Uncovering America Mile by Mile

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

* * *

posted by Unknown @ 8:28 PM