Uncovering America Mile by Mile

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!

posted by Unknown @ 10:16 PM