tell her that. Talking with her is fun because she’s got that rare trait of intelligence without coming across like a cocky know-it-all. Plus she’s into yoga (how about that, Steely Dan!) and will randomly bust into a back bend that looks impossibly painful and refreshing at the same time.
When the night comes to a close we stumble back to the church and attempt to sleep. I’m on my sleeping bag for about thirty seconds before I have to get up and run to the bathroom. The rest of the night comes in flashes. I’m over the toilet, next to the toilet, always feeling the turmoil of my insides trying to work their way out. Somehow I end up with no clothes on, though I am alone. I can’t sleep, but I keep drifting off in a haze. “Never again” come the words, and I immediately realize that they’ve been uttered by these very lips before, and I don’t mean it any more this time than I did then. Such is the life of a young American learning his tolerances. I spent years completely dry in high school and college while my friends went to parties, got drunk, got sick, got better. I thought I would avoid that by starting later. I guess I was wrong. Now it’s my turn.
June 12th, 2004.
I can’t get out of bed. Not that my camping mat is the most comfortable place to lie down, but I’m dead tired and still feel like I’ve got to struggle to keep from dry-heaving every thirty seconds. My “friends”, the ones who kept buying me drinks when I was far past gone, are trying to feed me last night’s leftovers. “Come on, Chad, get up.” They say. “let’s get going, we’ve got a lot to do today” and “is your bike ready to ride?”
“Uh, do I look ready to ride it?”
I’m not. We have a meeting at GX headquarters this morning that we’re supposed to ride to. I simply cannot do it. Jennifer offers to drive the van over, and I ride with her. I sit woozy and nauseated through the meeting, to which I try to appear to be paying attention. After the meeting everyone hops back on their bikes to ride around town and explore some more of San Francisco. I walk. Alone. Walk, walk, walk. I didn’t realize how far this would be!
I peruse through the local REI store, a giant multi-level affair. Rachel, Bunny, Heather, Leslie and a few others are there, too. We shop, but I don’t buy anything. I spend the time flirting with Heather, who seems more than happy to reciprocate, but whom I can’t read at all. I have no idea if there is any possibility for more than innocent flirtation, though I am surely interested in knowing!
When we’re all ready to leave I wave goodbye. They all quickly disappear around a corner and I am left to walk my way across San Francisco. I take a quick break at a soup shop to load up on clam chowder. The salty, creamy goodness slides down my throat more easily than I expected. It’s the first significant amount of food that I’ve been able to keep down all day. Almost immediately I begin to feel stronger and better, and it’s a good thing, too, because I have miles and miles to go before I sleep tonight.
I walk. Walk. Walk. I see all sorts of people doing all sorts of things, but I don’t have time to stop and explore. I have a mission. I have a destination. I keep walking.
I walk over a shady sun-dappled shortcut through the trees to a road that I am sure will take me north and to the church. About an hour later I’m back to the beginning of the short cut. I have no idea how I got turned around. I consult a park map in Golden Gate park. I wind my way up through the Castro, where gay couples stroll hand in hand under rainbow banners; and Haight-Ashbury, where the kids who were borm too late to be real hippies are giving it a shot, anyway. I keep walking.
I stop to buy a chocolate bar and a grape soda at a small grocery store on the corner. I think I’m close. The sun is getting low and I’m racing against the moment that it dips behind the horizon. A drum group is performing cultural rhythms that I cannot seem to place. There is a small crowd gathered around. Children hug their parents thighs while attempting to prevent their popsicles from dripping. A group of teens walks blithely by, as if the awesome talent of the performers is not good enough for them. I skirt the edges of the mass, enjoying the beats, feeling the rhythm pulse through me, and immensely relieved that my head is not hurting so much anymore. When the song finishes I hustle along. Only a few blocks left.
Eight at night and I’m finally back. I snack on leftovers from the others’ dinner. I nap. I talk for a moment with the Jennifer and Kate, Rachel and Kiona, Leslie and Bunny, as they begin to come back from wherever it was that they were. I go back to sleep, the faint twang of a Johnny Cash song making it’s way across the room from someone’s headphones.
In the Beginning
“I remember back when I was standing there, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the desert...”
It’s the middle of the night and we’re a six pointed star lying head to head, legs outstretched, staring up at another kind of star: the flaming ball of hydrogen kind, suspended in the black dome overhead.
“...forty miles out of the last town, another 40 miles to go until the next one...”
The wind suddenly picks up and blows a gritty blast of sand across our faces. I tighten my hood around my face, leaving only enough room for my mouth to continue forming the words.
“...and I looked up at the empty horizons, and down at my bike. Up at the road, it’s edges converging in the distance like a perspective piece from art class, and down at my legs, my feet...”
The wind dies down and I pause to ease my cracked lips with the stick of balm being passed around.
“And I just stood there, thinking of the distance, and how I got myself there on a chunk of metal and two strips of rubber.”
I feel like a character in a movie or a play, the kind where one guy goes off on a long monologue about the meaning of life. I always thought that was so unrealistic.
“Yeah, man. I remember that day. I felt that, too.”
“Dude, I think that was yesterday.”
“Really?”
“For sure.”
“Whoa. It feels like so long ago, though.”
“Yeah, man, it does”
Three weeks earlier... 11:58 pm, Boston Massachusetts.
I’m tossing and turning on the over-compressed foam of a small pull-out couch in my sister’s apartment. I’ve been trying to sleep, but I’m far too excited. I can’t get my mind off tomorrow. Questions blink on and off in my sleep deprived head.
“What will the other riders be like? Will I get along with them? Will I be able to keep up with them?” I have this nagging suspicion that everyone else will be really hard-core riders and I’ll be left wheezing up the mountains, choking on their dust.
I drift off for a moment. I’m not sure how long, but the next time I look at the clock it reads 12:25. My thoughts continue mid-stream from wherever it was they left off:
“...and then there’s the question of the girls.”
I’ve seen the roster. There’s a two to one girl/boy ratio. That, in my book, is a good thing. It is categorically not my main reason for the joining the ride—I mean, there are plenty of other far more convenient ways to meet women—but the idea of a relationship forming on the ride is one I’m certainly not overlooking. It’s the whole “summer-camp fling” mentality coming back to haunt me—though it’s a friendly ghost and I’m not discouraging its efforts. In my dreams I’m getting to the end of a long arduous ride, sticky with the familiar cocktail of sweat mingled with road grime and splattered gnats, and I get off my bike and into the arms of an equally slimy yet somehow still gorgeous girl. I know that that particular dream come off as a pathetic film noire--if Oscar the Grouch had made those kinds of movies--but it’s entertaining and I’m not complaining. Speaking of which, it’s time to head back to dreamland…
Wake up.
Stumble into the shower.
Dress.
Stumble out the door.
Forget to brush teeth. Damn.
Arrive at Boston Airport, say good-bye to sister
Check in.
Fall asleep at the gate.
Fortunately I awake before they start the boarding for my flight. Every time I’m in an airport I wonder which company it is that must be making billions of dollars building those seats that they have at the gate of every airport, ever. They don’t look like much, but they’re surprisingly comfortable.
When my zone is called I grab my pack, into which at the last minute I managed to stuff my bike helmet so as not to have it cracked in the abuse rendered to all checked luggage. I head to the plastic smile of the boarding attendant. This is a journey that started months ago, that won’t start for another week, and that begins right here and now. I board the plane, find my seat, and settle in for a life-defining experience.
Sometimes—in fact most of the time—when I’m about to begin one of my little journeys, odysseys into the exciting unknown, I don’t feel like it’s actually happening until I’m on the plane; then there’s no denying it.
Not this time.
This time it began the night that I took a toolkit to my beloved bike and tore it apart, piece by piece. The pieces went into a box, and the box went to FedEx, on its way westward a full two weeks before I would follow the same way. Those two weeks, spent finalizing all my arrangements at work and with my family, I couldn’t fail to miss my daily morning ride. It was then that I knew that this was for real, not just a fantasy that might eventually fade away.
These thoughts and more run through my head as I alternate between staring out the window at the wrinkled ground below and staring at the LCD screen imbedded in the seat in front of me, where Adam Sandler is trying to coax memories out of a wackily amnesiatic Drew Barrymore.
* * *
San Francisco. I’m at the airport. My ride is not. He was supposed to pick me up over two hours ago. I’m nursing a Heineken and attempting to read to pass the time. My phone rings.
It’s that guy that I’ve talked to a few times about the ride, “Lava” or “Sraba” or some equally unintelligible pronunciation. He’s supposed to be the one picking me up, and he’s been held up by some errand or other. “Surely less than thirty minutes to the airport form here” he tells me in a slight nasal accent that I can’t place.
* * *
He’s still not here. He’s finally called again though, to let me know that he’ll be here in about half an hour. Isn’t that what you said last time? He also told me that he’s supposed to be picking up another rider there, too. “Justine,” I think he said. At least it matches a name from the roster. I think I’m going to walk around for a while and see if I can find her, though I have no idea how I’ll recognize her.
* * *
Buzzers and lights inform the chronically lost that their baggage is about to arrive on the conveyor belts. Lonely suitcases make their way around and around for a few final laps long after the last passengers from that flight have moved on. The smell of greased wheels and old carpet lie as a constant background to the varying odors of the equally varied people wondering the Baggage claim.
Less than ten minutes of my own meandering brings me a tall-ish, slender woman walking around with a bike helmet. Red top, tight black pants, dark brown hair and a lightly freckled complexion. She appears to be in shape, she could be a serious cyclist-type. Choosing to forgo my usual reluctance to approach random strangers at the airport, I walk right up to her.
“Justine? From Bike-Aid?”
“Umm, yes?” Her expression adds “and who the hell are you?”
“Hi, I’m Chad. I’m doing the ride, too.”
“Oh, Hi.” Her guard having been somewhat lowered, I can see that she is clearly frustrated about something.
“So, how long have you been waiting for this guy to pick us up?”
“Two hours.”
“Yeah. I’ve been here since Ten a.m., myself.”
We take our conversation to a bench near the doors and share a little of our respective stories. Justine is one of the “older” ones in the group, since she’s recently in her thirties. She seems rather reserved, though she won’t hesitate to share her opinion on the current the topic of discussion, whatever it may be. She speaks in a mild mannered tone and very deliberate pace, which comes off as oddly formal, at times. She lives in Manhattan, and we talk a bit about the City.
Two of the other riders also live in New York City, and Justine tells me a bit about having met them over lunch one day. I had heard about that meeting and was hoping to be able to go, since I’ve got friends in the city with whom I was thinking of staying, and they’re only a couple hours’ drive from where I work. In the end I couldn’t make it, but it seems I didn’t miss much. Our absent driver, whose name turns out be “Slava”—short for Vladislav”—was at that lunch, as was another girl, Rachel, with whom I’d exchanged a few e-mails. It turns out that the whole thing became a debate about politics and religion, and more than one of the attendees left feeling more than a little offended.
We chatted a bit more—politics and religion featuring heavily, of course—before we decided to call our new friend Slava again and find out where in the world he could be. This time he assured us that he was no further than ten minutes out, which I rightly assumed to mean at least another hour. I was hoping he would be there soon not only so we could get out of the airport, but also because I could feel myself starting to slide into my old habit of “pathological self-disclosure”. I’m not sure why, but I have a disconcerting tendency to go into detail about my life with people I’ve just met. Perhaps it’s a coping mechanism, since I’m actually quite shy by nature. Or maybe it’s just an outward expression of a deep-seated desire to feel important. Either way, I can feel it coming on. Already I’ve brought up my fear of being an inadequate rider as compared to the others. Justine quickly added that she didn’t think that would be a problem, especially when I described the training regimen I’d been maintaining for the past six months. We decide that if indeed the other riders are hard-core chisel-bodied Olympians, at least neither of us would be alone as we chase dusk at the back of the pack.
When at last Slava arrives, trundling down the road toward the gate in a rented moving van, Justine and I have both reached a rather sour feeling toward him. I try to relax, though, to give him the benefit of the doubt and enjoy being free of the airports dark walls. Still, I manage to slip in quite a few sly digs, especially when he starts going off on a tangent about being a radical. Justine observes that if today is a good example of how this ride is going to run, we’re in for some trouble. I share her fears but express them more in terms of bitter sarcasm.
We make a quick stop at the freewheel bike shop to pick up a few of the bikes that I and other riders had shipped there. I’m happy to see my bike again, even if it is still in a box. The box looks fairly undamaged, and I am hopeful that the best has made it across the country completely unscathed. A few of the bikes have already been put back together by the fine folks at freewheel, so we decide to put them on the roof rack. We fumble with the mechanism for more than a short while and I wonder why the guy in charge of the van doesn’t know how to use the equipment. I manage to throw a few more sarcastic comments in Slava’s direction before deciding that, if I have to get along with guy for the next ten weeks, I might want to reel in that attitude. Still, from what I’ve seen so far, I echo Justine’s worries about the competence of our fearless leaders.
At last we arrive at the Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church, our home base for the next week as we get to know each other and make the final preparations for the ride. As we pull up to the curb we notice smiling faces streaming out of the church’s corner doors and toward us. We are greeted with the enthusiasm and warmth that has been so far missing in the day’s earlier interactions. I am at once reassured and excited. These are people I can live with, ride with, be with.
The introductions come one after another after another in a seemingly endless stream of names and faces. I struggle to tag them in my memory as they flash in and out before me. We’re all working together to get the van unloaded, especially to get the boxed bikes out and built. When things settle down I’ll be able to sort it all out.
Inside the church I take a look around. We are staying in the parish hall, a large room with high ceilings and a linoleum floor. It’s the bottom floor of the church, and partly underground. The only windows are small ones along the tops of the walls. To the right, taking up almost the entire wall, is an elevated stage, complete with curtain. To the left, nothing but blank wall. At the far end of the room, just past the stage are doors leading to the kitchen, and to the smell of dinner cooking. I turn to my bike, sans box but still in pieces. Finding a good open spot in which to work, I start piecing it back together. Foolishly I have forgotten to pack a pedal wrench. I’m sitting, staring at the crank with the pedal screwed on loosely, wondering what I can use to tighten it down when one of the girls comes over. It’s Rachel, I think. She hands me a pedal wrench.
“Here, you can use this.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Nice bike.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s a Cannondale, I see.”
“Yes. Yes it is. I really like the way Cannondales ride.”
“Yeah, me too. Mine’s the red one over there. It’s a cyclocross, though.”
I’m interested. I haven’t seen a cyclocross bike before. It’s mostly like a road bike, but beefed up to take the jolting and jarring of light off-road riding. It’s like mountain biking, but faster and on less technical terrain. Or conversely, it’s like road racing, but slower and on rougher terrain.
We strike up a conversation about my bike, her bike, and the other two-wheeled machines lining the walls of our home for the week. Others join in, and the topic jumps randomly as we chat the time away until dinner, when the official introductions begin.
We tell each other our name, age, and whether we prefer to called by the masculine or feminine sets of pronouns. That last bit strikes me as slightly odd. I’ve never encountered anyone before who preferred to be called something other than what was physically obvious. I try to stay open minded, though. The names and ages fly by with barely enough time to register in my brain. It’s my turn.
“Um, my name is Chad. I’m from Connecticut. I’ll be turning 24 this week. Oh, and male pronouns are fine, thanks.”
We shift to a game, the purpose of which is to help us remember each other’s names. We each pick fruit of vegetable that starts with the same letter as our first name. Then we go around and tell everyone else’s name and food item. I’m still not getting them all, but a few of the names are starting to sink in.
There are two Kevins. One of them has a thin mustache, buzzed hair, and when not wearing contacts, switches to designer glasses with thick white plastic frames. The other Kevin is tall, with longer, ear-length hair. He seems rather quiet, and wears a T-shirt that says “Laughter Patrol.”
Leonard “Bunny” Soriano is our “international exchange” rider. Bunny is from the Philippines. He rides a mountain bike from that he converted with a non-shock absorbing fork and road tires. He seems like a very world-wise sort of guy, and he’s got a great sense of humor. Bunny is sitting next to Justine, who I met at the airport, and Slava, who I also already know from the ride here.
Heather, Rachel, Kiona, and Kristen are all twenty-two years old and fresh out of college. Heather has long hair halfway down her back. Kiona just cut her blonde hair, and it’s only an inch long, sticking out from her head at all angles.
Jennifer and Kate are both older than most of the rest of us, though I’m not sure how much. Kate seems to be more my age, and I think Jennifer is more like five or even ten years older. They’ve both been rather quiet, so far.
Dan and Caitlyn are a couple form the pacific Northwest. Also very quiet folks, and I have no idea how to read them. Dan is consistently half asleep. I wonder if it’s from the travel to get here, or if he’s always like that.
Finally we get around to Leslie. She’s also from the Pacific Northwest. She’s almost exactly the same age as me, only off by a few days. She’s fairly tall, which belies her underlying childlike demeanor, which is turn seems to help cover a deeper more mature aspect of her personality.
After discussing a few basic ground rules for the week, and having a little introduction into the schedule and the way things will work, we are dismissed to set up our things for the evening. Most of us stay together for a while, chatting. Before long, though the group scatters along with our conversations.
Rachel and Heather and I decide to take a walk to find an internet café. It’s colder than I expected for California in June, but we wrap our sweatshirts close and walk to build heat. Our conversation keeps us distracted from the chill, anyway. Rachel stops at a convenience store to pick up a pack of cigarettes. I’m slightly surprised that a cyclist serious enough to do a ride like this would smoke. I mention it. She gives me a look that says “oh, don’t tell me you’ll be nagging me about this for the next thirty-six hundred miles.” I drop the subject.
Rachel, as it turns out, is a party girl from Jersey. Her parents own a Kosher deli, but she’s leaving the family business to get into urban planning. She’s got an extremely assertive, almost aggressive personality that is also somehow extremely compelling and magnetic. She drinks like a fish and smokes more than just tobacco. As we walk, Rachel tells Heather and me a little about her time doing a NOLS course in Patagonia. It’s a compelling story, and I’m a little jealous of the experience. I make a mental note to check out NOLS the next time I get a chance.
When we at last reach the internet café we all write home and to friends to let them know we arrived in San Francisco safely and are getting ready to start riding next week. I’ve never seen an internet café quite like this one. It’s more internet than café. I don’t see any food or drink for sale at all, actually. There are bikes, though. Not my kind of bike--Little pocket-rockets for sale or rent. Electric, I think, though probably some gas ones as well. The rows of computers are sparsely populated by teenagers and college students, all of whom seem to be playing the same online game. The next generation of “Dungeons and Dragons” kids. I don’t feel the urge to stick around, and when we leave I realize that our long walk was worth far more for the conversation and company than for the use of the internet.
* * *
From: "chad hadsell"
To: “Mom and Dad”, “Serena”, “Kyle”
Subject: I have arrived!
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 06:16:41 +0000
Hi all,
I'm here in San Francisco. It was a long day of traveling, since I had to wait at the airport for quite some time before my ride showed up.
Anyway, team training has begun., We are doing team-building exercises and laying out the ground rules and all that. Things are going well and I am very psyched. This is a great group, and I can tell that this will be a very good trip.
Anyway, gotta go, my time here in the cyber-cafe is running out.
I'll keep in contact periodically!
--chad
* * *
Welcome to NakedMiles! NakedMiles is an experiment in self-publishing and community editing. It's not so much a blog as it is a serialized story, open for comments, questions and criticism.
During the summer of 2004, I rode my bike across the country, from San Francisco to Washington DC. This is the story of that ride. It's about traveling, about cycling, about relationships with each other, our country, and our planet.
Every few days (hopefully) I will post the next story segment. Some may be long, some may be short. If they're any good, let me know! If they suck, let me know! Tell me what you think, make any corrections and suggestions you feel like, and when it's all done and I'm ready to publish it as a physical book, you just might show up in the acknowledgements!
A quick note: I want to give people time to read and respond. The more responses, the quicker the next segment will be posted. The fewer the responses, the longer I'll wait before posting. I want to be sure people are actually taking part in this experiment before I start loading the server with my words!
